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wandot.bsky.social
🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Susan B. Anthony: She was an American social reformer and feminist. Historians differ on whether Anthony was a lesbian, but her deepest relationships were with other women. Her quest for equal rights for women was the first planks in the platform women were building for social justice in America.
02-15-1820 - 03-13-1906 Susan B. Anthony - Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Historians differ on whether Anthony was a lesbian, but her deepest relationships were with other women and she never married. She was said to be the “third person” in the marriage of Stanton, her longtime companion with whom she traveled for three decades giving speeches. Her first treatise on women’s suffrage noted, “ Universal manhood suffrage, by establishing an aristocracy of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more absolute and cruel despotism than monarchy; in that women finds a political master in her father, husband, brother, son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above education, and the son above the mother who bore him.”
February 19, 2025 at 7:25 PM
wandot.bsky.social
‘Transgender’ and ‘queer’ erased from Stonewall Uprising national monument website - don't let this administration "erase" LGBTQ his/her-story.🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
February 14, 2025 at 3:54 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈💝Happy Valentine's Day - here are the LGBTQ people born on this day. Click on photos to read more.♥️🧡💛💚💙💜
02-14-1847 - 07-02-1919 Anna Howard Shaw - Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. When she was four, she and her family emigrated to the United States and settled in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. She was also a physician and one of the first ordained female Methodist ministers in the U.S. In 1887, Shaw met Susan B. Anthony. Shaw played a key role in the merging of Susan B. Anthony’s suffrage group with that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s. It became the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and beginning in 1904, Shaw was its president for the next eleven years. Shaw’s life-partner was Lucy Elmina Anthony, niece of Susan B. Anthony. Shaw and Anthony lived together for thirty years, and she was by her bedside when she died. Her 1915 speech “The Fundamental Principle of a Republic” was listed as #27 in American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century. 02-14-1890 - 12-16-1956 Nina Hamnett - Born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales. She was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors’ chanteys (songs sung by the sailors as they worked). Called the Queen of Bohemia, Hamnett was unconventional and openly bisexual. Her friends included Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Serge Diaghilev, and Jean Cocteau. In 1932, she published Laughing Torso, a memoir about her bohemian life. It was a best seller in the UK and the US. In 1956, she fell out of her apartment window. It was never determined if she fell because she was drunk or if it was suicide. 02-14-1961 Shannon Price Minter - Place of birth unknown, he grew up in East Texas. He is a transgender man and legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Minter first gained national recognition in 2001 when he represented Sharon Smith, the domestic partner of Diane Whipple who was killed by dog mauling in San Francisco. He won the case. In 2009, Minter was the lead attorney arguing before the California Supreme Court to overturn California Proposition 8. He has taught law at Stanford University, Golden Gate University, and Santa Clara University. 02-14-1962 - 05-07-2002 Kevyn Aucoin - Born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was an American make-up artist and photographer and author. He realized he was gay at the age of six. Aucoin moved to New York City and was discovered by Vogue. It was his cover shoot with Vogue with supermodel Cindy Crawford that took his career in a new direction. At his peak, he would often be booked months in advance and could command as much as $6,000 for a makeup session. Aucoin’s parents eventually came to accept his homosexuality and started a chapter of P-FLAG in Lafayette, Louisiana. Aucoin was diagnosed with a rare pituitary tumor. He had been suffering from acromegaly resolution from the tumor, but it had gone undiagnosed. He died on May 7th, 2002 at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York.
February 14, 2025 at 3:47 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Celebrating Black History Month🇺🇸🇺🇸
Click on photos to read more about them.
