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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1891 -

TED SHAWN, choreographer and dancer, born (d: 1972); a key figure, and the only male figure, in the founding period of modern dance. With his wife, Ruth St. Denis, he was half of the production company "Denishawn." Shawn appeared in the classic films Intolerance in 1916 and Don't Change Your Husband in 1919.

Picture brawny, ripped men, scantily costumed as Indian warriors, Greek gods, and Olympic athletes. No, we're not talking about the hired entertainment at a Gay circuit party but about Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers, circa 1933. Shawn and his all-male troupe revolutionized the way people saw male dancers when they performed all over the United States in the 1930s. The Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, founded by Shawn -- one of the great pioneers of modern dance -- celebrated its 85^th anniversary this summer.

Barton Mumaw, who was both Shawn's leading dancer and his lover for many years, wrote candidly about their passionate partnership in Barton Mumaw, Dancer: From Denishawn to Jacob's Pillow and Beyond. Shawn, who had been married to choreographer Ruth St. Denis (together they had formed the legendary Denishawn Dance Company), decided to go his own way in 1932 to show America that men could choose modern dance as a legitimate, masculine profession.

Shawn hired and trained men, many of whom had been star college athletes, to dance his choreography with his new company, which was based at his Becket, MA farmhouse. In March 1933, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers gave their first, historic, all-male performance in Boston. By May 1940 when Shawn disbanded the group, the Company had danced for over a million people in all of the United States, in Canada, Cuba and England, having challenged and irrevocably changed the course of American dance.

The dancers were chosen for athleticism and looks, as can be seen from snapshots from the period. "The photographs work incredibly well as homoerotic images in the year 2002," says David Gere, a professor of dance history and queer studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote the foreword to the 2000 edition of Mumaw's book. Shawn's dance retreat in Becket, Massachusetts, became the world-renowned Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

1944 -

FAYGELE BENMIRIAM, was born on this day (d:2000) . A Seattle civil-service worker who made news in 1972 when he lost his job because he was gay, but who in 1978 convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the firing, wore his beliefs proudly. An ardent crusader for gay, racial and religious rights, he organized national men's meetings and took part in the 1987 Lesbian and Gay March on Washington, D.C.

He helped found Seattle's Gay Community Social Services, which opened the Gay Community Center and produced the first gay country-music album, "Lavender Country."

In 1971, with then-partner Paul Barwick, he was part of the first King County couple to apply for - and be denied - a license to marry someone of the same sex.

"Faygele never looked at things from a standardized viewpoint," said friend Duane West, who in the 1970s marched with benMiriam at an anti-gay-harassment rally at the home of Seattle police Chief George Tielsch. "From the early days he and others did a lot of work, and now police march in gay-pride parades."

Born John Singer in New York, Mr. benMiriam in 1973 changed his first name to Faygele — Yiddish for "little bird" and "gay person." He changed his surname to benMiriam — "son of Miriam."

Even in childhood he was an activist. He refused to pray with the rest of his class at public school in the 1950s. He attended several colleges, served as a Vista volunteer for civil-rights causes in the mid-1960s, applied for conscientious-objector status and served as an Army medic in Germany.

In 1970 he earned a liberal arts degree at City College of New York. He worked in a San Francisco bank before moving to Seattle. He got a job as a clerk-typist with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1971, openly declaring his homosexuality. He got excellent work reviews but wore capes and dresses to work and was fired a year later. The American Civil Liberties Union took his case and they pursued it up to the Supreme Court.

The high court vacated his firing and ordered the Civil Rights Commission to reconsider in light of new federal civil-service regulations of 1975. Those regulations require that people not be disqualified from federal employment solely on the basis of sexual preference.

Mr. benMiriam got back pay but chose to work for the U.S. Department of Labor, from which he retired in 1995. He served on the National Board of the New Jewish Agenda, worked with the International Jewish Peace Union and was active in Kadima of Seattle. He loved baking and knitting gifts for others.

Faygele benMiriam died of lung cancer.

1953 -

PETER MANDELSON, Baron Mandelson PC is a British Labour politician, president of international think tank Policy Network, and chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel.

From 1985 to 1991, Mandelson served as Labour's Director of Communications. He was one of the first to whom the term 'spin doctor' was applied and gained the nickname 'the Prince of Darkness' because of his 'ruthlessness' and 'media savvy'. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004 and held a number of Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was the European Commissioner for Trade between 2004 and 2008.

Mandelson was one of several key individuals responsible for the rebranding of the Labour Party as New Labour before its subsequent victory in the 1997 election. He was twice forced to resign from the Cabinet before leaving Parliament to take up an appointment as a European Commissioner. He later rejoined the Cabinet for a third time after being created a Life Peer, sitting on the Labour benches in the House of Lords. He is the only person to hold the position of First Secretary of State as a Peer.

Mandelson is beset with scandals redolent of the Trump administrations Russian entanglements. Suffice it to say that he spends a good deal of time on the Russian oligarch, Oleg Derapaska's yacht in the Mediterranean. Then Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Mandelson's dealings with Deripaska had been "found to be above board". He's also spent time on the late American oligarch, Paul Allen's yacht.

Mandelson is gay and he is -- as they say -- 'intensely private' about his personal life. During his time as a former government leader, the press – tabloid and broadsheet alike – often portrayed Mandelson as effeminate through "the linguistic resources of camp" (as evidenced through his common nickname, 'Mandy') and narcissistic – sometimes including coded references to homosexual acts in their descriptions of his actions.

He has lived with his life partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, a Portuguese-English translator, since March 1998.

1963 -

GREGG GONSALVES is a global health activist, an epidemiologist, an Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health and an Associate Professor (adjunct) at Yale Law School. He was born on this date in Mineola, New York and grew up in nearby East Meadow, NY and attended East Meadow High School.

He began working with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) in 1990, going on to co-found the Treatment Action Group (TAG) in 1992, with his colleagues from the Treatment and Data Committee of ACT UP New York, including Peter Staley, Mark Harrington and Spencer Cox. With TAG, he authored several reports on HIV research, including a critical review of AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health, which led to a reorganization of the NIH's AIDS program by Congress. He found out he was HIV+ in 1995. In 2000, Gonsalves went on to join Gay Men's Health Crisis and its Department of Public Policy. In 2006, Gonsalves moved to Cape Town, South Africa to work for the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa where he was part of campaigns to expand access to antiretroviral therapy in Southern Africa. In the mid-2000s, he gave well-regarded plenary speeches at two back-to-back International AIDS Conferences in Toronto and Mexico City. He is also a co-founder of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, a collective of AIDS activists from around the world fighting for access to AIDS treatment and other life-saving medicines through education, monitoring and advocacy. In 2008, he received $100,000 as the first recipient of the AIDS Leadership Award from the John M. Lloyd Foundation.

He joined the faculty of Yale School of Public Health in 2017. His research focuses on using quantitative models to improve the delivery of services and shape policy-making on HIV/AIDS. At Yale, he is affiliated with the Public Health Modeling Unit and the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine. In 2019, he received an Avenir award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a grant program devoted "to early-stage investigators who propose highly innovative studies [and] researchers who represent the future of addiction science" for his proposal to examine the syndemic of HIV, hepatitis C and overdose in the contest of the US opioid crisis. In 2018, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship.

1976 -

ANDREW SCOTT is an actor born in Dublin, Ireland on this date: He did a little acting as a child when he was in a couple of commercials on Irish TV. At 17 he was chosen to star in his first professional role in the Irish film Korea (1995).

Scott attended Trinity College in Dublin for six months then dropped out to pursue acting full-time. He was cast in several plays at the Abbey Theatre, the national theater of Ireland. Later, Scott moved to London for a supporting role in Longitude, a television movie starring Michael Gambon. He has stated that he felt uncomfortable and shamed as a gay man in his native country and that was one of the reasons he wanted to move to England where the atmosphere was more welcoming. He mentioned that he had a girlfriend in Dublin in a 2000 newspaper interview, however.

Occasional film and television work in Britain, Ireland and America interspersed his busy stage career. Most notable of these were American mini-series Band of Brothers and John Adams, and the British television comedy series, My Life in Film. He has won many awards for his work in theater in Ireland and England, and received a nomination for The Vertical Hour on Broadway.

When Scott gained international notice as Moriarty, detective Sherlock Holmes' nemesis in Sherlock on BBC TV, his film and television career stepped up considerably with roles in several movies including Victor Frankenstein with James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe which was a clunker with the critics, and Spectre, the usual 007 box office smash that was nevertheless considered a weak James Bond entry. In 2017 Scott realized a long-held ambition when he starred as Hamlet in a widely acclaimed performance on the stage in London.

On a personal level, Scott revealed to the Times of London newspaper in 2019 that he and his partner of 15+ years, former actor turned screenwriter of Scott's film, Pride, Stephen Beresford, were no longer a couple.

In 2019 Scott's star took an international upswing when he played the part of the Priest in the second season of the critically lauded British comedy, Fleabag. The popularity of his character as the forbidden love interest of the title character resonated strongly with mostly female audiences in the UK and the United States via internet mania dubbing him the "hot priest" as the character, Fleabag, played by the show's star, creator and writer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, called him in the show.

Died

1993 -

JAMES LEO HERLIHY was an American novelist, playwright and actor, who died on this date (b: 1927). He was known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down, and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted include The Season of the Witch and several short stories.

Herlihy was born into a working-class family in Detroit, Michigan, in 1927. He enlisted with the Navy in 1945 but saw no action due to the end of World War II. He attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina for two years, where he studied sculpture. He then moved to southern California and attended the Pasadena Playhouse College of the Theatre.

Herlihy was a close friend of playwright Tennessee Williams, who served as his mentor. Both spent a significant amount of time in Key West, Florida. Like Williams, Herlihy had lived in New York City. Apart from Key West, the primary home of Herlihy was in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. He was also close to novelist Anais Nin, who also served as a mentor to the young writer.

Plays he wrote include Streetlight Sonata, Moon in Capricorn, and Blue Denim (produced on Broadway in 1958). He directed actress Tallulah Bankhead in a touring production of his play Crazy October in 1959. Three of his one-act plays, titled collectively Stop, You're Killing Me were presented by the Theater Company of Boston in 1969. According to author Sean Egan in his biography of James Kirkwood Jr., Ponies & Rainbows, Herlihy co-wrote the play UTBU with Kirkwood but demanded his name be taken off the credits.

Herlihy wrote three novels: All Fall Down (1960), Midnight Cowboy (1965), and The Season of the Witch (1971). His short stories were collected in The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories (1959) and A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others (1967), a collection which included plays. Herlihy appeared as a guest star in "A Bunch of Lonely Pagliaccis," a 1962 episode of the TV series Route 66. He acted in the movie In the French Style (1963) with Jean Seberg. Herlihy also acted in Edward Albee's play The Zoo Story in 1963 in Boston and Paris, and in the 1981 film Four Friends directed by Arthur Penn.

Herlihy died by suicide at the age of 66, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills in Los Angeles.