1975-05-08

The Florida Supreme Court dismissed charges against a group of men who were arrested in a Miami bathhouse, citing freedom of assembly, privacy, and equal protection of the law. Wow. What a concept!

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Noteworthy

1811 -

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.

Born

1947 -

ELTON JOHN, English singer and songwriter, born; (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on March 25, 1947) is an English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. In his four decade career, John has been one of the dominant forces in rock and popular music, especially during the 1970s.

He has sold more than 250 million albums, and over one hundred million singles, making him one of the most successful artists of all time.

He has more than fifty Top 40 hits including seven consecutive #1 U.S. albums, fifty-nine Top 40 singles, sixteen Top 10, four#2 hits, and nine #1 hits. He has won five Grammy awards and an Academy Award. His success has had a profound impact on popular music and has contributed to the continued popularity of the piano in rock and roll.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him #49 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time. You’ve got to hand it to Elton. Coming out publicly in Rolling Stone when he was at the top of the charts took guts. Not many rock stars would have dared to take the risk. But everything’s worked out pretty good. Elton has a new look, and a sharp wit. “Ever since I had that interview in which I said I was bisexual,” he grins, “it seems twice as many people wave at me on the streets.

John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He has been heavily involved in the fight against HIV-AIDS since the late 1980s (becoming a close friend to Ryan White and his mother) and was knighted in 1998. He entered into a civil partnership (now married) with David Furnish in December 2005 and continues to be a champion for the LGBT social movements.

1962 -

THOM BIERDZ, American soap opera star and painter, born; Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this American actor is best known for his role as "Phillip Chancellor III" on The Young and the Restless, appearing from 1986 to 1989 and returning for one "dream sequence" in 2004.

Shortly after leaving Y&R to pursue movie roles, his youngest brother Troy, a paranoid schizophrenic, beat their mother to death with a baseball bat. He is currently serving a life sentence in a Wisconsin prison. In May 2002, his other brother Craig committed suicide. Bierdz had devoted most of his time to painting in recent years, although he has also written a memoir entitled "Forgiving Troy."http://www.thombierdz.com/bio.html Bierdz returned to The Young & The Restless in May 2009 playing a Gay painter.

1966 -

Xabier Arakistain professionally known as ARAKIS is a feminist curator based in Bilbao born in Madrid, Spain on this date. Arakis incorporated the category of sex as a curatorial criterion since his first exhibition, Trans Sexual Express (BilbaoArte, 1999).

In 2001 I worked with Rosa Martinez expanding Trans Sexual Express to include other contexts. It showed at the Santa Monica Art Center, Barcelona, Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (2002) and Kiosko Alfonso, La Coruña (2002). Between 2001 and 2003 he introduced gender parity into the exhibition program at the Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, and from 2003 to 2006 directed the debates on art and feminism at the ARCO contemporary art expert forums. In 2005 he launched the Arch Manifesto 2005demanding that public administrations adopt practical measures to implement equality between the sexes in the field of art, which inspired article 26 of Spain's Equality Act.

He was Director of Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, Vitoria-Gasteiz, from 2007 to 2011, making it a pioneering institution in the development and application of feminist policies in the fields of contemporary art, thought and culture. At Montehermoso he curated exhibitions such as The Furious Gaze (co-curated with Maura Reilly), Living Together (co-curated with Emma Dexter), What I See. Susan Hiller (co-curated with Beatriz Herraez), or Kick in the Eye. Eight Feminist Strategies to Interrupt the Male Gaze. In 2008, concerned about hurdles to the transmission of feminist knowledge between generations and the shortage of feminist texts in translation, I have started, in collaboration with feminist anthropologist Lourdes Méndez, the yearly interdisciplinary, international and intergenerational course Artistic Production and the Feminist Theory of Art : New Debates . Since 2012, the course is held at Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, under the title Feminist Perspectives in Art Production and Theories of Art .

He has curated retrospective shows devoted to Feminist Art pioneers like Margaret Harrison (Margaret Harrison, Dialogues between sex, class and violence, Azkuna Zentroa 2017-2018), Judy Chicago ( Why not Judy Chicago ? , CAPC Bordeaux and Azkuna Zentroa 2015) and the Guerrilla Girls (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2016-17, FRAC Lorraine, Metz, 2016-17, Slaughterhouse, Madrid 2015, Alhóndiga Bilbao 2013 and BilbaoArte 2002) or undeground artist Leigh Bowery (Museu Textil i de la Indumentaria de Barcelona 2004 and BilbaoArte 2002) as well as the shows Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 86 steps in 45 Years of Art and Feminism (Museum of BBAA, Bilbao 2007), For all audiences (Sala Rekalde, Bilbao 2006) and Switch on the Power (MARCO, Vigo, CC Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, CAM, Gran Canaria).

Arakis graduated at the UPV / EHU School of Social Sciences and Media Studies. He also obtained a Master of Advanced Studies with a paper on sex, gender and sexual identities in film, as well as a Master's Degree in Film Studies from the same university. Arakistain has given lectures at Tate Modern; the Royal College of Art and UCL in London; the EHESS in Paris; MAK in Vienna, the 8th Berlin Biennale; the Brooklyn Museum and the New Museum in New York; Boston College; MUAC in Mexico City; the University of Costa Rica; the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile and MNCARS in Madrid, among others.

1979 -

LEE PACE is an American actor born on this date. He is known for starring as Thranduil the Elvenking in The Hobbit trilogy and as Joe MacMillan in the AMC period drama television series Halt and Catch Fire. He has also appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ronan the Accuser, a role he first played in Guardians of the Galaxy and reprised in Captain Marvel. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Ned in the ABC comedy-drama Pushing Daisies. From 2021, he stars as the galactic emperor Brother Day in the TV series adaptation of Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories Foundation.

As a child, Pace spent several years in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked in the oil business; the family later moved to Houston, Texas. Pace attended Klein High School in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston, with actor Matt Bomer. Pace briefly stopped attending high school to act at Houston's Alley Theatre before returning to graduate. At the Alley, he appeared in productions of The Spider's Web and The Greeks. In 1997, he was accepted by the Juilliard School's Drama Division as a member of Group 30 (1997–2001), which also included actors Anthony Mackie and Tracie Thoms. While there, he was in several plays, including Romeo and Juliet as Romeo, Richard II in the title role, and Julius Caesar as Cassius. He graduated from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

In 2012, Pace starred as Garrett, the nomadic vampire, in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. Pace was admittedly aware of the reputation linked to the Twilight franchise, and revealed that he "went in to this a little like ‘You know what you’re getting into, just do what you can.’ " However, he enjoyed the experience and only had praise for the director Bill Condon. Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight saga, was very satisfied with Pace’s performance as Garrett, since he "stood out as someone who really was just so much fun and really looked the part." The movie was met with a mixed reception by critics. However, some critics, such as Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times, whose only issue was that he was introduced too late in the series: "Why, oh, why didn’t they introduce him sooner?" Meanwhile, Sara Stewart of the New York Post simply described him as a “standout”.

In 2011, it was announced that Pace had been cast as the king of the Mirkwood Elves, Thranduil, in Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The announcement was made by Peter Jackson himself, who revealed on his Facebook page that Pace had been his favorite for the part, ever since he saw his performance in The Fall. The character had previously been mentioned in Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and had previously been portrayed in The Hobbit, voiced by Oscar-nominated director Otto Preminger, and in the 1968 BBC radio series, voiced by the British actor Leonard Fenton. Pace made three trips to New Zealand, and called it a “fantastic experience”. The character appeared in the prologue of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey released in December 2012, and had a larger role in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug released in December 2013 and in the last film of the series, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, released in December2014.

In July 2011, it was announced that Pace had been cast in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, as the one-time New York City mayor Fernando Wood, an early Confederate supporter. The events in the film take place in 1865, when Fernando Wood served in the House of Representatives. However, at the time, Wood was 53 years old, which is 20 years senior to Pace’s age when he portrayed him. In a Q&A, Spielberg revealed that he decided to offer Pace the part, after he saw his performance in Ceremony. Of the experience of the film, Pace said that “it was a real pinnacle of what I’ve done as an actor.” The movie was nominated for 12 Academy Awards.

Pace's sexual orientation became a topic of public discussion after he was identified as gay by Ian McKellen, who worked with him in The Hobbit films, in 2012. McKellen's "outing" was described in the press as a blunder and an accident on his part, as Pace had never addressed the subject. Pace stated in a February 2018 interview that he has dated both men and women but did not identify himself with a sexual identity label. In June 2018, he spoke about being a queer actor in an interview with The New York Times.

Died

1980 -

ROLAND BARTHES, French literary critic and writer died (b. 1915); A French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher and semiotican. Barthes' work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism.