NORMAN DOUGLAS, born (d: 1952); British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind. Douglas was one of the liveliest, wittiest and most original writers of his generation. His novel, South Wind (1917) exerted a strong influence on almost every modern writer who came out of the 1920s. Douglas had discovered the joys of Capri in 1888 when he journeyed there in pursuit of a rare species of blue lizard. What he discovered there was a rare species of something else altogether. He fell in love with the island and decided to make it his “soul’s operating base.”

South Wind, in part, recounts the story of how he made up his mind to leave his wife and settle in Capri to enjoy the Gay life, openly and without shame. The setting of the novel is an island, like Capri, called Nepenthe, inhabited by an extraordinary group of eccentrics who, seen through the eyes of an English bishop, represent the contrast between the cultures of Northern and Southern Europe. In this satiric novel, Northern (English) hypocrisy gets it between the eyes.

Douglas died, broke on Capri, but not before he had compiled an anthology of graffiti collected in several languages from the walls of public toilets throughout Europe. Roger Williams's Lunch With Elizabeth David (Little, Brown, 1999) is a novel about Douglas's relationship with Eric Walton, the boy he took to Calabria.

FRANKLIN ABBOTT is a psychotherapist, writer, poet, artist, and gay activist, born on this date in Birmingham, Alabama. Abbott earned an undergraduate degree at Mercer University and his Master of Social Work at the University of Georgia.

Since 1979, he has practiced psychotherapy in Atlanta. Abbott was an original member of the Radical Faeries and has explored numerous aspects of spirituality. He has facilitated many self-help and healing workshops on gay identity and other issues. A leading organizer in the Atlanta gay community, he co-founded the Atlanta Circle of Healing and established the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival. Abbott has corresponded with gay men, poets, and radicals from all over the world including Harry Hay, James Broughton, and Assotto Saint, and was a pioneer in the pro-feminist men's movement. The author of two books of poetry, Mortal Love: Selected Poems, 1971-1998 and Pink Zinnia; he also edited three anthologies on men and gender: New Men, New Minds: Breaking Male Tradition (1987), Men and Intimacy: Personal Accounts of the Dilemmas of Modern Male Sexuality, and Boyhood: Growing up Male .

SINEAD O’CONNOR, Irish musician, was born (d: 2023); Grammy Award winning Irish singer-songwriter, her 2002 album, Sean-Nós Nua, marked a departure in that O'Connor interpreted or, in her own words, "sexed up" traditional Irish folk songs, including several in the Irish language. In Sean-Nós Nua, she covered a well-known Irish Folk song, "Peggy Gordon", interpreted as a song of Lesbian love. In her documentary, Song of Hearts Desire, she stated that her inspiration for the song was her friend, a lesbian who sang the song to lament the loss of her partner.

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O'Connor outed herself as a lesbian, "I'm a lesbian ... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a lesbian. But I actually am a lesbian."

However, soon after in an interview in The Indepenent, she stated, "I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description." In a magazine article and in a program on RTE (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTE 1 on May 29, 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women. In a May 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, she stated, "I'm three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes."

She posted a video of herself in the middle of what could only be described as a nervous breakdown. She subsequently made an appearance on Dr. Phil's Show.

 JOHN LENNON, English musician and peace activist murdered (b. 1940); There are stories of an early intimate relationship between Lennon and Brian Epstein that are probably true. Lennon was certainly a friend to Gay rights and LGBT people as Yoko has continued to demonstrate in her own works. On the morning of December 8, 1980, Annie Leibovitz came over to the Ono-Lennon's apartment to do a photo shoot for a Rolling Stone cover. She had promised Lennon it would make the cover but she initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone. Leibovitz would recall that, "nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover." When Lennon insisted that both be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to recreate the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved. With the pictures in hand, Annie Leibovitz left their apartment.

The Lennons spent several hours at the studio on West 44^th Street before returning to the Dakota at about 10:50 p.m. Lennon was concerned about seeing five-year-old Sean before he went to sleep, so they returned to the Dakota instead of going out to eat. They exited their limousine on 72^nd Street, even though the car could have been driven into the courtyard.

Jose Perdomo (who was the doorman at the entrance), an elevator operator, and a cab driver all saw Chapman standing in the shadows by the archway. The Lennons walked past, and Ono opened the inner door — leaving Lennon alone inside the entrance. Chapman called out, "Mr. Lennon!" As Lennon paused to turn around, Chapman dropped into a "combat stance" and shot at Lennon five times with hollow point bullets from a Charter Arms .38 revolver. One shot missed, passing over Lennon's head and hitting a window of the Dakota building. Two shots struck Lennon in the left side of his back and two more in his left shoulder. All four wounds caused serious internal damage, and at least one of them fatally pierced Lennon's aorta.

REV. JAMES LEWIS STOLL, M.Div.a Unitarian Universalist minister, died (b: 1936). Stoll was the first ordained minister of any religion in the United States or Canada to come out as gay. He did so at the annual Continental Conference of Student Religious Liberals on September 5, 1969 in La Foret, Colorado.

Born in 1936 in Connecticut, he was educated at San Francisco State University and the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA. In the words of his friend, Leland Bond-upson, Mr. Stoll took a flat in the Eureka Valley neighborhood in San Francisco with three other friends. In September 1969, Mr. Stoll went to the La Foret Conference Center in Colorado Springs to attend a convention of about 100 college-age Unitarians. On the second or third night of the conference, Stoll got up to speak. He told the assembly that he’d been doing a lot of hard thinking that summer and that he could no longer live a lie.

He had been hiding his true nature—from everyone except his closest friends. “If the revolution we are in means anything, it means we have the right to be ourselves, without shame or fear.” And then he told the group he was gay, and it wasn’t a choice, and he wasn’t ashamed anymore and he wasn’t going to hide it anymore. From now on he was going to be himself in public.

He led the effort that convinced the Unitarian Universalist Association to pass the first-ever gay rights resolution in 1970. He founded the first counseling center for gays and lesbians in San Francisco. In the 1970s he established the first hospice on Maui. He was president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1990's. He died at the age of 58 from complications of heart and lung disease, exacerbated by obesity and a life-long smoking habit.