01-28-1978 Big Freedia (b. Freddie Ross Jr.) - Born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is an American Rapper known for his work in the New Orleans genre of hip hop called bounce music. Freedia identifies himself as a gay man and has stated that he does not care which pronoun is used to refer to him. In 2011, he was named Best Emerging Artist and Best Hip-hop/Rap Artist in January’s Best of the Beat Awards and was nominated for the 2011 22nd GLAAD Media Awards. He operates an interior design in New Orleans. Freedia has stated, “I am not transgendered, I am just a gay male…I wear women’s hair and carry a purse, but I am a man.” He also stated, “I love my feminine side. She is the diva in me.” 01-29-1927 - 04-06-2013 Don Shirley - Born in Pensacola, Florida. He was an American classical and jazz pianist, as well as a composer. Shirley recorded many albums for Cadence Record Company during the 1950s and 1960s, experimenting with jazz with a classical influence. His compositions included organ symphonies, piano and cello concertos, a one act opera, and string quartets. During the 1960s, Shirley went on tour, some venues were in Southern states. He hired New York-nightclub bouncer Tony “Lip” Vallelonga as his driver and bodyguard. Their story has been made into the 2018 film Green Book. The screenplay was written by Tony Vallelonga’s son, Nick, Peter Farrelly, and Brian Currie. Nick used letters written by his father and Shirley that were sent to “Lips” wife, Dolores. The scene in the film depicting Shirley being handcuffed to a YMCA shower by a cop that discovered him having sex with another man is factual. In the 1980s, Nick told Shirley and his father that he wanted to make a movie about their experiences together. Shirley told him to do it but to wait until after he was no longer around. “You should put in everything your father told you, and everything I told you,” Nick recalls Shirley telling him. “You tell exactly the truth, but you’re going to wait until I pass.” Nick believes that Shirley wanted him to wait because Shirley worried that telling the true story would out his sexuality. Shirley passed away from heart disease in April 2013, less than five months after “Lip” died. 01-29-1954 Oprah Winfrey - Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi. She is an American media mogul, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 t0 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. She has long been an advocate for LGBT rights. When Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 on her TV show, Oprah played her therapist. After the episode aired, Oprah received a lot of hate mail, as did Ellen. Neither woman gave in and the rest is “herstory.” 01-29-1949 Doris Davenport - Born in Gainesville, Florida and raised in Cornelia, Georgia. She is a writer, educator, and literary and performance poet. Davenport identifies as African American, Appalachian, Feminist, and LGBTQ, which all heavily influence her writings. Her Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Literature was earned from the University of Southern California. As a self-identified lesbian, Davenport incorporates anecdotes from her life that revolve around her relationships with women. She has published eight books of poetry and gives performances at colleges. Davenport lives in Cleveland, Georgia.
February 10, 2025 at 10:30 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Celebrating Black History Month🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈
01-05-1931 - 12-01-1989 Alvin Ailey Jr. - Born in Rogers, Texas. He was an African-American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York City. He is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th-century concert dance. Ailey was born to his 17-year old mother in Rogers, Texas. His father abandoned the family when Alvin was six months old. He grew up during a time of racial segregation, violence and lynchings against African Americans. When he was five, his mother was raped by a group of white men, leaving him afraid of whites. It was his early experiences in the Baptist church and juke joints that instilled in him a fierce sense of black pride. In 1942, Ailey’s mother moved to Los Angeles where he attended predominantly black schools. He belonged to the glee club, wrote poetry, and demonstrated a talent for languages. He became serious about dance in 1949 when his school friend Carmen De Lavallade introduced him to the Hollywood studio of Lester Horton. (He kept his life as a dancer a secret from his mother for the first two years) Horton became his mentor, giving him both a technique and a foundation with which to grow. When Horton died in 1953, the tragedy left the company without an artistic director. Ailey assumed the position. In 1958 he formed his own group, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. His company is multi-racial and always employed artists based solely on talent and integrity. In 1988, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. Ailey died one year later at the age of 58. To protect his mother from the social stigma of his death from AIDS, he asked his doctor to announce that he had died of terminal blood dyscrasia. Ailey was openly gay and was romantically involved with a white school teacher for several years. In 2014, President Obama selected Ailey to be a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 01-20-1944 - 06-17-1989 Pat Parker - Born in Houston, Texas. She was an African-American lesbian feminist poet. Parker began to identify as a lesbian in the late 1960s. In an interview with Anita Cornwell, she said that, “after my first relationship with a woman, I knew where I was going.” Parker was involved with the Black Panther Movement, in 1979 she toured with the Varied Voices of Black Women, a group of poets that included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins and Gwen Avery. She also was involved in gay and lesbian organizations. Cheryl Clarke, another poet and peer, said Parker was a “lead voice and caller” in the world of lesbian poetry. Parker was also friends with Audre Lorde. They met in 1969 and continued to exchange letters and visits until Parker’s death in 1989. Parker died of breast cancer and was survived by her long-time partner Marty Dunham. 