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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1923 -

NED ROREM, American composer, born; He is most well-known and praised for his song settings. He was born in Richmond, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and the American Conservatory and then Northwestern University. Later, Rorem moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and finally the Juilliard School in New York City.

During the time he lived in Morocco and Paris (1949-57), his song texts came from several languages. An avid diarist, in 1969 he published his Paris Diary, which, with his later diaries, has brought him some degree of notoriety, as he is honest about his and others' sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, Noel Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson, and outing at least a few people. Rorem has written extensively about music as well. These essays are collected in anthologies such as "Setting the Tone", "Music from the Inside Out", and "Music and People". His music prose is much admired, not least for its barbed observations about prominent musicians such as Pierre Boulez. Rorem has composed in an unapologetically tonal idiom throughout his career, and he is not hesitant to attack the orthodoxies of the avant-garde.

1954 -

ANG LEE, Taiwanese-born director born; Lee decided to take on a small-budget, low-profile independent film based on Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-finalist short story originally published in The New Yorker, Brokeback Mountain. In a 2005 article by Robert K. Elder, Lee was quoted as saying, "What do I know about Gay ranch hands in Wyoming?" In spite of the director's removal from the subject at hand Brokeback Mountain showcased Lee's skills in probing depths of the human heart.

The 2005 movie about the forbidden love between two Wyoming cowboys immediately caught public attention and initiated intense debates. The film was critically acclaimed at major international film festivals and won Lee numerous Best Director and Best Film awards worldwide. In addition, "Brokeback" became a cultural phenomenon and a box office hit. "Brokeback" was nominated for a leading eight Oscars and was the front-runner for Best Picture heading into the March 5 ceremony, but lost out to Crash, a story about race relations in Los Angeles, in a controversial upset. There was speculation that the film's depiction of homosexuality might have been the reason for that upset, while others speculate that Crash was simply a better movie. Lee said he was disappointed that his film did not win Best Picture, but was honored to win Best Director, becoming the first Asian to ever win the award.

1965 -

AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS, American writer, born; an American writer, known for his bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002), which spawned a feature film of the same name. Burroughs is the son of poet and writer Margaret Robison and the late John G. Robison, head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His mother sent him to live with her psychiatrist’s family in western Massachusetts.

His books are published by St. Martin's Press (hardcover) and Picador (trade paperback). Some of his childhood experiences were chronicled in Running with Scissors; the book spurred a June 2005 lawsuit in which the Turcotte family of Cambridge, Mass., whom Burroughs had disguised and renamed the "Finch" family in the book, claimed that various family members — particularly the deceased Dr. Rodolph Turcotte, Burroughs' former legal guardian — were defamed by the book's portrayal of the eccentric Finch family. The family recently settled with Sony over the film adaptation, which was written and directed by Ryan Murphy and stars Joseph Cross as Burroughs. In August, 2007, the Turcotte family settled with Burroughs, who emerged victorious, being required only to make trivial word changes in the memoir's front matter. Burroughs lives in New York City, and Amherst, Mass., with his partner of many years, Dennis Pilsits, and their French bulldogs, Bentley and The Cow.

Noteworthy

1973 -

The Watergate Scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations about the scandal.

Ahhhh…the good old days of…what was that word? Oh yeah…accountability. Ever since, the Republican party has decided that every Democratic President has to be harassed to the brink of impeachment. But Republican Presidents have to shoot someone in the middle of...oh....wait...not even that.