EMILY DICKINSON, American poet born (d. 1886); Dickinson is another of those pale, frail, Victorian ladies whose psyches are encased in concrete, generally by their families and later by academicians. To tamper with the official versions of their lives is tantamount to spitting on the flag, with the same dire consequences. Just look at what happened to Rebecca Patterson when she dared to suggest in a biography some years back that Dickinson was a Lesbian in love with her girlhood friend Kate Scott Anthon. She was fried. “What do you mean?” was the cry in the land. “How can Emily Dickinson be a Lesbian? She’s an American.” Although there are some who think that the great poet was, in fact, a Lesbian, the official story remains the same as that innocently told about our Lesbian grammar school teachers: their boyfriends died in World War I so they remained old maids.

PIERRE LOUŸS, French author born (d. 1925); a poet and Romantic writer, most renowned for Lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."

In 1891, Louÿs helped found a literary review, La Conque, where he proceeded to publish Astarte, an early collection of erotic verse already marked by his distinctive elegance and refinement of style. He followed up in 1894 with another erotic collection in 143 prose poems, Songs of Bilitis (Les Chansons de Bilitis), this time with strong Lesbian themes. It was divided into three sections, each representative of a phase of Bilitis' life: Bucolics in Pamphylia, Elegies at Mytilene, and Epigrams in the Isle of Cyprus; dedicated to her were also a short Life of Bilitis and three epitaphs in The Tomb of Bilitis.

What made The Songs sensational is Louÿs' claim that the poems were the work of an ancient Greek courtesan and contemporary of Sappho, Bilitis; to himself, Louÿs ascribed the modest role of translator. The pretense did not last very long, and "translator" Louÿs was soon unmasked as Bilitis herself. This did little to tarnish The Songs of Bilitis, however, as it was praised as a fount of elegant sensuality and refined style, even more extraordinary for the author's compassionate portrayal of lesbian (and female in general) sexuality.

Some of the poems were tailored as songs for voice and piano, and, in  1897, Louÿs' close friend Claude Debussy composed a musical adaptation. In 1955, one of the first Lesbian organizations in America called itself Daughters of Bilitis, and to this day Louÿs' Songs continues to be an important work for Lesbians.

Many erotic artists have illustrated Louÿs' writings. Some of the most renowned have been Louis Icart, Pascal Pia, Marcel Vertes, Suzanne Ballivet, Edouard Zier, Joseph Kuhn-Regnier, Pierre Lissac, Beresford Egan and Georges Pichard et al.

The most famous illustrations for The Songs of Bilitis have been done by Willy Pogany in art deco style for a publication privately circulated by Macy-Massius, New York, in 1926.

TOMMY KIRK, American actor, born; If you are of a certain age, and watched early kid-TV and Disney movies, there is little need to say who Tommy Kirk is. Or more accurately, was. Kirk is an object lesson in the dangers of not concealing one's Gayness in the early 1960s. Kirk was a child star in such blockbuster Disney films as The Absent Minded Professor, Old Yeller, and The Shaggy Dog.

But in his late teens, despondent over the exploitation of his cute all-American adolescent image, Kirk took a step that most of his Gay predecessors in Hollywood never dared. He came out to Disney. Immediately fired, Kirk briefly received national press coverage but soon passed into obscurity.

He joined church organizations working with Gay and lesbian youth. He remained furious, and, at times, vocal, about Disney's propaganda mill and discriminatory practices. Unfortunately, Kirk's heroic act has all but disappeared from Gay history.

Tommy Kirk was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2006, alongside his old co-stars Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran.

His other repeat co-stars, Annette Funicello and Fred MacMurray, had already been inducted (in 1992 and 1987, respectively). Also in 2006, the first of Kirk's Hardy Boys serials was issued on DVD in the fifth "wave" of the Walt Disney Treasures series.