One Year Anniversary

One year ago today, I began writing this blog.  If you didn’t know, I have another blog, that is definitely NSFW.  I had started the other blog as a place to put all of the porn that had accumulated on my hard drive, and as I found that I enjoyed blogging, I started to do some (somewhat) intellectual posts about gay history.  Some people loved them, most who read that blog didn’t much care, they were only there for the pictures and other naughty stuff.  So I decided to start another blog, one dedicated to GLBT Studies: History, Art, Literature, Politics, and Culture, with a wide range of topics that interested me and hopefully you.  I started by transferring most of the old history and cultural posts from my other blog to this one, and then this one took on a life of its own.  I think that I have been somewhat successful in doing this.  I still get roughly a tenth of the readers on this blog than on my other blog, but even though some of you read both, mostly each blog is geared toward a different type of reader:  the smut set and the smart set.

So when my one year anniversary was pending, I asked my readers for suggestions for this post.  I got several awesome suggestions, some of which will be future posts.  The one that most agreed was the best was from Writer, who suggested that I do a post on important gay events that coincide with today.  So I did a little search and surprisingly found a number of things. First thing first, we will look at some important birthdates.  Not all of which are gay, but do have a gay theme to them.

George Washington Carver is believed to have been born on this day in 1864 (according to some sources; the year and date are often disputed).  Carver was known as a botanist at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee Institute.  His most important contributions were in the field of sweet potatoes (at least 118 uses), peanuts (over 300 uses, one reputed to be peanut butter), and soybeans, and he was an early advocate of crop rotation in the South. Why is he on this list of GLBT important dates?  Carver never married, and there is little documented information about his private life. He is included in the encyclopedia glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture and books such as Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America. Carver never married or expressed interest in dating women. While he taught at Tuskegee, there were reportedly rumors about his sexuality. Late in his career, Carver established a life and research partnership with the scientist Austin W. Curtis, Jr. The two men kept details of their lives discreet.  Carver bequeathed to Curtis his royalties from an authorized 1943 biography by Rackham Holt. After Carver died in 1943, Curtis was fired from Tuskegee Institute. He left Alabama and resettled in Detroit. He manufactured and sold peanut-based personal care products

Next on the list of birthdays is Oscar Hammerstein II, who was born July 12, 1895.  Although he was married with children and there is no indication that he was gay, he is one of the greatest contributors to the classic American musicals of Rodger and Hammerstein.  Hammerstein contributed the lyrics to 850 songs, according to The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Amy Asch. Some well-known songs are "Ol' Man River" from Show Boat, "Indian Love Call" from Rose Marie, "People Will Say We're in Love" and "Oklahoma" (which has been the official state song of Oklahoma since 1953) from Oklahoma!, "Some Enchanted Evening", from South Pacific, "Getting to Know You" from The King and I, and the title song, "The Sound of Music" as well as "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and “Edelweiss", which was the last song he wrote before his death.  Yes, the love of musicals is a stereotype of gay men, but I do love musicals and couldn’t resist including him in this list.

The next GLBT oriented birthday is that of Cheyenne Jackson (born July 12, 1975), the  American television and Broadway actor and singer.  He is openly gay and an LGBT rights supporter, as well as an ambassador for amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) and the national ambassador for The Hetrick-Martin Institute. Jackson's partner, Monte Lapka, is a physicist; they have been together since 2000.

And just as an aside, Julius Caesar was born on this day in 100 BC.  Some contemporary historians and political enemies claimed that he was “every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.” Also, Richard Simmons, the fitness and weight loss guru was born on this day in 1942.  Need I say why he is included on this list.

Other events today in GLBT History…

1730: In Frisia, a part of the Netherlands, Caspar Abrahams Berse is arrested after being accused of sodomy. He begged the policeman who arrested him to kill him, saying that he would later be executed.

1940: A directive from the Reich Main Security Office mandates that any homosexual who had seduced more than one partner would be put into protective custody (a concentration camp). Evidence of a sexual act was often absent in meeting the criteria.

1950: Elsie de Wolfe, socialite and premier designer, dies at age 85. She liked to call herself the first interior decorator, and actress, and madly in love with her husband, but was none of them. The interior arts had been developed long before her, her "modeling" of outrageous clothes on Broadway hardly made her an actress, and she was in fact in love with socialite Elizabeth Marbury. Elsie's husband didn't mind though, as he was gay, too.

1972: Jim Foster of San Francisco and Madeline Davis of New York become the first openly gay delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

1986: The International Lesbian & Gay Association votes almost unanimously not to revoke the membership of the South African Gay Association after testimony from a representative who stated that the organization is opposed to apartheid.

1998: The New York Times reports on the murder of Ali Forney, a 22-year-old homeless, black, gay transvestite who supported himself by occasionally working as a prostitute. He was the third transvestite prostitute to be murdered in New York City in 14 months.

1998: Poland's gay pride demonstration is cancelled because city authorities refused to issue the necessary permits.

1999: Miller Brewing Company cancels a beer ad featuring shirtless male models on San Francisco based gay cable show QTV's "Xposure" program.

2002: A Canadian court for the first time rules in favor of recognizing same-sex marriages when the Ontario Superior Court rules that prohibiting gay couples from marrying is unconstitutional. The court gives the province of Ontario two years to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples, but two weeks later the federal government steps in to appeal the ruling.

Today in LGBT History--July 12 - National Grassroots Equality | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/grassroots-equality-in-national/today-lgbt-history-july-12#ixzz1Rnylm9me