1978-05-23

In Eugene, Oregon residents voted to repeal an ordinance banning discrimination against Gays and Lesbians by a 2-to-1 margin. Eugene, Oregon, people. Eugene!

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1866 -

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.

Noteworthy

1900 -

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, first published on this date, is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. The first novel in the Oz series, the story chronicles the adventures of a young Kansas farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a tornado. Upon her arrival in Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.

The book was first published in the United States on May 17, 1900 by the George M. Hill Company. In January 1901, the publishing company completed printing the first edition, a total of 10,000 copies, which quickly sold out. It had sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956. It was often reprinted under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the successful 1902 Broadway musical adaptation as well as the popular 1939 live-action film.

Many of the characters, props, and ideas in the novel were drawn from Baum's personal life and experiences. Baum held different jobs, moved a lot, and was exposed to many people, so the inspiration for the story could have been taken from many different aspects of his life. In the introduction to the story, Baum writes that "it aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out."

The ground-breaking success of both the original 1900 novel and the 1902 Broadway musical prompted Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books which serve as official sequels to the first story. Over a century later, the book is one of the best-known stories in American literature, and the Library of Congress has declared the work to be "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale."

Born

1916 -

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.

1929 -

GEORGE WEINBERG was a Jewish-American psychologist born on this date (d: 2017); He was the author of several books. He coined the term "homophobia" in the 1960s, it first appearing in the press in 1969.

His father, Frederick Weinberg, was a lawyer while his mother, Lillian Hyman, was a secretary for a law firm. He grew up without his father in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

Weinberg graduated from City College of New York, and went on to earn a master's degree in English from New York University in 1951, where he also studied statistics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He subsequently earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University. Weinberg's extensive background in mathematics was reflected in his doctoral thesis, "Clinical versus Statistical Prediction in Psychology", and he later wrote the textbook, Statistics, An Intuitive Approach.

Weinberg coined the term "homophobia". He began contemplating it after remembering having witnessed abhorrence towards a lesbian friend while preparing to deliver a speech in 1965. The word was first printed in Screw on May 5, 1969, followed by Time a few months later. Gay Times stated after his death in 2017 that he invented it in 1965. By 1972, Weinberg explained the use of term in Society and the Healthy Homosexual. He suggested that those who harbor prejudice against homosexuals, and not homosexuals themselves, are suffering from a psychological malady, an irrational state of mind. Weinberg, though heterosexual himself, became a leader in the ultimately successful struggle to have homosexuality removed as a diagnostic category from the DSM, the professional therapeutic handbook. He was instrumental in shifting public perception of homosexuality.

Weinberg's widely read, seminal 1984 book, The Heart of Psychotherapy, described innovative therapeutic methods that de-emphasize traditional therapy's approach. He instead presented immediately practical tools that patients can use to help themselves.

Noteworthy

1990 -

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.

Died

1999 -

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.

Noteworthy

2004 -

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

2008 -

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.

2010 -

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.

2010 -

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.

2022 -

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/