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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1833 -

CHARLES GEORGE “CHINESE” GORDON British soldier and administrator born (d. 1885); A military hero of imperial Britain and a martyr at Khartoum, Gordon worried constantly about his inability to score with women, several times wishing himself either a eunuch or a corpse. His wish to die in battle, which was eventually granted him, no doubt accounted for his almost legendary bravery.

He made his military reputation in China, where he was placed in command of the “Ever Victorious Army”, a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers. In the early 1860s, Gordon and his men were instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname "Chinese Gordon" and honors from both the Emperor of China and the British. He also liked dressing in elaborately embroidered Asian costume as was the fashion in the day.

Although the record shows that he surrounded himself with beautiful young men, his sense of honor and his religious convictions make it doubtful that his soul was ever sullied, no less his pud. Still, he found a novel way to gratify his senses. He was fond of picking up street urchins, bathing them, feeding them, and mending their clothes with his own needle and thread. Wasn’t that sweet of him?

1873 -

GABRIELLE SIDONIE COLETTE, French writer was born (d. 1954); The great French writer’s affairs with women are well known, but equally so are her affairs with men. Colette’s was a concept of androgyny in which everyone was predisposed to discover within herself, himself, and in other people, a subtle mixture of male and female components. “Once the precious tresses are cut,” she wrote, “the breasts, hands, bellies, hidden, what is left of our female facades? In sleep, an incalculable number of women approach the form they would probably have chosen had their life awake not made them ignorant of themselves. And the same for me. I can still see the gracefulness of a sleeping man! From forehead to mouth, behind his closed eyelids, he smiled, nonchalant and sly as a sultana behind her grilled window… And I, who would have in my stupidity ‘really liked’ to be completely a woman, I looked at him with a male regret.” Ambivalence was Colette’s middle name.

“Be happy. It’s one way of being wise,” said Colette. She published around 50 novels in total, many with autobiographical elements. Her themes can be roughly divided into idyllic natural tales or dark struggles in relationships and love. All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style. Her most popular novel, Gigi, was made into a Broadway play and a highly successful Hollywood motion picture, Gigi, starring Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdain and Leslie Caron.

A controversial figure throughout her life (at age 60 she had an incestuous affair with her 16 year old son), Colette was open about her Lesbian affairs. She aided her Jewish friends, including hiding her husband in her attic all through the war. She was a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1935), president of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and the first woman to be admitted into it, in 1945), and a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur. When she died in Paris on August 3, 1954, she was given a state funeral, although she was refused Roman Catholic rites because of her divorce. Colette is interred in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. In her own words: “What a wonderful life I had…I only wish I knew it sooner.”

An excellent bio-pic, Colettte, has been made of her life starring Keira Knightly is available, now. It is a fairly honest telling of her life and loves. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018. It was released in the United States in September 2018. The film premiered in London at the BFI Film Festival and was released in the United Kingdom in January 2019.

1901 -

RICHMOND BARTHÉ (d: 1989) was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance born on this date. He is best known for his portrayal of black subjects. The focus of his artistic work was portraying the diversity and spirituality of man. Barthé once said: "All my life I have been interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man."

Barthé mingled with the bohemian circles of downtown Manhattan. Initially unable to afford live models, he sought and found inspiration from on-stage performers. Living downtown provided him the opportunity to socialize not only among collectors but also among artists, dance performers, and actors.

His remarkable visual memory permitted him to work without models, producing numerous representations of the human body in movement. During this time, he completed works such as Black Narcissus (1929), The Blackberry Woman (1930), Drum Major (1928), The Breakaway (1929), busts of Alain Locke (1928), bust of A'leila Walker (1928), The Deviled Crab-Man (1929), Rose McClendon (1932), Feral Benga (1935), and Sir John Gielgud as Hamlet (1935).

