Today is the birth date of WALT WHITMAN (d: 1892) In our humble opinion, this ought to be a national holiday. The prophetic poet, writer of the visionary homoerotic poetry of Calamus, lover of PETER DOYLE, and many others,

Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Proclaimed the "greatest of all American poets" by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death, he is viewed as the first urban poet.

He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. His works have even been translated into more than twenty-five languages and he was an early and profound inspiration to many of the earliest Gay theorists, including Edward Carpenter who carried on a correspondence with him and visited Whitman in his Camden, New Jersey home twice. 

For decades after his death historians denied his sexuality, but ironically in the 1950s, when Philadelphia wanted to name a bridge after him, there protests in front of city hall because of his homosexuality.

RAINER WERNER FASBINDER is born in Bad Worishofen, Germany. Whether he was a genius or a hack is still debated by film scholars and we will leave for others to decide. His sexuality, worn like a badge, did little to tarnish his image as an enfant terrible of film. His life was a continuous excess of S&M sex, alcohol, and drugs. That he died young surprised few.

Psychoanalyst DR. A.A. BRILL presented a paper at a joint meeting of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association in Boston on homosexuality and paranoia. He stressed that homosexuality was part of the normal sexual instinct and plays a useful part in social relationships, and that homosexuality was only pathological when combined with adjustment difficulties. However, he also equated homosexuality with paranoia by saying homosexuals experienced delusions of persecution. (Now why would that be?)

On this date in Germany, a debate took place in the Reichstag on Gay Rights and the repeal of Germany's sodomy laws. 

A few years later, in 1907 Adolf Brand, the activist leader of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, working to overturn Paragraph 175, publishes a piece "outing" the imperial chancellor of Germany, Prince Bernhard von Bulow. The Prince sues Brand for libel and clears his name; Brand is sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (The Society of the Self-Determined) was established in 1903 on the outskirts of Berlin to realize the social and political goals espoused by its leader: the author, photographer, and perennial activist, Adolf Brand (1874–1945).

Inspired by anarchist political thought, Brand and the organization's members used a rhetoric of personal liberation to advocate for greater social acceptance of male bonding and intimacy and to promote a cult of youthful beauty. The group's unwavering faith in the transformative power of culture was central to the realization of these objectives. A secondary goal was the elimination from the German penal code of Paragraph 175, the statute that prohibited “unnatural acts” between men.

The society published Der Eigene which was the first Gay journal in the world, published from 1896 to 1932 by Brand in Berlin in Berlin. Brand contributed many poems and articles; other contributors included writers Benedict Friedlander, Hanns Heinz Ewers, Erich Muhsam Klaus Mann and Thomas Mann, as well as artists Wilhelm von Gloeden, Fidus and Sascha Schneider. The journal may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its run, but the exact numbers are uncertain.

THE BODY POLITIC and three officers of PINK TRIANGLE PRESS go on trial in a Toronto Provincial Court a second time to face charges of using the mails to transmit immoral and indecent material.

United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast rejected a grant application from the AIDS Foundation of Houston and announced it would not fund AIDS related projects.

The right-wing fundamentalist group American Family Association launches a nationwide boycott of FORD MOTOR COMPANY in retaliation for Ford support of LGBT issues.

TODAYS GAY WISDOM

Excerpt from

Leaves of Grass

"Recorders ages hence,
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I
will tell you what to say of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love
within him, and freely pour'd it forth,
Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,
Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might
secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on
hills, he and another wan dering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the
shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also."

Leaves of Grass, 1891

" When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd
with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd,
And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came
my friend, and that night while all was still I heard the waters
roll slowly continuously up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me
whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy."

"I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed
have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these
States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large
that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades."