French composer, ERIK SATIE, born (d: 1925); Any way you look at it, Satie was a character, a bona-fide eccentric. Dissatisfied with the compositions of his youth, which were overshadowed by the music of Debussy, he went back to school to study music formally at the age of forty, the resulting compositions all but completely overshadowed by the music of the young Stravinsky. Together with Cocteau and Picasso, he created the ballet Parade, for Diaghelev.

He is thought to have been gay because of the company he kept, but his private life was so hidden from his contemporaries that no one really knows whether he was straight, gay, bi or nothing at all. He was known to enter a room and sit down without ever removing his hat, coat, or gloves, and he was rarely seen in public without a brand new umbrella, which would never leave his hands no matter where he was. He lived in a tiny Parisian room that no one was ever permitted to enter. After he died, great curiosity centered on the contents of that room. In it were found hundreds of umbrellas, many of them still in wrapping paper, and little else.

ROBIN MAUGHAM, British novelist, playwright and travel writer born (d: 1981); Robin Maugham was a decent enough novelist in his own right, with or without the influential help of his uncle Willie. The Servant, of course, requires no apology for literary nepotism. That Robin was Gay, and a chip off the old Maugham block in that respect, goes without saying. It’s his memoirs of the senior Maugham, however, that are slightly suspect, although his two attempts to cash in on his uncle’s celebrity are in themselves not open to criticism, given the incestuous nature of the publishing racket to begin with.

It’s the stories he tells, the family secrets, that don’t always hold water. Like, for example, that well-told story of how Uncle Willie arranged to have his lover, Gerald Haxton, screw the innocent Robin until he was black and blue. A nice yarn, and, given the good looks of Haxton, not exactly a fatal experience for a young homosexual to have endured. Only, it’s not true, as Maugham’s biographer has shown.

Apparently Robin Maugham was a novelist even when writing autobiography.

On this date the great gay poet and filmmaker JAMES BROUGHTON died in Port Townshend, Washington (b. 1913). Broughton was a poet, poetic filmmaker, and practitioner of "Big Joy," a pan-sexual Dionysian approach to life. He’s been called the father of the West Coast experimental film movement in the wake of World War II, was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a literary movement that included Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries. White Crane Books published a collection of Broughton's work, ALL: A JAMES BROUGHTON READER, Edited by Jack Foley. It is available as an eBook download at http://www.whitecranebooks.org/broughton.html

There was also a great documentary film project called "Big Joy!" that tells the story of this great man of love and compassion. We highly recommend your visiting their website for more information: http://www.bigjoy.org/

Broghton’s surviving husband Joel Singer also shared this short film about Broughton’s passing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cij_3Lw9nIo Enjoy.

Today is INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA: The International Day Against Homophobia is a rallying event offering an opportunity for people to get together and reach out to one another. Fondation Émergence promotes, mainly on a pan-Canadian level, the International Day Against Homophobia and encourages organizations and individuals to highlight this event in their environment. Belgium, France and United-Kingdom caught on to the idea and set up similar events. http://www.homophobiaday.org/

On this date ACT UP organized a large choreographed demonstration at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Campus in Washington, DC. According to Larry Kramer, this was their best demonstration, but was almost completely ignored by the media because of a large fire in Washington, D.C. on the same day.

On this date Massachusetts becomes the first state to legalize MARRIAGE EQUALITY in the United States. 

On this date two Indian women whose families had tried to break up their relationship set themselves on fire in what police describe as an apparent suicide. The charred bodies of CHRISTY JAYANTHI MALAR, 38, and her partner identified only as RUKMANI, 40, were discovered in the home of one of the women in the town of Sathangadu. Police said it appeared the women died in an embrace. Both women were in opposite-sex marriages in what some LGBT activists say is common among Indian gays who must fight laws against homosexuality and pressure from families. The two women had been lifelong friends and had met while attending school together. Police said that the families of the two women knew of the relationship and had tried for years to separate the women. Despite the pressure the women continued to meet while their husbands were at work.

On this date PORTUGAL'S PRESIDENT ANIBAL CAVACO SILVA resisted a concerted campaign from the Vatican and ratified the nation's Marriage Equality law, which was bound for approval whether he vetoed it or not. Interestingly, Silva's decision came on the International Day Against Homophobia and made Portugal the sixth European country to allow same-sex couples to wed.

TIM PAWLENTY, the governor of the usually-considered moderate state of Minnesota vetoed a bill that would have given Gay couples the right to make burial decisions about their partners.