In October 1933, a major body of Barthé's work inaugurated the Caz Delbo Galleries at the Rockefeller Center in New York City. That same year his works were also exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. In the summer of 1934, Barthé went on a tour to Paris with Reverend Edward F. Murphy, a friend of Reverend Kane from New Orleans, who exchanged his first class ticket for two third class tickets to share with Barthé. This trip exposed Barthé to classical art, but also to performers such as Feral Benga and African American entertainer Josephine Baker, of whom he made portraits in 1935 and 1951, respectively. During the next two decades, he built his reputation as a sculptor. He was awarded several awards and has experienced success after success and was considered by writers and critics as one of the leading "moderns" of his time. Among his African-American friends were Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Jimmie Daniels Countee Cullen and Harold Jackman. Ralph Ellison was his first student. His white supporters included Carl Van Vechten, Noel Sullivan, Charles Cullen, Lincoln Kirstein, Paul Cadmus, Edgar Kaufman, Jr. and Jared French.

In 1947 he decided to abandon his life of fame and move to Jamaica in the West Indies. His career flourished in Jamaica and he remained there until the mid-1960s when ever-growing violence forced him to yet again move. For the next five years he lived in Switzerland. Spain, and Italy before eventually settling in Pasadena, California, in a rental apartment. In that apartment, Barthé worked on his memoirs and most importantly, editioned many of his works with the financial assistance of the actor James Garner until his death in 1989. Garner copyrighted Barthé's artwork, hired a biographer to organize and document his work, and established the Richmond Barthe Trust.

Once, when interviewed, Barthé indicated that he was homosexual. Throughout his life, he had occasional romantic relationships that were short lived. In an undated letter to Alain Locke he indicated that he desired a long-term relationship with a "Negro friend and a lover". The book Barthé: A Life in Sculpture, by Margaret Rose Vandryes, links Barthé to writer Lyle Saxon, to African American art critic Alain Locke, young sculptor John Rhoden, and photographer Carl Van Vechten. According to a letter from Alain Locke to Richard Bruce Nugent, Barthé had a romantic relationship with Nugent, a cast member from the production of Porgy and Bess.

1932 -

VIRGINIA MOLLENKOTT was born on this date (d: 2020); Dr. Mollenkott was a biblical scholar best known for her "God of the Breasts" interpretation of El Shaddai. She, spent her 44-year professional career teaching college level English literature and language, but developed specializations in feminist theology, and LGBT theology during the second half of that career.

She was born Virginia May Ramey in Philadelphia's Temple University Hospital. When she was 17, she fell in love with a woman. Discovered by her brother, her family sent her to a bible school in Florida where she was advised to marry a man to cure her "perversion." She dutifully married Frederick H. Mollenkott in June 1954, with whom she had a son, Paul F. Mollenkott, The Mollenkotts divorced in July 1973.

Dr. Mollenkott made a name for herself in evangelical circles in the 1970s as the author of five books about feminist theology when her sixth, “Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? Another Christian View,” appeared in 1978. It quickly changed the conversation around gay people and evangelicals and helped usher in a new era of gay spirituality.

The book, which she wrote with Letha Dawson Scanzoni, a feminist author of religion and social issues, patiently works through the myriad ways that, the authors found, the Bible does not support the conservative Christian credo that homosexuality is a sin. It also examines the trauma that gay Christians and those who love them have endured because of those teachings. She had come out to Scanzoni prior to starting work on their book. Scanzoni, who had never met a lesbian before, she averred, was stunned by the news. But they went on to write their book.

Raised in an evangelical household that disavowed her lesbianism, Dr. Mollenkott became a scholar of the Bible whose books on feminist and gay spirituality offered an expansive, inclusive theology that embraced not just women as equals to men but gay, bisexual and transgender people, too.

She pointed out that Adam, for instance, was male and female before he got lonely. She noted biblical passages that argued for the eradication of all sorts of categories like race, class and gender. And she wrote about how gay people could use the experience of oppression to find compassion and empathy for those who might be hostile toward them.

Dr. Mollenkott often said that she had been radicalized by the Bible. Yet she remained an evangelical.

A Democrat and trans-religious Christian, Mollenkott lived with her domestic partner Judith Suzannah Tilton at Cedar Crest Retirement Village until Judith's death in February 2018; together they co-grandmothered Mollenkott's three granddaughters.

Ramey and Tilton got married in 2013 after the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.

She chaired the English Department at Shelton College in New Jersey from 1955 to 1963 and at Nyack College from 1963 to 1967. She then taught at William Paterson University from 1967 to 1997, chairing the English Department from 1972 to 1976. Since 1997 she held the position of Professor of English Emeritus.

Mollenkott served as an assistant editor of Seventeenth Century News from 1965 to 1975, and as a stylistic consultant for the New International Version of the Bible for the American Bible Society from 1970 to 1978. She became an associate of the Woman's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) in 1977. WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization which works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. She also was a member of the translation committee for An Inclusive Language Lectionary for the National Council of Churches from 1980 to 1988. From 1980 to 1990, she was on the Board of Pacem in Terris, Warwick, New York. From 1989 through 1994, Mollenkott served on the Board of the Upper Room AIDS Ministry, Harlem, New York. For over a decade she was on the Board of Kirkridge Retreat and Conference Center, Bangor, Pennsylvania, starting in 1980. She held a seat on the Advisory Board of the Program on Gender and Society at the Rochester (New York) Divinity School from 1993 to 1996. She has been a manuscript evaluator for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion since 1994. She worked as a contributing editor to The Witness from 1994 to 2000. Since 1997 she has served on the editorial board of Studies in Theology and Sexuality, based in the United Kingdom. She was a contributing editor to The Other Side from 2003 to 2007.

She has delivered hundreds of guest lectures on feminist and LGBT theologies at churches, conferences, universities and seminaries throughout the United States.

Dr. Mollenkott grew accustomed to hate mail and death threats, Ms. Morrison said, but would often say, “There are some things worth dying for.”

In 1999, Dr. Mollenkott received a lifetime achievement award from Sage, a nonprofit group that supports older L.G.B.T.Q. people, for “challenging homophobia in Christian institutions.” In 2001, she received a Lambda Literary Award for “best book in the transgender category,” for “Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach,” which explored nonbinary experiences in Christian and other religious traditions in early biblical texts.

She envisioned a society in which people could be free to define their own identities, saying in an interview published in 2018 that she considered herself “bi-gender, inwardly identifying myself with males as well as females.”

1940 -

Today is the birthday of the Swiss novelist, pianist and actor GUIDO BACHMANN. (d: 2003) Born in Luzern, Switzerland, Bachmann work includes Gilgamesch, Madeira, Die Parabel, Echnaton, and Dionysos.

Gilgamesh is Bachmann's first work published in 1966. The book is dedicated to Bachmann's friend Alfred Arm. Roland Steinmann, the protagonist of the novel, is an adolescent as talented as he is complicated and vulnerable, who is in trouble because of his adolescent love for another boy named Christian. The educational and problem novel is considered socially critical, modern and timeless.

Among other things, the novel led to the "Burgdorfer scandal" because of its provocative depiction of human sexuality. When the novel was published in 1966, it became the talk of the day because of its homoerotic passages. After a reading in 1967 in Burgdorf by a reading group named “group 67” it came to a scandal: the high school student Martin Schwander was temporarily excluded as organizer of the reading of the high school, and the group 67 was so pressured that it disbanded

Died

1947 -

On this date the Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic and diarist REYNALDO HAHN died (b. 1875). Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie. The fine craftsmanship, remarkable beauty, and originality of his works capture the insouciance of la belle époque.

A child prodigy, Reynaldo made his "professional" début at the salon of the eccentric beldam Princess de Metternich (Napoleon's niece). Hahn played the piano accompaniment to his own singing of Jacques Offenbach's arias on this occasion; just a few years later at the age of eight, Hahn would compose his first songs.

