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Maggie Gallagher Speaks

November 8, 2009 Dan Vera Leave a comment

You can thank Jeff Whitty (of Avenue Q) for this bit o' truth.

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Died

1312 -

PIERS GAVESTON, French favorite of Edward II of England, murdered (b: 1284); The favorite, and probable lover, of King Edward II of England. A Gascon by birth, Piers was the son of Sir Arnaud de Gabaston, a soldier in service to King Edward I of England. Arnaud had been used as a hostage by Edward twice; on the second occasion, Arnaud escaped captivity, and fled to England with his son. Both then entered the royal household, where Gaveston behaved so well and so virtuously that the King declared him an example for his own son, Prince Edward, to follow, making him a companion of Prince Edward in 1300.

Prince Edward was delighted with Gaveston -- a man skilled in the arts of war and military tactics -- who was noted for his wit, rudeness, and entertaining manner, and gave him many honors and gifts. The Prince also declared that he loved Gaveston 'like a brother.' Gaveston was also a close friend of Roger Mortimoer of Wigmore, Gaveston being awarded the wardship of Mortimer's property after the death of Roger's father – this was a great honor for Gaveston, since the wardship of such an estate would normally be awarded to a nobleman, and is thus an indication of the regard both the King and his son held for Gaveston.

When Gaveston returned in 1312, he was faced with hostility. Thomas Plantagenet, 2nd Earl of Lancaster raised an army against Gaveston and the King, and on May 4th attacked Newcastle, where Edward and Gaveston were holed up. They were forced to flee by ship to Scarborough Castle, leaving behind all of their money and soldiers, where they were appropriated by Lancaster. Edward then went south to raise an army, leaving Gaveston in Scarborough. Lancaster immediately brought his army up to threaten Gaveston and to cut him off from the King. Fearful for his life, Gaveston was forced to surrender to Aymer de Valence 2nd Earl of Pembroke who swore an oath to surrender his lands and titles to protect Gaveston.

However, in Oxfordshire, Gaveston was captured and taken to Warwick Castle by Guy de Beauchamp10th Earl of Warren. He was held there for nine days before the Earl of Lancaster arrived; Lancaster then judged, "While he lives, there will be no safe place in the realm of England." Accordingly, on June 19th, Gaveston was taken to Blacklow Hill (which belonged to the Earl of Lancaster), and killed by two Welshmen, who ran him through with a sword before beheading him as he lay dying on the grass.

For more see The White Crane Blog.

Born

1566 -

KING JAMES I OF ENGLAND AND VI OF SCOTLAND (d. 1625); Responsible for the accursed version of the Bible that bears his name, James was the son of a homosexual who was murdered in his bed at twenty-two, together with the page he was buggering. James, King of Scotland and England, was himself homosexual, but, understandably, unable to act on his own instincts.

All of James’ great loves were heterosexual men completely unable to return the love this unhappy man so desperately needed. Fewer heads in history were ever more uneasy wearing the crown. The joke that circulated about King James in his own day is telling: “Habuimus regem Elisabetham, habemus reginam Jacobum” (“We have had King Elizabeth, now we have Queen James.”)

Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597) and Basilikon Doron (1599). Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character ever since (and, I’m sure we need not remind you if you’ve been paying attention!...one of the essential archetypes of same-sex people across time and cultures in history.)

1900 -

LAURA Z. HOBSON, American novelist (d. 1986); The daughter of Jewish socialist immigrants, Hobson graduated from Cornell University. In July, 1930, she married Francis Thayer Hobson, owner of William Morrow & Company. In 1934, she joined the promotional staff of Time, Life, and Fortune.

In 1935, her marriage ended in divorce. In 1937, she decided to adopt a baby and became pregnant in 1941, raising both children on her own. After 1940 she devoted herself to writing. On April 27 1947, her most famous work, Gentleman’s Agreement, reached #1 on the The New York Times best sellers’ list. A later novel, Consenting Adult (1975), about a mother dealing with her son's homosexuality, was based on her experience with her son, Christopher.

1905 -

MILDRED NATWICK was an American actress born on this date (d: 1994). She won a Primetime Emmy Award and was nominated for an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. Natwick was a lesbian whose gayness was an open secret in the theatre community. She appeared in 40 Broadway shows: musicals, classics, dramas and comedies, plus 30 films.

Natwick began performing on the stage at age 21 with "The Vagabonds", a non-professional theatre group in Baltimore. She soon joined the University Players on Cape Cod. Natwick made her Broadway debut in 1932 playing Mrs. Noble in Frank McGrath’s play Carry Nation, about the famous temperance crusader Carrie Nation. Throughout the 1930s she starred in a number of plays, frequently collaborating with friend and actor-director-playwright Joshua Logan. On Broadway, she played "Prossy" in Katharine Cornell's production of Candida. She made her film debut in John Ford's The Long Voyage Home as a Cockney slattern, and portrayed the landlady in The Enchanted Cottage.

Natwick is remembered for small but memorable roles in several John Ford film classics, including 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Quiet Man. She played Miss Ivy Gravely, in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, and a sorceress in The Court Jester.

She continued to appear onstage, and made regular guest appearances in television series. In May 1950, she starred in "Listen, Listen" on Suspense.

She was twice nominated for Tony Awards: in 1957 for The Waltz of the Toreadors, the same year she also starred in Tammy and the Bachelor with Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Nielsen and in 1972 for the musical 70 Girls 70. She returned to film in Barefoot in the Park as the mother of the character played by Jane Fonda. The role earned Natwick her only Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting actress. One of Natwick's memorable roles was in The House Without a Christmas Tree, which starred Jason Robards and Lisa Lucas. The program's success spawned three sequels: The Thanksgiving Treasure, The Easter Promise, and Addie and The King of Hearts.

