JOHN LEHMANN, British editor, born (d. 1987); The editor responsible for first publishing in England such authors as George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, Jean-Paul Sartre, C. Day Lewis (Daniel's father), Boris Pasternak, Louis MacNiece, Bertolt Brecht, Lawrence Durrell, Edith Sitwell, and Theodore Roethke, was by no means the most distinguished member of his family. His sister Beatrix was one of the great English actresses, and his sister Rosamund an outstanding writer, whose first novel, A Dusty Answer, incidentally, is not without its relevance to this almanac.

Their father, Rudolph Lehmann, wrote for Punch for thirty years and regularly included his children’s writings, misspellings and all, in his column. Having grown up surrounded by books, it is hardly a surprise that John Lehmann became one of the most influential editors and publishers of modern literature.

A list of some of the American authors that he introduced to England is instructive: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Carson McCullers, Paul Bowles, the very best post-war Gay writers. Lehmann’s poetry, much of it quite beautiful, is sometimes unabashedly Gay. Some of it appears, with the author’s permission, in Ian Young’s pioneering Gay anthology, The Male Muse.

Teacher, activist, philanthropist and Radical Faerie ROBERT CROONQUIST was born on this date. Originally from Minnesota, Croonquist graduated from Stanford University and taught world literature in the New York City School system until his retirement and continues his work as a LGBT Rights and anti-nuclear activist.

He founded The Hibakusha Stories project, collecting the stories of  and working with the survivors of the nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasake (the "hibakusha") to educate high school students about nuclear weapons and  proliferation and what they can do to create peace in the world. The Hibakusha Story project is part of the larger NGO organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

FRANK RICH, American theater critic, political columnist, LGBT ally, was born; From 1980 to 1993, Rich was the New York Times' chief theater critic. He was sometimes known as "the Butcher of Broadway," not only for the perceived frequency and acerbity of his negative reviews, but also for the supposed influence that those reviews carried in determining whether or not a producer would close a show. He is married to Alex Witchel, who also writes for the Times, and has two sons. He has consistently championed LGBT civil rights, even when the issue hasn’t been particularly in the news or topical.

As a political commentator, Rich is openly critical of Fox News Channel, accusing it of having a conservative bias. Bill O'Reilly cites Rich's 2007 award from GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) as proof of his bias. On his radio broadcast of April 16, 2007, O'Reilly called Rich a hypocrite for having accused Mel Gibson of anti-semitism (in reference to Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ), while maintaining a more friendly attitude toward controversial commentator Don Imus, who had called New York City based sportscaster Len Berman "Lenny the Jew" on a 60 Minutes broadcast in 1998.

The October 14, 2007 Times featured Stephen Colbert guest-writing most of Maureen Dowd's column. In that article, Colbert satirically wrote: "Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay. There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too."

BRENT HAWKES, CM ONB born; Hawkes is a Canadian clergyman and Gay Rights activist. 

He was appointed as senior pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, a church openly affirming for LGBT parishioners, in 1978 to succeed Bob Wolfe.

Hawkes has served on the advisory committee of PrideVision TV, and served on the board of directors for advocacy group Egale Canada. In addition to his advocacy work on LGBT issues, he has supported anti-racist initiatives, drawn attention to poverty and poor housing, and advocated the ordination of female priests.

On January 14, 2001, Hawkes gained national attention by performing a wedding ceremony for two same-sex couples at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto. Although city clerks would not issue marriage licenses for same-sex marriages at this time, Hawkes employed the alternative provided in Ontario law for regular church attendees to publish official banns for three consecutive weeks, and thereby conducted a legal marriage without requiring prior government permission. 

In the spirit of the banns as a public opportunity for interested parties to raise legal objections, the church also issued a press release in late 2000 announcing its intentions. The government of Jean Chretien did not endorse the marriages, although Governonr General Adrienne Clarkson sent a personal letter of support. The city clerk refused to register the record of marriage, leading to a court battle. The church sued the city, the province and the federal government. On July 12, 2002, the Ontario Superior Court Justice ruled that the marriages performed by Hawkes in January 2001 were legal, but stayed its decision pending a possible appeal, and on June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeals for Ontario declared the common law definition of marriage as "invalid to the extent that it refers to “one man and one woman” in the ruling of Halpern v Canada, immediately striking down all barriers against same-sex marriage in the province. It also made those two marriages the first in the modern world.

He retired as pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in fall 2017, and was succeeded by Jeff Rock.  Hawkes lives in Toronto with John Sproule, his partner of more than thirty years. They married on March 7, 2006.

GILBERT BAKER was an American artist, gay rights activist and designer of the rainbow flag born on this date (d: 2017). Baker's flag became widely associated with LGBT Rights causes, a symbol of Gay pride that became ubiquitous in the decades since its debut. California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker "helped define the modern LGBT movement". There was, in fact, a collective that had been working on developing a rainbow banner. And some dispute the sole credit going to Baker. 

Nevertheless, in 2015, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City ranked the rainbow flag as an internationally recognized symbol as important as the recycling symbol.

Baker died in his sleep of a heart attack in March of 2017. We pay tribute to the rainbow and Baker with the rainbow of colors in Daily GayWisdom every day.

VITA SACKVILLE-WEST, English writer, and gardener, died (b. 1892); The same-sex relationship that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Sackville-West's personal life was that with novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter to courtesan Alice Keppel. They met when Sackville-West was age twelve and Trefusis ten, and attended school together for a number of years. A relationship started while both were in their teens. Both married, but by the time both of Sackville-West's sons were no longer toddlers, she and Trefusis had eloped several times from 1918 on, mostly to France, where Sackville-West would dress as a young man when they went out. The affair eventually ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took their toll, but Trefusis refused to give up.

Also, the two women had made a bond to remain exclusive to one another, meaning that although both women were married, neither could engage in sexual relations with her own husband. Sackville-West received allegations that Trefusis had been involved sexually with her own husband, indicating she had broken their bond, prompting her to end the affair. By all accounts, Sackville-West was by that time looking for a reason, and used that as justification. Despite the poor ending, the two women were devoted to one another, and deeply in love, and continued occasional liaisons for a number of years afterward, but never rekindled the affair.

Vita's novel Challenge also bears witness to this affair: Sackville-West and Trefusis had started writing this book as a collaborative endeavor, the male character's name, Julian, being Sackville-West's nickname while passing as a man. Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to insist the novel not be published in England; her son Nigel, however, praises her: "She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"

The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature", as a result of this affair. Unusually, Orlando's moment of conception was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on October 5th 1927: "And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other" (posthumous excerpt from her diary by husband Leonard Woolf).

On this day the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened in Salem Town, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem Witch Trials. The hysteria had begun in Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts) in January of that year; a few preteen and teenage girls, including the daughter of Samuel Parris, the village's minister, began acting strangely and having fits, insisting that they were being poked and pinched. The local doctor was at a loss to explain the behavior, and concluded that they must be bewitched. 

When the girls were pressured to name their tormentors, they blamed Tituba, the Parrises' Caribbean slave, and two eccentric social outcasts, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. Paranoia mounted, with more teenage girls suddenly joining the ranks of the afflicted; they were no longer expected to be "seen and not heard," but were now the center of attention, even crying out and disrupting church meetings without being punished. They began accusing reputable churchgoers, often people their parents had feuded with for years.

Alibis were useless because the afflicted girls would say that the accused had sent her specter to torment them, and anyone who spoke out against the proceedings soon found the accusing fingers pointing at them.

And if you think this is just a quaint piece of ancient history, there are modern "pastors" who will fill your head with stories of Gay demonic possession. They're idiot fantasists, too.