01-26-1944 Angela Davis - Born in Birmingham, Alabama. She is an American political activist, academic scholar and author. During the 1960s, she was a prominent counterculture activist leader. One of her prime interests in to abolish the prison-industrial complex. From 1969 to 1991, she was a member of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party. Now retired, she was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was prosecuted for conspiracy involving the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County, California courtroom. She was acquitted by an all white jury on June 4, 1972. She had spent sixteen months incarcerated. Davis is a supporter of Black Lives Matter. She was a co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington on January, 21, 2017. She is openly lesbian. As of 2020, Davis is living with her life partner Gina Dent, a fellow humanities scholar and intersectional feminist researcher at UC Santa Cruz. In 2020, she was listed as the 1971 "Woman of the Year" in Time magazine's "100 Women of the Year" edition, which selected iconic women over the 100 years since women's suffrage in the United States of America from 1920. In 2020, she was included on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 01-28-1901 - 03-05-1989 Richmond Barthé - Born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He was an African-American LGBT pioneer. Sculptor and key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s. Because he was a gay man who expressed his orientation in his work is most likely why he fell into obscurity by the 1940s. Much of his art depicted African-American men in sensual poses, often nude. Today his work doesn’t seem that confrontational, but in a racist, sexually uptight America of the middle of the last century, it is remarkable that his work received the acclaim that it did. In 1935 his work was included in a 1935 exhibit of African-American art at the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1975 he moved to Pasadena, California, and a year later curators at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art included his work. The attention to his work, the growing respect of a younger audience to artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and the support of his friends brought stability into his life. He lived out his later years as a treasured part of the art community.
February 10, 2025 at 10:21 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Celebrating Black History Month🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈
03-25-1942 - 08-16-2018 Aretha Franklin - Born in Memphis, Tennessee. She was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. She was also an LGBT ally. By the end of the 1960s, she became known as “The Queen of Soul.” In 1987, she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Aretha’s sister, Carolyn, was a lesbian. About her, Aretha stated, “I consider her a great woman…She went her own way, lived her own life, and found freedom and her individuality. She had no shame about her sexual preference and spoke the unvarnished truth.” Aretha also recorded with George Michael (1987) and Elton John (1989) — two of the most famous openly gay singers. In 1993, she organized a concert to raise money for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. In 2011, Aretha sang at the wedding ceremony of Bill White and Bryan Eure in New York, solidifying her support for LGBT rights. On November 7, 2017, Aretha sang at what was to be her final public performance for Elton John’s AIDS Gala. She died of cancer on August 16, 2018. 03-28-1991 Mya Taylor - Born in Houston, Texas. She is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Alexandra in the 2015 film Tangerine. In January 2013, she came out as transgender. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Taylor was asked about what she hopes the audience members actually learn about sex work from the film. “ I hope that people see this is real. Trans people — not every trans person — but trans people are doing sex work because they can’t get a job or anything,” she explained. She knows from experience. “I could not get a job because I am trans,” she said matter-of-factly. That’s the only reason she was forced into sex work. “I applied for everything from cleaning all the way to being a personal assistant. I did 26 interviews in one month and I know I was more than skilled in every job because a long time ago when I was a boy, I had those skills. It’s so different when you transition; nobody wants you around.” Taylor is the first openly transgender actor to win an Independent Spirit Award. 03-30-1964 Tracy Chapman - Born in Cleveland, Ohio. She is an American singer and songwriter, known for her hits Fast Car and Give Me One Reason along with other singles. She is a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy Award-winning artist. Although Chapman has never discussed her sexual orientation, during the mid-1990s she dated writer Alice Walker. Her song Fast Car recorded by Country Singer Luke Combs becomes #1, making Chapman the first Black woman to have a sole writing credit on a No. 1 country radio song. 04-01-1900 - 10-17-1984 Alberta Hunter - Born in Memphis, Tennessee. She was an internationally known African-American jazz singer and songwriter. Her career spanned from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. With the death of her mother in 1957, she stopped performing and became a nurse. She worked for 20 years at Roosevelt Island’s Goldwater Memorial Hospital. When she was forced to retire, she decided to sing again and had a successful comeback up until her death in 1984. Hunter was a lesbian, although she kept her sexuality relatively private. She was involved with Lottie Tyler for many years, the relationship ending upon the death of Tyler.
