EMILY DICKINSON, American poet born (d. 1886); Dickinson is another of those pale, frail, Victorian ladies whose psyches are encased in concrete, generally by their families and later by academicians. To tamper with the official versions of their lives is tantamount to spitting on the flag, with the same dire consequences. Just look at what happened to Rebecca Patterson when she dared to suggest in a biography some years back that Dickinson was a Lesbian in love with her girlhood friend Kate Scott Anthon. She was fried. “What do you mean?” was the cry in the land. “How can Emily Dickinson be a Lesbian? She’s an American.” Although there are some who think that the great poet was, in fact, a Lesbian, the official story remains the same as that innocently told about our Lesbian grammar school teachers: their boyfriends died in World War I so they remained old maids.

PIERRE LOUŸS, French author born (d. 1925); a poet and Romantic writer, most renowned for Lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."

In 1891, Louÿs helped found a literary review, La Conque, where he proceeded to publish Astarte, an early collection of erotic verse already marked by his distinctive elegance and refinement of style. He followed up in 1894 with another erotic collection in 143 prose poems, Songs of Bilitis (Les Chansons de Bilitis), this time with strong Lesbian themes. It was divided into three sections, each representative of a phase of Bilitis' life: Bucolics in Pamphylia, Elegies at Mytilene, and Epigrams in the Isle of Cyprus; dedicated to her were also a short Life of Bilitis and three epitaphs in The Tomb of Bilitis.

What made The Songs sensational is Louÿs' claim that the poems were the work of an ancient Greek courtesan and contemporary of Sappho, Bilitis; to himself, Louÿs ascribed the modest role of translator. The pretense did not last very long, and "translator" Louÿs was soon unmasked as Bilitis herself. This did little to tarnish The Songs of Bilitis, however, as it was praised as a fount of elegant sensuality and refined style, even more extraordinary for the author's compassionate portrayal of lesbian (and female in general) sexuality.

Some of the poems were tailored as songs for voice and piano, and, in  1897, Louÿs' close friend Claude Debussy composed a musical adaptation. In 1955, one of the first Lesbian organizations in America called itself Daughters of Bilitis, and to this day Louÿs' Songs continues to be an important work for Lesbians.

Many erotic artists have illustrated Louÿs' writings. Some of the most renowned have been Louis Icart, Pascal Pia, Marcel Vertes, Suzanne Ballivet, Edouard Zier, Joseph Kuhn-Regnier, Pierre Lissac, Beresford Egan and Georges Pichard et al.

The most famous illustrations for The Songs of Bilitis have been done by Willy Pogany in art deco style for a publication privately circulated by Macy-Massius, New York, in 1926.

TOMMY KIRK, American actor, born (d: 2021); If you are of a certain age, and watched early kid-TV and Disney movies, there is little need to say who Tommy Kirk is. Or more accurately, was. Kirk is an object lesson in the dangers of not concealing one's Gayness in the early 1960s. Kirk was a child star in such blockbuster Disney films as The Absent Minded Professor, Old Yeller, and The Shaggy Dog.

But in his late teens, despondent over the exploitation of his cute all-American adolescent image, Kirk took a step that most of his Gay predecessors in Hollywood never dared. He came out to Disney.  There is also a back story of his involvement, at the age of 21, with a 15-year-old boy. Either way, he was immediately fired. Kirk briefly received national press coverage but soon passed into obscurity.

He joined church organizations working with gay and lesbian youth. He remained furious, and, at times, vocal, about Disney's propaganda mill and discriminatory practices. Unfortunately, Kirk's heroic act has all but disappeared from Gay history.

Tommy Kirk was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2006, alongside his old co-stars Tim Considine and Kevin Corcoran.

His other repeat co-stars, Annette Funicello and Fred MacMurray, had already been inducted (in 1992 and 1987, respectively). Also in 2006, the first of Kirk's Hardy Boys serials was issued on DVD in the fifth "wave" of the Walt Disney Treasures series.

Kirk was found dead in his Las Vegas home in September of 2021. No cause of death was released. Former child actor Paul Peterson (The Donna Reed Show) and founder of A Minor Consideration, an organization that lobbies to provide guidance and support to child actors, said, "Tommy was gay and estranged from what remains of his blood-family. We in A Minor Consideration are Tommy’s family. Without apology. We will take care of this.

RICHARD PRYOR [born Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor who died on this date (b: 1940. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.

Pryor's body of work includes the concert films and recordings: Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin', That Nigger's Crazy, ...Is It Something I Said?  Bicentennial Nigger, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip, and Richard Pryor: Here and Now. As an actor, he starred mainly in comedies. His occasional roles in dramas included Paul Schrader's Blue Collar. He also appeared in action films, like Superman III . He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder, including the films Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, and See No Evil, Hear No Evil.

Nine years after Pryor's death, in 2014 the biographical book Becoming Richard Pryor by Scott Saul stated that Pryor "acknowledged his bisexuality" and in 2018, Quincy Jones and Pryor's widow Jennifer Lee claimed that Pryor had had a sexual relationship with Marlon Brando, and that Pryor was open about his bisexuality with his friends. Pryor's daughter Rain later disputed the claim, to which Lee stated that Rain was in denial about her father's bisexuality. Lee later told TMZ, in explanation, that "it was the 70s! Drugs were still good... If you did enough cocaine, you'd fuck a radiator and send it flowers in the morning". In his autobiography Pryor Convictions, Pryor talked about having a two-week relationship with Mitrasha, a trans woman, which he called "two weeks of being gay". In his first special, Live & Smokin', Pryor discusses performing fellatio, and in 1977, he said at a gay rights show at the Hollywood Bowl, "I have sucked a dick."