RICHARD C. FRIEDMAN was born on this date and was an academic psychiatrist, the Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a faculty member at Columbia University. He was also a courageous ally of the gay community. He conducted research in the endocrinology and the psychodynamics of homosexuality, especially within the context of psychoanalysis. Friedman was born in The Bronx, New York.

In the 1960s when marriage and adopting children seemed an impossible dream for gay men, Dr. Friedman was our champion. His 1988 book, Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective showed that sexual orientation was largely biological and presented a case that helped undermine the belief held by most Freudian analysts at the time that homosexuality was a pathology that could be cured.

His wife, a clinical social worker at the Weill Medical College of Cornell commented, "Straight people had the same personality issues, and they got away with murder; but gay people were stigmatized, and he didn't think that was right."

His work was a direct challenge to popular Freudian theories and thrust him into the center of debates among the more established heavyweights of psychoanalysis. It led to a model in which analyst and patient simply assumed that homosexuality was intrinsic, said Jack Drescher, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who knew Dr. Friedman and would later offer his own critiques of Dr. Friedman’s theory as new approaches to working with gay and lesbian patients emerged.

The great Black Lesbian poet PAT PARKER was born (d. 1989). Author of many books, including "Movement In Black," "Child of Myself" and "Jonestown and Other Madness." She is remembered for such incisive writing in poems like "For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend" and "For The Straight Folks Who Don't Mind Gays But Wish They Weren't So BLATANT" (One of the funniest and most right-on poems written on this subject -- see today's "Gay Wisdom"). Her poems were a herald of strength and resistance in the early movement of Gay Liberation. After a long history of writing and teaching, Parker died of cancer in 1989.

Donald J. Trump received the nuclear codes. Post-swearing in on this date he appointed as many or more Wall Street executives to a variety of positions in his administration, many of whom were formerly adamantly opposed to the missions of their appointed agencies. At the same time his Secretary of State, a lifetime employee and finally CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, while he lasted, relentlessly gutted the state department. The Foreign Service officer corps at State lost 60 percent of its Career Ambassadors since January of that first year. Ranks of Career Ministers, State's three-star equivalents, were down from 33 to 19. The ranks of two-star Minister Counselors fell from 431 right after Labor Day to 369 —and continued to fall. 

Trump, a vulgar narcissist, praised racists and white nationalists, which should come as no surprise considering he installed tinfoil-hatted nationalist Steve Bannon in the White House (and pardoned on his way out). Bannon departed but the damage he continues to wreak from the sidelines is no less worrying. 

And then there was the whole matter of Trump's seeming love affair with Vladimir Putin and the trail of crumbs and bums that lead back to Moscow. A self-proclaimed sexual predator, and under investigation for conspiracy and collusion he will go down in history as the Worst President in American History, and as the only president ever to be impeached twice. Stay tuned. We await the  indictment of the Orange Menace, his slimy family and his greedy cronies. As one of his last gasps while declining to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 election, he incited a mob of his followers to invade the Capitol in an attempt at a coup. Stay tuned.

A draft-dodging three times-divorced liar and grifter who wraps himself in a false flag of patriotism he remains the darling of the craven right wing theocrats. He is a disgusting person. It is impossible to run out of negative things to say about him because as soon as you think you've hit on it, he goes lower.