February 10, 2025 at 10:12 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ Her/His-Story for February 10th - Click on photos to read more💖🧡💛💚💙💜
02-10-1958 John Yang - Born in Chillicothe, Ohio. He is a Chinese-American newscaster and journalist. Yang is an American Peabody Award-winning television news correspondent, commentator, and journalist. He was one of the first openly gay national television correspondents. 02-10-1967 Laura Dern - Born in Los Angeles, California. She is an LGBT supporter. She played Ellen’s love interest when she came out on her show in the famous 1997 The Puppy Episode. On the April 24, 2007 airing of DeGeneres’s talk show, Dern revealed she did not work for more than a year following her appearance in that episode because of resulting backlash, but nevertheless called it an “extraordinary experience and opportunity.” She is an American actress, film director, and producer. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1991 for her performance in the film Rambling Rose. In 2014 she received her second Academy Award nomination for the work in the film Wild. In 2020, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the film Marriage Story. She is the daughter of Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. 02-10-1968 Anne R. Kaiser - Born in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. In 2014 she was elected to her fourth term as one of three members of the House of Delegates from Maryland’s 14th District. Beginning with the 2015 legislative session, Anne serves as the Majority Leader in the Maryland House of Delegates. On February 23, 2013, Kaiser became engaged to her long-time partner, Nancy C. Lineman. They were married on November 2nd, 2013. The couple lives in the Calverton neighborhood of Silver Spring with their 3 cats and 1 dog. 02-10-1974 Ivri Lider - Born in Givat Haim, Israel. He is an Israeli musician and pop star. On Out’s 3rd Annual 100 Most Eligible Bachelors (2013). He is one of the biggest-selling contemporary artists in Israeli music, and has won the Male Singer of the Year award from Israeli national and local radio stations since entering the Israeli music scene in the late 1990s. He has sold more than 200,000 records. He is openly gay. He came out publicly after the release of his second album.
February 10, 2025 at 4:31 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ Her/His-Story for February 10th - Click on photos to read more. Preserving LGBTQ Her/His-Story one day at a time.💖🧡💛💚💙💜
02-10-1893 - 06-05-1953 Bill Tilden II - Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was an American tennis player who was the World No. 1 player for seven years. He won Wimbledon three times, 1920, 1921 and 1930. In total he won 14 Major singles titles including 10 Grand Slams, 1 World Hard Court Championship, and 3 Pro Slams. He also won a record 7 U.S. Championship titles. His homosexuality was known but not discussed during the 1920s, the decade he dominated tennis. He was arrested twice on sexuality and morals charges, the first time in November of 1946 and again in January, 1949. Both arrests involved young boys, one 14 , the other 16. He went to jail both times. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1959. 02-10-1908 - 09-27-2002 Charles Henri Ford - Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Ford was an American poet, novelist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View (1940-1947) in New York City. He dropped out of school and by age 16 had started his first magazine, Blues (subtitled “A Bisexual Bimonthly). He went to Paris and became part of Gertrude Stein’s salon. His life-partner was artist Pavel Tchelitchew until his death in 1957, while they were living in Rome, Italy. Ford returned to the U.S. in 1962 where he lived for many years in the Dakota apartment building in New York City. 02-10-1920 - 12-10-2010 Adele Starr - Born in Brooklyn, New York,. She and her husband moved to the Los Angles area in 1951. It was when Philip Starr, the couple’s second son, came out to his parents in 1974, that his mother got involved with gay rights. Although the gay rights movement was well underway by then she recalled, “being gay was still seen as a mental illness.” In 1976 Adele Starr founded the Los Angeles chapter of PFLAG. In 1979, she spoke on the steps of the U.S. Capitol at a march for gay rights. Two years later, she became PFLAG’s first national president; she served in that capacity until 1986 and remained a forceful advocate for civil rights and, in later years for the legalization of same-sex marriage. 02-10-1944 - 06-18-1992 Peter Allen - Born in Tenterfield, Australia. He was an Australian singer/songwriter/pianist and entertainer. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester, and Olivia Newton-John. In 1981, Arthur’s Theme won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Allen was the first husband of Liza Minnelli. They divorced after 7 years of marriage. He later came out as gay. Both he and his long-term partner, Gregory Connell, died from AIDS-related illnesses.
