EMMA GOLDMAN, anarchist and feminist (d. 1940); An anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics. Although she was hostile to first-wave feminism and its suffragist goals, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women, and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges patriarchy (Harry Hay preferred the term “androarchy” as the rule was by men, not fathers necessarily) as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions. In 1897 she wrote: "I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."

A nurse by training, she was an early advocate for educating women concerning contraception. Like many contemporary feminists, she saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions, and birth control as a positive alternative. Goldman was also an advocate of free-love, and a strong critic of marriage. She saw early feminists as confined in their scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism and capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for women's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction."

Goldman was an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her belief that social liberation should extend to Gays and Lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists. As Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public."

In numerous speeches and letters she defended the rights of Gays and Lesbians to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld,

"It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life."

FRANK O’HARA, poet, born (d: 1966); The poet, playwright, and art critic died just two days before his 40th birthday in a freak accident on New York’s Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.

His talents, diverse but minor, seem to recede with the passing years, just as much of the art that he championed when he was with the Museum of Modern Art seems like so much ancient history. Frank O’Hara’s poetry was published in a collected edition, posthumously in 1971. In recent years, the painter Larry Rivers, in discussing his own bisexuality, said that he was for a time, one of O’Hara’s lovers.

TROY PERRY, Metropolitan Community Church founder born; Happy Birthday Troy! The Reverend Elder Troy Deroy Perry is the founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, a Protestant denomination devoted to ministering to the spiritual needs of GLBTQ people.

A charismatic preacher and leader, Perry has built the religious organization into one of the fastest growing denominations in the world, with over 300 churches in some 18 countries. Perry obtained a GED and enrolled at a Bible college in Illinois, at the same time serving as pastor of a congregation of the Church of God.Perry was excommunicated from the Church of God after church officials learned that he had had a consensual sexual relationship with a man.

After reading Donald Webster Cory's The Homosexual in America (1951), Perry decided that he could no longer live as a "pseudo-heterosexual." He revealed his sexual orientation to a church official. Shortly thereafter he was dismissed by his bishop. Perry's wife left him, taking their sons with her. She eventually divorced Perry and remarried. She kept the boys from having any contact with Perry until 1985, when the younger son, James Michael Perry, sought out his father and was happily reunited with that side of his family. Perry soon began to discover the Gay community in Los Angeles and to become acquainted with other Gay men, whom he viewed "as part of [his] extended family."

When Perry was drafted into the United States Army in 1965, he acknowledged that he was Gay, but the Army inducted him anyway. He was stationed in Germany, where he worked as a cryptographer, a job requiring a high-level security clearance. Eventually, Perry felt called to start a new church. He spoke to members of the Gay community and took out an advertisement in a newspaper announcing a worship service.

Twelve people attended the first meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church, which was held in Perry's living room. Perry preached a sermon entitled "Be True to You," enunciating three important tenets of his faith: 1) salvation--which comes through Jesus Christ and is unconditional; 2) community--which the church should provide, especially to those without caring family and friends; and 3) Christian social action--a commitment to fight oppression at all levels. These principles have guided the Church as it has matured from an evangelical, Pentecostal organization into a more liturgical and ecumenical denomination that welcomes heterosexuals as well as homosexuals and that empowers women and minority groups.