Despite the Paris Conservatoire's tradition of antipathy towards child prodigies (Franz Liszt had famously been rebuffed by the school many years before), Hahn entered the school at the age of ten. His teachers included Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns; Alfred Cortot and Maurice Ravel were fellow students.

The poet Paul Verlaine, whose lyrics inspired many of Reynaldo's most beautiful songs, had on one occasion a chance to hear the young composer's settings of his poems (which Hahn entitled Chansons grises, begun in 1887 when Hahn was twelve years old and finished three years later). The poet "wept to hear Hahn's songs". L'heure exquise, from Chansons, was undoubtedly one of the songs that brought tears to Verlaine's eyes. With its flowing piano accompaniment, gentle melody, and ingenious modulations, Hahn captured the limpid and languid beauty of its text. The poet Stephane Mallarmé, also present, wrote the following stanza:

Le pleur qui chante au langage

Du poète, Reynaldo

Hahn, tendrement le dégage

Comme en l'allée un jet d'eau.

In 1894, at the home of artist Madeleine Lemaire, Hahn met an aspiring writer three years older than himself. The writer was the then little-known, "highly strung and snobby" Marcel Proust. Proust and Hahn shared a love for painting, literature, and Fauré. They became lovers and often traveled together and collaborated on various projects. One of those projects, Portraits de peintres (1896), is a work consisting of spoken text with piano accompaniment.

Hahn honed his writing skills during this period, becoming one of the best critics on music and musicians. Seldom appreciating his contemporaries, he instead admired the artists of the past (shown in his portraits of legendary figures). His writing, like Proust's, was characterized by a deft skill in depicting small details.

Proust's unfinished autobiographical novel Jean Santeuil, posthumously published and, by some, considered ill-structured, nevertheless shows nascent genius and foreshadows his masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu. Proust began to write it in 1895, one year after meeting Hahn (on whom the hero is reportedly based). Although by 1896 they were no longer lovers, they remained lifelong friends and supporters until Proust's death in 1922.

Born

1948 -

BRIAN McNAUGHT, born on this date, is a corporate diversity and sensitivity coach and author who specializes in LGBT issues in the workplace.

A conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam, McNaught did his alternative service at The Michigan Catholic, weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Detroit, where he worked as a writer and columnist from 1970 to 1974. In 1974, McNaught founded the Detroit chapter of Dignity, the national gay Catholic organization. When he came out in an article on Dignity in The Detroit News, the diocesan newspaper dropped his column. McNaught went on a water fast, which lasted seventeen days, ending with a letter of support from Bishop Thomas Gumbleton. Following the fast, McNaught was fired by the newspaper, resulting in a civil rights suit, which was settled out of court.

From 1974 to 1986, McNaught wrote a syndicated column in the gay press, entitled, "A Disturbed Peace." Following Anita Bryant's successful campaign to overturn gay rights protections in Dade County, Florida, McNaught wrote the essay, "Dear Anita, Late Night Thoughts of an Irish Catholic Homosexual." Initially published by Impact magazine out of Syracuse University, the essay was widely republished, resulting in McNaught appearing on "To the Point," a Miami talk show on which he debated the head of Anita Bryant Ministry's conversion program.

From 1982 to 1984, McNaught served as the Mayor of Boston's Liaison to the Gay Community, the first such full time position in the country. With the permission of Mayor Kevin White, McNaught created the first city task force on AIDS. That task force influenced the screening process instituted by the American Red Cross.

McNaught became a speaker and trainer on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in the workplace, acting as a consultant to companies and discussion moderator.

McNaught has written four books, the latest being On Being Gay and Gray, which offer advice for LGBT individuals and employers on dealing with the challenges faced by the LGBT community. Recommendations from his book Gay Issues in the Workplace are included in many corporate diversity policies. In 2011 he won the Selisse Berry Leadership Award.

He lives with his husband in Wilton Manors, Florida.