BCE to The Suffragettes
1832, UK – Jeremy Bentham (February 4, 1748 – June 6, 1832) died. He was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer and founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham wrote the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England in around 1785, at a time when the legal penalty for buggery was death by hanging. His advocacy stemmed from his utilitarian philosophy in which the morality of an action is determined by the net consequence of that action on human well-being. He argued that homosexuality was a victimless crime, and therefore not deserving of social approbation or criminal charges. He regarded popular negative attitudes against homosexuality as an irrational prejudice, fanned and perpetuated by religious teachings. However, he did not publicize his views as he feared reprisal. His powerful essay was not published until 1978. The essay Offences Against One’s Self, argued for the liberalization of laws prohibiting homosexual sex. The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. It was published for the first time in 1931.Bentham does not believe homosexual acts to be unnatural, describing them merely as “irregularities of the venereal appetite”. The essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence – public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws. When the essay was published in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1978, the “Abstract” stated that Bentham’s essay was the “first known argument for homosexual law reform in England.” On his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for his body to be first dissected, and then to be permanently preserved as an “auto-icon” (or self-image), which would be his memorial. This was done, and the auto-icon is now on public display at University College London (UCL).
06-06-1875 – 08-12-1955 Thomas Mann – Born in the Free City of Lûbeck, German Empire. He was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1905, Mann married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a wealthy, secular Jewish industrialist family. She later joined the Lutheran church. The couple had six children. The two oldest, Erika and Klaus, were gay. The outbreak of WWII on September 1, 1939, motivated Mann to make anti-Nazi speeches (in German) to the German people via the BBC. He was one of the few publicly active opponents of Nazism among German expatriates in the U.S. The Mann family emigrated to the U.S. in 1939, where he taught at Princeton University. In 1942, the family moved to the Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, where they lived until after WWII. On June 23, 1944, Mann became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He returned to Europe in 1952, but never lived in Germany again. Mann’s diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his bisexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently in his novella, Death In Venice.
1885 – A’Lelia Walker (June 6, 1885 – August 17, 1931) was an American businesswoman and patron of the arts. She was the only surviving child of Madam C.J. Walker, popularly credited as being the first self-made female millionaire in the United States and one of the first African American millionaires. “A’Lelia Walker probably had much to do with the manifest acceptance of bisexuality among the upper class in Harlem,” wrote Lillian Faderman in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, “Those who had moral reservations about bisexuality or considered it strange or decadent learned to pretend a sophistication and suppress their disapproval if they desired A’Lelia’s goodwill.” A’Lelia inherited her mother’s fortune but also ran the business herself, opening training centers for Walker agents and the Walker Hair Parlor. She married three times and has been linked to the legendarily hilarious Mayme White (daughter of the 19th century’s last black U.S. Congress member), stage actress Edna Thomas (November 1, 1885 – July 22, 1974)and Mae Fane, about whom little is known.
06-06-1894 – 02-29-1972 Violet Trefusis – Born in London, England.
She was an English socialite and author. She was married to Denys Trefusis from 1919 until his death in 1929. Violet is best remembered for her long affair with Vita Sackville-West. Both women wrote about their affair in novels. Their affair was also written about in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography. Violet wrote novels and non-fiction, both in English and in French. In 1921, the two women went to France where they spent six weeks together. Their affair ended when
Vita’s husband threatened to break off their marriage. From 1923 on, Violet was one of the many lovers of the Singer sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer, wife of the gay Prince Edmond de Polignac. In 1940 Violet and Vita met again and they kept in touch for the rest of their lives. A lot of their love letters and poems written to each other have survived.
06-06-1913 – 07-13-1988 Hilda Gobbi – Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (at the time she was born, Budapest was part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire). She was an award-winning Hungarian actress best known for her portrayals of elderly women. Gobbi as Aunt Szabo in the radio soap opera The Szabo Family was well-loved. She was contracted with the National Theater in 1935. During WWII she was a resistance fighter. After the war, she worked at the National Theater until 1959. In 1960, she began working at the József Attila Theatre. At a time when homosexuality was illegal, Gobbi was openly lesbian and often dressed in men’s clothing. She had a long relationship
with actress Hédi Temessy in the late 1950s to the 1960s. After their relationship ended, Gobbi became involved with writer, Erzsébet Galgóczi. In 1982, Gobbi published her autobiography. Her career on film, radio, and stage spanned over fifty years. She died in 1988 leaving her estate to the National Theater and set up an annual award for the best theater production of the season. A statue of her is outside of the National Theatre.
June 6, 1933
In Camden, New Jersey, the first drive-in movie theater opened. The price of admission was 25 cents for the car, plus 25 cents per person, and no group charged more than one dollar.
The Friends of Dorothy Era and The Hayes Code
06-06-1942 Ulrike Ottinger – Born in Konstanz, Germany. She is a German filmmaker and photographer. She wrote her first screenplay in 1966. In
1969, she founded the film club “Visueli” in West Germany and directed it until 1972. Her film, Joan of Arc of Mongolia, was entered into the 1989 Berlin International Film Festival. Her film style has been referred to as bizarre and surrealistic. Ottinger has also worked as a photographer, lithographer, and painter. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She has lived in Berlin since 1973 and has always been openly lesbian.
1944 – D-DAY. The American/British/Canadian invasion of Normandy Beaches in WWII. While it’s not a specific LGBT-related event, there were undoubtedly many hundreds of young gay soldiers killed on those beaches. 160,000 landed, 9,000 killed or wounded. Today we remember them with gratitude.
06-06-1949 Holly Near – Born in Ukiah, California. She is an American singer-songwriter,
actress, teacher, and activist. Her television career began in 1969 with a part on The Mod Squad. She also appeared on Room 222,All in the Family and The Partridge Family, as well as other shows. In 1970, Near became a member of the Broadway musical Hair. In her long career in folk and protest music, she has worked with many other musicians, including Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, and Harry Belafonte. In the early 1990’s she wrote an autobiography, Fire in the Rain, Singer in the Storm.
In 1970, Near was a cast member of the Broadway musical Hair. Following the Kent State shootings in May of that year, the entire cast staged a silent vigil in protest. The song, “It Could Have Been Me”, released on A Live Album 1974, was her heartfelt response to the shootings. In 1971, she joined the FTA (Free The Army) Tour, an anti-Vietnam War road show of music, comedy, and plays, organized by antiwar activist Fred Gardner and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. In 1972, Near founded an independent record label called Redwood Records (now defunct) to produce and promote music by “politically conscious artists from around the world”. Near became a feminist, linking international feminism and anti-war activism. In 1976, Near came out as a lesbian and began a three-year relationship with musician Meg Christian(born 1946). Near was probably the first out lesbian to be interviewed in People Magazine. “I don’t know why. Just isn’t a handle I relate to. I include human and civil rights in all that I do. I am monogamous. I relate to that term. I am a feminist. If I am with a woman I am a feminist. If I am alone I am a feminist. If I am with a man I am a feminist. And until the one I am with and I part ways, then I am just what I am in that relationship and I don’t much think about what I will do next. I focus more on what I bring to that relationship. It is a full-time job being honest one moment at a time, remembering to love, to honor, to respect. It is a practice, a discipline, worthy of every moment. I think my feminism and my ability to love has been highly informed by having had lesbian relationships. The quality of my life has, without question, been elevated.” For a brief moment in time I struggled with sexual identity, somewhere in the mid-’80s. Then I realized it was the wrong question for me. That is not to say it is the wrong question for others. It just wasn’t important to me. So I haven’t really thought much about it since. I am going to sing lesbian love songs and support gay rights no matter what. The rest is public relations.”
1950s The Decade the public learned heterosexual women wanted sex
1950, Belgium – Chantal Anne Akerman (6 June 1950 – 5 October 2015) is born. She was a Belgian film director, artist and professor of film at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles(1975). According to film scholarGwendolyn Audrey Foster, Akerman’s influence on feminist filmmaking and avant-garde cinema has been substantial. Although Akerman is often grouped within feminist and queer thinking, the filmmaker has articulated her distance from an essentialist feminism. Akerman resists labels relating to her identity like “female”, “Jewish” and “lesbian”, choosing instead to immerse herself in the identity of being a daughter. Akerman has stated that she sees film as a “generative field of freedom from the boundaries of identity”.Akerman died on 5 October 2015 in Paris. Le Monde reported that she committed suicide.
