Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1845: Lord Ronald Gower

Saturated in Urningthum. Portrait of Lord Ronald Gower (1897) by Henry Scott Tuke (Jun 12)

(d. 1916) Professionally, he was a sculptor and politician, creator of the statue of Shakespeare and four of his characters which stands in Stratford-upon-Avon, and Liberal member of Parliament from 1867-1874. Personally, well, he never married, for reasons that were obvious to everyone who knew him. His friend, Oscar Wilde (Oct 16), used Gower as the model for the hedonistic esthete, Lord Henry Wotton, in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Gower’s statue of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Gower shared Wotton’s (and Wilde’s) enthusiasm for the Esthetic movement, whose rallying cry was “art for art’s sake,” reflecting the belief that beauty itself was the only worthwhile guiding principle. Everything about Gower reflected those beliefs: his friends, his decorative tastes, his sculptural projects and his clothing, although his reputation as a dandy did little to impress Henry James (Apr 15) who deemed him “not so handsome as his name.” John Addington Symonds (Oct 5) said Gower “saturates one’s spirit in Urningthum (homosexuality) of the rankest most diabolical kind.” Gower’s most significant lover was the handsome young journalist Frank Hird, whom Gower adopted as his son, leading Wilde to quip, “Gower may be seen, but not Hird.” The happy couple remained together until Gower died in 1916 at the age of 70.

Born On This Day, 1924: James Baldwin

More fully American in Paris.

(d. 1987) He was born to poverty in Harlem, the son of a Pentecostal preacher and a mother with, as he put it, “the exasperating and mysterious habit of having babies.” As he grew older, his father groomed him for the family business of saving souls, but when Baldwin turned seventeen, he left the business and his home and journeyed to an entirely different world in the Village. He began writing book reviews for the New York Times, focusing on books about “the Negro problem, which the color of my skin made me automatically an expert.” Some of his essays led to a few fellowships which allowed him to leave New York for France, where he stayed for the next six years and would spend the better part of his life.

While in Europe, Baldwin learned two surprising things: 1) that he was never before more thoroughly an American as he was the moment he landed on French soil, and 2) “I was forced to admit something I had always hidden from myself, which the American Negro has had to hide from himself as the price of his public progress; that I hated and feared white people.” And from working through those two issues, he came to a profound realization: “I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” He also worked through his ambivalence of what it was to be an American. “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Baldwin’s first novel, 1953’s semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain, was written during his first sojourn to France and became an instant American classic. His first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son came out two years later. Despite his success, his publisher turned down his third novel, Giovanni’s Room. The problem was that Baldwin, this time, had tried to break two barriers. The first was that Baldwin’s characters were all white, but  Baldwin was an established Negro writer. This book, they feared, would alienate his audience and ruin his career.

Of course, Giovanni’s Room broke a second barrier; the two main protagonists were gay lovers. And yet the themes were similar to those confronted in Baldwin’s two earlier works. Just as Baldwin had to escape New York so he could work out the alienation he felt for the land that he loved, the American “David” in Giovanni’s Room had also found himself in Paris, torn between the expectations of marriage to his fiancé and the love that he felt for his Italian lover. Other novels — 1962’s Another Country and 1968’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone — also dealt unflinchingly with gay and bisexual themes. In an essay that was included in the 1961 collection Nobody Knows My Name, he tackled the argument that homosexuality was somehow unnatural:

…To ask whether or not homosexuality is natural is really like asking whether or not it was natural for Socrates to swallow hemlock, whether or not it was natural for St. Paul to suffer for the Gospel, whether or not it was natural for the Germans to send upwards of six million people to an extremely twentieth-century death. It does not seem to me that nature helps us very much when we need illumination in human affairs. I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state. How to be natural does not seem to me to be a problem — quite the contrary. The greatest problem is how to be — in the best sense of that kaleidoscopic word — a man.

Federal Judge Appears Skeptical Of North Carolina’s Anti-Trans Law

From Dominic Holden of Buzzfeed:

A federal judge expressed skepticism on Monday that North Carolina lawmakers were solving a legitimate safety problem when they passed a law that bans many transgender people from restrooms in government facilities that match their gender identity.

US District Court Judge Thomas D. Schroeder also seemed flummoxed at one point by how the law could function in practical terms — it requires people to use single-sex restrooms associated with the sex on their birth certificate, thereby making transgender people enter facilities that conflict with their identity and appearance.

“We would have people dressed like males, who consider themselves male, walking into the ladies room,” he told a lawyer representing Gov. Pat McCrory.

“How on earth is that supposed to work?” he asked.

Schroeder was considering a request to suspend the law while its underlying legal merits are considered at a trial. “I endeavor to make a decision as soon as I can,” he told the courtroom. “I know school is about to ramp up.”

According to Holden, the hearling lasted more than three hours, and his report includes an extended account of the arguments made in court. It seems that lawyers for the state have quite a hill to climb.