In 1971, Natwick co-starred with Helen Hayes in the ABC Movie of the Week, Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate, in which their characters worked together as amateur sleuths. The success of that telefilm resulted in a similar team-up the next year, portraying two mystery-writing and solving sisters; this spawned the 1973-74 series The Snoop Sisters, which was part of The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. For her performance, Natwick won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. In 1981, Natwick joined Hayes as the first members of the Board of Advisors to the Riverside Shakespeare Company. Both attended and supported several fund raisers for that off-Broadway theatre company.

She guest-starred on such television series as McMillan & Wife, Family, Alice, The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O, The Bob Newhart Show and Murder, She Wrote. She made her final film appearance at age 83 in the historical drama Dangerous Liaisons.

Natwick lived in a duplex on Park Avenue in Manhattan for the majority of her life. She was a devout Christian Scientist. A Republican, she supported Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election. She died of cancer at her home in Manhattan at age 89.

1919 -

PAULINE KAEL, American movie critic born (d. 2001); A film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused" movie reviews. In 1948, Kael and gay filmmaker and poet James Broughton had a daughter, Gina, though Kael would raise her alone. In preface to a 1983 interview with Kael for the gay magazine Mandate, Sam Staggs wrote that "she has always carried on a love/hate affair with her gay legions....like the bitchiest queen in Gay mythology, she has a sharp remark about everything."

However, in the early eighties, largely in response to her review of the 1981 drama Rich and Famous, Kael faced notable accusations of homophobia. First remarked on by Stuart Byron in The Village Voice, according to gay writer Craig Seligman the accusations eventually "took on a life of their own and did real damage to her reputation." In her review, Kael called the straight-themed Rich and Famous "more like a homosexual fantasy," saying that one female character's affairs "are creepy, because they don't seem like what a woman would get into." Byron, who "hit the ceiling" after reading the review, was joined by The Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo, who argued that Kael equated promiscuity with homosexuality, "as though straight women have never been promiscuous or been given the permission to be promiscuous."

In response to her review of Rich and Famous, several critics reappraised Kael's earlier reviews of the sixties gay-themed movies Victim and The Children's Hour, including a wisecrack Kael made about the lesbian-themed Children's Hour: "I always thought this was why Lesbians needed sympathy — that there isn't much they can do." Craig Seligman has defended Kael, saying that her perceived "bigotry" was simply her showing "enough ease with the topic to be able to crack jokes — in a dark period when other reviewers....'felt that if homosexuality were not a crime it would spread.'"

Kael herself rejected the accusations as "craziness," adding, "I don't see how anybody who took the trouble to check out what I've actually written about movies with homosexual elements in them could believe that stuff."

Noteworthy

1976 -

Largest Gay demonstration in Canada to date is organized in Montreal by Comité homosexuel anti-répression (Gay Coalition Against Repression) to protest pre-Olympic "clean-up" raids on Gay bars and baths.

Born

1989 -

CHRISTOPHER WYLIE is a Canadian whistleblower in the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal who was previously the director of research at Cambridge Analytica.

In 2018, Wylie became a whistleblower, giving The Guardian documents that described the secret workings behind Cambridge Analytica. The documents center around Cambridge Analytica's alleged unauthorized possession of personal private data from some 87 million Facebook user accounts, obtained for the purpose of creating targeted political campaigns for the 2016 US presidential elections. These campaigns were based on psychological and personality profiles mined from the Facebook data.

On March 27, 2018, Wylie gave evidence to the UK's Sigital Culture, Media and Sport Committee which contained further revelations about the practices at Cambridge Analytica and its associated companies.

Wylie's revelations triggered government investigations on both sides of the Atlantic and pushed long-simmering privacy concerns.

Wylie is self-described as Gay and vegan. In an interview with The Guardian, Wylie stated that Rebekah Mercer "loved the gays, and so did Steve Bannon. He figured if you could get the gays on board, everyone else will follow...(like the) Milo Yiannopolous thing"

Noteworthy

2018 -

JUNETEENTH, also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day; Winston Churchill famously quipped that “America always does the right thing...after it tries everything else. Juneteenth is an American holiday that celebrates our finally getting this part right. It commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas, and more generally the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans throughout the former Confederacy of the southern United States. Its name is a portmanteau of "June" and "nineteenth", the date of its celebration.

Juneteenth is only recognized as a state holiday or special day of observance in forty-five states, and primarily in local celebrations. Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing", and reading of works by noted African-American writers such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou. Celebrations may include rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth contests. The Macogos descendants of Black Seminoles of Coahulla, Mexico also celebrate the Juneteenth.

In 1996 the first legislation to recognize "Juneteenth Independence Day" was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.J. Res. 195, sponsored by Barbara Rose Collins (D-MI). In 1997 Congress recognized the day through Senate Joint Resolution 11 and House Joint Resolution 56. In 2013 the U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution 175, acknowledging Lula Briggs Galloway (late president of the National Association of Juneteenth Lineage) who "successfully worked to bring national recognition to Juneteenth Independence Day", and the continued leadership of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. In 2018 Apple added Juneteenth to its calendars in iOS under official US holidays.

On June 15, 2021, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday; it subsequently passed through the House of Representatives by a 415–14 vote on June 16. President Joseph Biden signed the bill on June 17, 2021, making Juneteenth the eleventh American federal holiday and the first to obtain legal observance as a federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated in 1983.

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