06-06-1950 – 10-05-2015 Chantal Akerman – Born in Brussels, Belgium. She is a Belgian film and TV director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and professor of film
at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 qui du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). According to film scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Akerman’s influence on feminist filmmaking and avant-garde cinema has been substantial. Her latest film, No Home Movie, was being shown at the 2015 New York Film Festival. She committed suicide on October 5, 2015. According to her sister, she had been hospitalized for depression. She was known as being openly lesbian.
06-06-1952 Harvey Fierstein – Born in Brooklyn, New York. He is an American actor, playwright, and voice actor. Fierstein won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his own play Torch Song Trilogy and the Tony Award for Best
Actor in a Musical for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. He wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and the book for the Tony Award-winning Kinky Boots. In 2007 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. He appeared in Showtime’s Nurse Jackie in 2014. Fierstein is openly gay and came out at a time when very few celebrities did. Occasionally he writes columns about gay issues. He now resides in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
06-06-1955 Sandra Bernhard – Born in Flint, Michigan, her family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona when she was ten. She is an American comedian, singer, actress, and author. She first
gained attention in the late 1970s with her stand-up comedy. In 1977 she was cast as a supporting player on The Richard Pryor Show. Her big break came in 1983 when she was cast by Martin Scorsese to star as a stalker and kidnapper Marsha in the film King of Comedy for which she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1985 she began performing her first one-woman show. In 1988 she launched an Off-Broadway show called Without You I’m Nothing, with You I’m Not Much Better. In 1990 it was turned into a film and a double album. She was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s NBC program. She was on the show with her then-good-friend (and rumored lover) Madonna. The two alluded to their romantic relationship. In 1991, Bernhard began playing the role of Nancy Barlett on the hit sitcom Roseanne. She appeared in 33 episodes between 1991 and 1997 and was one of the first actresses to portray a lesbian recurring character on American television. Bernhard is openly bisexual and a strong supporter of LGBT rights.
06-06-1958 Tracey Adams – Born Debra Blaisdell in Severna Park, Maryland. She is an American porn superstar whose career has spanned three decades. Comfortable sexing with men and women in film but is openly a lesbian. She has appeared in over 300 movies during the 1980s and 90s. She also appeared in mainstream movies, such as the 1986 comedy film Wimps and in the French TV movie La femme en noir in 1988.
The Civil Rights 60s: When the Boomers were under 30
06-06-1961 Grace Ross – She grew up in New York (birthplace unknown) before she moved to Worcester,
Massachusetts. In 2006 Ross became the first open lesbian to run for Governor of Massachusetts. She lost to Deval Patrick receiving only 1.95% of the total vote. In December 2006, she was named “Person of the Year” by the New England gay-orientated magazine, IN News Weekly. In 2008, Ross helped found the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending, a coalition of over 30 community organizations, housing counseling agencies, legal services groups and others who have come together to work on the sub-prime foreclosure crisis in Massachusetts. She is also active in the Worcester Anti-Foreclosure Team (WAFT).
1967 – The New York City’s Civil Service Commission makes public its year-old policy of allowing city agencies to hire and employ lesbians and gay men. The new policy comes partly in response to the lobbying efforts of the Mattachine Society of New York.
Feminist, Gay Liberation and Lesbian Separatists: Civil Rights
06-06-1970 J.C. Adams – Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is an American author, magazine editor, and reporter whose work focuses on the adult pornographic industry. He is also a director of gay phonographic films. Since 2003, Adams has been a regular guest on the Derek and Romaine Show, on SIRIUS OutQ Satellite Radio. He is known to be bisexual.
June 6, 1972
David Bowie released “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” album.
1976
College student Richard Heakin was leaving a Pride event at Stonewall Tavern when he was followed by four teenagers, who then beat him to death. His killers were tried as juveniles and only received probation for what was determined a hate crime. The sentence shocked and outraged Tucson residents, who then rallied to demand justice for the slain 21-year old. As a result of their actions, the city became one of the first in the nation to add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination laws the following year, according to Tucson.com.