February 10, 2025 at 4:25 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈February 9th - LGBTQ Her/His-story. Click on photos to read more.❤️
02-09-1948 - 07-02-23 Dr. Susan Love - Born in Little Silver, New Jersey. She was an American Surgeon, a prominent advocate of preventative breast cancer research, and author. She is regarded as one of the most respected women’s health specialists in the United States. In 2012 she announced that she was diagnosed with leukemia and took a leave of absence to pursue chemotherapy treatment. After a successful treatment, she returned to work the following year. On February 22, 2004, she married her partner, Dr. Helen Sperry Cooksey in San Francisco. She died after a recurrence of the disease at the age of 75, at her home in Los Angeles. 02-09-1949 Judith Light - Born in Trenton, New Jersey. She is an American actress, producer, and prominent LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS straight activist. Her breakthrough role was in the ABC soap opera One Life to Live (1977 to 1983). In the early 1980s, Light was one of the first celebrities to advocate against the social stigma encountered by the gay community with those with AIDS. She has served on the boards of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Point Foundation, a support organization for students discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender. On September 12, 2019, Light received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Since 1985, she has been married to television actor Robert Desiderio. 02-09-1957 Carla Trujillo - Born in Las Vegas, New Mexico. She is an American writer and teacher. She has a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin. Her first novel, What Night Brings (2003), received the Miguel Mármol Prize for best work of fiction by a Latino. It was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Trujillo is the editor of Living Chican Theory (1998) and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award. She has taught at Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat, U.C. Berkeley, Mills College and San Francisco State University. She is openly lesbian. 02-09-2015 Petty Officer 2nd Class Thomas and his boyfriend, Shawn Brier, become the first gay men in history to share the ceremonial “first kiss” held when a vessel returns from deployment.
February 9, 2025 at 3:37 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ Her/His-Story for February 9th - click on photos to read more.
02-09-1874 - 05-12-1925 Amy Lowell - Born in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was an American poet of the imagist school. Lowell never attended college because her family considered it improper for a woman to do so. On her own, she became an avid reader and a book collector. Lowell lived as a socialite and became a world traveler. In 1902, after seeing a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe, she began to write poetry. It was known that Lowell was a lesbian, and in 1912, she began a relationship with actress Ada Dwyer Russell. Lowell’s poems about Dwyer have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between Sappho and the poets of the 1970s. The two women lived together for over a decade until Lowell’s death in 1925. Lowell posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. 02-09-1938 - 12-31-2012 Jovette Marchessault - Born in Montreal, Quebec. She was a Canadian writer, poet, artist, and an important pioneer of lesbian and feminist literature and art in Canada. In 1980, with the publication of Triptyque lesbien, she risked her developing career by becoming the first Quebec novelist to declare her lesbianism. A portrait of Marchessault, by artist Robert Laliberté, is on exhibit in the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives’ National Portrait Collection, in honor of her role as a builder of LGBT culture and history in Canada. 02-09-1944 Alice Walker - Born in Putnam County, Georgia. She is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the novel The Color Purple (1982) which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was the youngest of eight children. Walker began writing when she was eight years old. “With my family, I had to hide things,” she said, “And I had to keep a lot in my mind.” In 1952 she was wounded in the right eye by a shot from a BB gun fired by one of her brothers. Because the family didn’t have a car, her parents couldn’t take her to the hospital. It was a week later before she saw a doctor and by that time she became permanently blind in that eye. Stared at and sometimes taunted, she felt like an outcast and turned for solace to reading and to writing poetry. The scar tissue was removed when she turned 14. She later became valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class. Her injury allowed her to “really see people and things, really notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out.” In 1965, she met Melvyn Postman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married in 1967, in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming “the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi”. They were harassed and threatened by whites, including the KKK. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976. In the mid-1990s, she was involved in a romantic relationship with singer Tracy Chapman. “It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was nobody’s business but ours.” Walker wrote, “At one point I learned Transcendental Meditation. This was 30-something years ago. I was in that state on oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.” 02-09-1941 Sheila Kuehl - Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is best known for her role as Zelda Gilroy on the TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. She was also in the television series The Stu Erwin Show (also known as Trouble with Father) from 1950 to 1955. Her father was Catholic and her mother was Jewish. She was a member of the California State Assembly from 1994-2000 and California State Senate from 2000-2008. She the first openly gay member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from District 3 and assumed office on December 1, 2014. In her fourteen years in the State Legislature, she authored 171 bills that were signed into law, including legislation to establish paid family leave, establish the rights contained in Roe vs. Wade in California statute, overhaul California’s child support services system; establish nurse to patient ratios in every hospital; further protect domestic violence victims and their children; prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender and disability in the workplace and sexual orientation in education; safeguard the environment and drinking water; and many other bills that protected the people of California. She is an advocate of single-payer health care.
February 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
wandot.bsky.social
Saturday Report 2/8/25 - Who Will Stand Against the Authoritarians?
open.substack.com/pub/thomhart...
Saturday Report 2/8/25 - Who Will Stand Against the Authoritarians?
The Best of the Rest of the News
open.substack.com
February 8, 2025 at 4:48 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ for February 8th - click on photos to read more❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
02-08-1931 - 09-30-1955 James Dean - Born in Marion, Indiana. He was an American actor best known for his role in Rebel Without a Cause. He had starring roles in three films before his untimely death in an automobile accident; East of Eden (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and Giant (1956). After his death, Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations. When Dean was questioned about his sexuality, he said, “No, I am not a homosexual. But I’m also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.” Screenwriter William Bast was one of Dean’s closest friends and also Dean’s first biographer, James Dean: A Biography (1956). Bast was Dean’s roommate at UCLA and later in New York, they were close friends the last five years of Dean’s life. A second biography by Bast, published in 2006, Surviving James Dean, was more candid about his relationship with Dean; it featured material that Bast did not include in his first book due to personal fears and because of the social stigma of being gay or bisexual. Bast admitted that their friendship had included sexual intimacy. Dean had affairs with women and men. In 2001, Elizabeth Taylor, who was also a friend of Dean’s, referred to him as gay during a speech she made at the GLADD Media Awards in 2001. Actor and director, Mark Rydell, stated, “I don’t think he was essentially homosexual. I think that he had very big appetites, and I think he exercised them.” James Dean remains a cultural icon to this day. 02-08-1944 Harmony Hammond - Born in Chicago, Illinois. She is an American artist and writer. Hammond is openly lesbian and curated A Lesbian Show in 1978 that featured lesbian artists. She was one of the featured artists in the “Great American Lesbian Art Show” at the Woman’s Building in 1980. In 1999, she curated an exhibition in Santa Fe titled Out West, bringing together 41 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and two-spirit artists from the Southwest. In 2000 she published Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. She has had more than 30 solo exhibitions internationally. Her works are in permanent collections in the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Mexico Museum of Art. 02-08-1964 Nicole LeFavour - Born in Colorado, place unknown and was raised in Central Idaho in Custer County. She is an American politician and educator from Idaho. She served as an Idaho State Senator from 2008 to 2012. LeFavour previously served in the Idaho House of Representatives from 2004 until 2008. LeFavour’s partner of 12 years, Carol Growhoski, was in the later years of LeFavour’s service in the legislature, invited to participate in the “Legisladies," a social organization of legislative spouses. LeFavour was the first openly gay member of the Idaho Legislature. She has made a personal “It Gets Better” video, in which she noted “When I first walked into this building (the Idaho Statehouse) fifteen years ago to talk to lawmakers about what it was like to be a gay person in Idaho, many didn’t think they had ever met anyone gay; sadly, some were cruel… Today, I serve in the Senate next to some of the same people and some have changed…” She is featured in the 2013 documentary Breaking Through and is currently writing a memoir doubt her time as Idaho’s first openly gay legislator. 02-08-1971 Maura Healey - Born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. She was elected as Attorney General in the state of Massachusetts in 2014. She is the first openly gay attorney general in the U.S. Healey’s women’s rights platform focuses on sex education, expanding access to abortion services in Massachusetts and ensuring that every woman in Massachusetts has access to reproductive health care regardless of where she lives, her occupation or her income. She is openly gay and lives in Charlestown, Massachusetts with her partner, Gabrielle Wololhojian.
February 8, 2025 at 4:11 PM
wandot.bsky.social
🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ for February 8th - click on photos to read more.❤️
02-08-1863 — 07-04-1952 Ada Dwyer Russell - Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was a stage actress both on Broadway and London and became the muse to her poet lover Amy Lowell. Russell met Lowell in 1912 in Boston while on tour. She moved in with Lowell in 1914. Their relationship would last over a decade until Lowell’s death in 1925. Lowell referred to Dwyer as “the lady of the moon” and loved Dwyer’s daughter and grandchildren as her own. Lowell’s poems about Russell have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry written between Sappho and the poets of the 1970s. Russell’s father was asked to leave the Mormon church in 1913 by its top leaders after telling other Salt Lake members that same-sex activity was not a sin. 02-08-1869 — 10-27-1941 Georgette Leblanc - Born in Le Cannet, near Cannes, France. She was a French operatic soprano, actress, and author. She had a 23-year relationship with playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. The last fifteen years of her life, she lived with lesbian Margaret Anderson (b. November 24, 1886). Leblanc appeared in a couple of French films, including L’Inhumaine (1924). The last decades of her life she wrote two commercially successful autobiographies, several children’s book, and travelogues. She is buried in the Notre Dame des Anges Cemetery beside Margaret Anderson. 02-08-1911 - 10-06-1979 Elizabeth Bishop - Born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was an American poet and short-story writer. Bishop was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. She lived in Petrópolis, Brazil with architect Lota de Macedo Soares, who was descended from a prominent and notable political family, for 15 years. Much of their relationship is documented in Bishop’s extensive correspondence with Samuel Ashley Brown. The relationship deteriorated in its later years, becoming volatile and tempestuous, marked by bouts of depression, tantrums and alcoholism. From 1971 to 1979 she was involved with Alice Methfessel. Reaching for the Moon (2013) is a Brazilian movie about Bishop’s life when she was living in Brazil with Lota de Macedo Soares. The Portuguese title of the film is Flores Raras. Highly recommend seeing the film. 02-08-1926 - 02-04-1968 Neal Cassady - Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. In 1941, Cassady had his first gay relationship with Justin W. Brierly, his teacher and mentor. In June 1944, he went to prison for possession of stolen goods. Upon his release in October 1945, he married LuAnne Henderson. The couple went to New York where Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Cassady married several times and had an on and off sexual relationship with Ginsberg that lasted for twenty years. He died of a drug overdose just before his 42nd birthday.
February 8, 2025 at 4:05 PM