06-06-1978 Mondo Guerra (Armando Thomas “Mondo” Guerra) – Born in the Denver, Colorado area. Guerra is a fifth-generation Mexican-American from the Denver area. He is a
fashion designer and activist. Guerra finished as runner-up on Season 8 of Project Runway, and later won the series’ first All-Stars season. He was also the first contestant on the show to come from Denver, Colorado. On November 30, 2010, Guerra appeared with Liza Minnelli, Kenneth Cole, and Cheyenne Jackson on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell and usher in World AIDS Day. He is HIV positive. Guerra was listed on Out’s 3rd Annual 100 Most Eligible Bachelors (2013).
1979, Canada – Toronto Teacher Don Franco is charged with being a keeper of a common bawdyhouse in his own home after a police raid found him in an orgy with a number of other men. A year earlier Franco was arrested in a police raid at the Barracks baths and then released his name to the media. Franco was close to retirement and worried that a conviction might lead to losing his pension. He didn’t back down, and dozens of hearings later he was acquitted of the charge. He retired with full pension. His was an important early victory in the struggle for gay rights. In a time when the fight for rights was savage, Franco was involved with just about every protest, group or movement. He was connected to varying degrees with AIDS Action Now, the Ontario Coalition for Gay Rights, the Campaign for Equal Families and the NDP, just to name a few. He got little credit for the work that he did and didn’t profit from his good deeds, but he is one of a select group of people who were involved in almost the entire history of the fight for gay rights in Canada. He died on February 3, 2014, at the age of 90.
The Genderfuck Apathetics vs Yuppies : Aids the new STD on the list
1987
Whitney Houston had her second UK No.1 single with ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)’. It reached No.1 in over a dozen other countries and won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1988
06-06-1988 Gideon Glick – Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an American stage performer and movie
actor. His Broadway work includes the role of Ernst in the musical Spring Awakening. Glick is openly gay and has stated in interviews that he came out when he was in the seventh grade. He was listed on Out’s 3rd Annual 100 Most Eligible Bachelors (2013).
90s: Slurs Reclaimed: Act Up! Lesbian Avengers and Queer Nation
06-06-1991 Park Cannon – Born in Albany, Georgia. She is an American politician that serves in the Georgia House of Representatives, representing the 58th district. On March 25, 2021, as Governor Kemp was signing the controversial voting legislation, Cannon knocked on the Governor’s office doors in an attempt to discuss her concerns about the bill. She was arrested by Georgia State Patrol officers and charged with “Preventing or disrupting General Assembly sessions or other meetings of members.” The incident sparked backlash towards both the officers and Georgian Republican lawmakers. She was not prosecuted.
Post 9/11 – The Shock Decade From “gay and lesbian” to “lesbigay” to “Lgbt/Lgbtq/Lgbtq2”
2001
Twenty of Elton John‘s automobiles sold at auction for $2.75 million. Elton said he, ‘doesn’t have time to drive them anymore’. The most expensive was a ’93 Jaguar that sold for over $330,000.
Unnamed Common Oppressor VS: Heterosexual women VS Trans vs LGB/
2012 – A federal district judge in New York becomes the fifth to rule against the Defense of Marriage Act. The case, Windsor v. United States, eventually will reach the Supreme Court. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013) (Docket No. 12-307), is a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court held that restricting U.S. federal interpretation of “marriage” and “spouse” to apply only to opposite-sex unions, by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.”Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, a same-sex couple residing in New York, were lawfully married in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2007. Later in 2008, New York recognized their marriage following a court decision. Spyer died at the age of 77 in 2009, leaving her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of DOMA (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7), which provided that the term “spouse” only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The Internal Revenue Service found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied Windsor’s claim, and compelled her to pay $363,053 in estate taxes.On November 9, 2010, Windsor sued the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex couples for “differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification.”
cited sources
Today in LGBT History by Ronni Sanlo
Today in LGBT History – June 6 | Ronni Sanlo
https://ronnisanlo.com › today-in-lgbt-history-june-6-2
Jun 6, 2018 — Today in LGBT History – June 6 · 1832, UK – Jeremy Bentham (February 4, 1748 – June 6, 1832) died. · 1885 – A’Lelia Walker (June 6, 1885 – August …
Today in LGBT History – June 6 – Ronni Sanlo Literaryhttps://ronnisanlo.com › today-in-lgbt-history-june-6Jun 6, 2017 — Today in LGBT History – June 6 … Today is the anniversary of D-Day when British, Canadian and US soldiers – 160,000 of them – landed on Normandy …
On This Day in LGBTQIA+ History
~~~~~~
https://lgbtdailyspotlight.com/
people link events link
LGBTQ2 Blogger Nina Notes:
To Each Decade it’s Age of Understanding, do not under consider differing geographies, nor the heterosexual clash of cultures – in particular – do not read backwards the words of humans now to earlier ages, to each own expression in culture and under legal conditions; and to all biology applies, regardless of what humans think is understood, rather than told, the why and when.
Sex the act of; is central to religion, war – who gets to what to who- vs which has had a no.
Understood as noting to be debated, quibbled nor negotiated.
Both in personal lives, in public and the workplaces, which were gender divided owing to sexual roles, across cultures and times.
~~~~
music and movie information from my previous blog
where I note, The Last Elvis Secret given what the Memphis Mafia wrote about Presley Parties, the only thing not officially and rarely luridly written about was the balance of probability Elvis Presley was bisexual, and was described by heterosexual men as being so attractive as to raise a question – including Jerry Reed, writer and performer. And given Larry Geller’s descriptions of being accused by other Memphis Mafia members of being gay with Elvis during the private hair cut sessions -rather makes it seem the Memphis Mafia were jealous, and with Larry having to point out that were they admitting Elvis was bisexual?
As if Geller, a Hollywood hairdress would have a problem and his challenge back to those accusers was were they admitting Elvis was bisexual with the accusation? the last Elvis secret, along with the suicide note left in 1977, all swore to not reveal.
And each Memphis Mafia Member book was all about the orgies and parties Elvis made them attend, as if that was not why they were his friends acquired over time, to Red West, who saved Elvis from high school bathroom beatings and haircuts.
from my original blog:
Books: Elvis My Best Man by George Klein and Genuine Elvis by Ronnie McDowel
Book: Baby Let’s Play House – Alanna Nash
see also:
However:
With the new theatric Biopic that will reveal Elvis’ self harm in both diet and injuries as a pretense to get cancer level drugs from doctors and dentists and anyone who would administer anything, including an induced week long coma for weight loss in Vegas, known to any Elvis fan who read:
the Darkest Elvis Secret was said by his StepMom on National USA tv. That one can be famous and rich and be depressed, connects to why western nations have the highest suicide rates: direct/obvious and passive. In 2017 it was revealed Elvis Presley left a suicide note, and that was why the life insurance policy was never cashed.
Was There A Dark Side to Elvis and Gladys?
It is important to note that the majority of sexual predators and murderers are males who victimize: pick the most inclusive or the most diverse statement of victim categories:
A) women and other men
B) men and women
C) heterosexual men, heterosexual women and LGBTQ2
D) heterosexual men, heterosexual women, gay/bisexual men, bisexual women, lesbians and NB/Transpersons
Extra Credit:
now factor in how to phrase that sentence and include 1 ethnicity 2 disability – physical of body and/or of the brain and persons without religion/spirituality
LGBTQ2 Blogger Nina Notes:
Most of the above is copied from one of the sites cited as sources in the daily post and as linked at the end of every post.
the history of nonheterosexuals and different historical eras views are such that there is a there is a danger to apply current decadish of time, in 2021 to past decades and centuries; particularly without application of complete history.
There is a difference between adopting male attire in the era when clothing was spelled out in law, and lesbians who passed in public, differ from those who only change clothing for personal sexual gratification, in private “cross dressors” in the language of this same era.
Laws regarding clothing exist in many nations, including capitol punishment, this is why sexual orientation is a demographic, That heterosexual women continue to be denied reproductive rights, education and professions, even where won at court; that women are a demographic. That male and female persons who are ethnically different from the majority population and with differing experiences being merged into colour blind visible minorities are differing demographics.
the farther back in time the given individual is, and why on this blog, there is a under theme of Elvis Presley, as the most prominent modern era person of the 1900s Current Era; who was photographed almost every day of his adult life., and who’s number of days on this planet have resulted in his being one of the most recognizable individuals across all cultures on the planet, which in 1950s was 1 billion people, and by his death almost 4 billion, to the 8 billion currently existing on earth.
Nineties Dyke 