Judge Schroeder was hearing arguments over a motion for a injunction to prevent North Carolina from enforcing the anti-transgender public accommodations portion of HB2. The state law was introduced, debated, passed by both state chambers in the legislature and signed into law in a single day, which has to be some kind of a record. HB2 was enacted in response to a Charlotte city ordinance that granted broad anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. HB2 overrode the Charlotte ordinance and prohibited all municipalities from passing any such anti-discrimination ordinances. HB2 also added an additional anti-transgender component that single-sex restrooms and locker rooms in public schools and government buildings be used by people according to the gender specified on their birth certificates.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Emphasis Mine

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Milwaukee gay newspaper GPU News:

Dear G.P.U. NEWS:

Thank you very much for sending me copies of the October G.P.U. NEWS carrying my article.

I note in another article that in Milwaukee you have vice squad policemen who sometimes visit gay bars. I would suggest that if such policemen are identified by any patron that they be publicly pointed out to the other patrons. I know that if any of our D.C. plainclothesmen ever came into our bars (they don’t), I’d get up on a chair or a table and make a public announcement, identifying him as a policeman and warning everyone to shun him as they would the plague — or as the human vermin that he is. A systematic operation of this kind would mean that any particular plainclothesman could make, at most, his “maiden” arrest — his first. After that, he would be identified as soon as he walked into a bar and his usefulness would be ended. Give it some thought.

Keep me informed on events in Milwaukee and my greetings to those who remember me.

Cordially,
Franklin E. Kameny

[Source: Letter to the Editor. G.P.U. News (November 1972): 5. Available online here.]

Today In History, 1961: First Meeting To Discuss Organizing a New Kind of Gay Rights Organization

It was against the law to be a gay government employee. If you worked for the federal government and they even so much as suspected you to be gay, you were out of a job. Most of those who were fired or forced to resign simply disappeared. But when the Army map service fired Frank Kameny (Dec 20), he fought back, just as you might expect a World War II veteran who saw action in the Battle of the Bulge would do. He appealed his firing though the Civil Service, and when he exhausted that channel, he sued the government. He lost the suit and its appeal. When his lawyers told him the case was hopeless and they wouldn’t go any further, Kameny taught himself how to file his own petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. His petition shows his combative nature; he called the government’s ban on employing gay people a “stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for.” The Supreme Court denied his petition without comment (as was customary).

Somewhere along the way, Kameny became not just some guy fighting to get his job back, but a fully assertive gay rights activist, the likes of whom no one had seen before. In 1960, Kameny met Jack Nichols (Mar 16), and the two decided to start a grassroots movement to advance the civil rights of gay people. They contacted leaders of the Mattachine Society of New York, who gave them advice on how to set up a group in D.C. along with a list of potential members living in the area. As was customary at the time, almost all of the names on the list were aliases, including one particular alias for a police sergeant from the D.C. Police Department’s Morals Division.

On August 1, 1961, just five months after the Supreme Court rejection, Kameny and Nichols called a meeting at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. Before the meeting got under way, one of the attendees who worked on Capitol Hill whispered to Kameny, “That guy over there is a vice cop.” Kameny noticed that “that guy,” Sergeant Louis Fouchette, had a gun and holster under his suit jacket. Kameny walked over to Fouchette and announced, “I know who you are.” His cover blown, Fouchette got up and left before he was able to glean much information about this new group. Nevertheless, he filed a report with the department, and the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. was already on the government’s radar before it was officially launched.

Fouchette’s presence was a chilling reminder of just how much work still lay ahead. In subsequent planning meetings before the group’s official launch, the they decided to require everyone in the group except Kameny to adopt an alias. This way, if the police or FBI obtained a membership list or meeting minutes, members who were government employees would escape exposure and avoid losing their jobs. Kameny was exempt from this requirement because he had already lost his job and was blacklisted from further employment. Besides, once you put your name on a Supreme Court writ, you’re about as out as you could possibly be.

Aliases aside, Kameny was determined that the new group would be nothing like anything that had been established before. Until now, homophile groups had mostly limited their activities to hosting discussion groups, often featuring straight “experts” to explain to homosexuals the “problems” of homosexuality. Homophobic messages were so prevalent in society and so thoroughly internalized by many leaders in the homophile movement, that the very idea that gay people might be advocates for themselves was denounced as crazy, radical, and dangerous. The thinking went this way: if we could educate straight people, with straight “experts” being the face of that educational effort (no matter what implicit prejudices those “experts” themselves may hold), then a more educated public would become a less prejudiced public.

Kameny rejected that ideal. He saw the gay community’s situation in the 1960s as similar to that of the African-American community in the 1920s. He had studied the civil rights movement closely — for example, he often cited the Supreme Court decision in Alabama v. NAACP as justification for not turning over membership lists to government authorities — and he saw the need for new kind of organization using direct action to advance the cause of civil rights for gay people. His new organization would be “what the NCAAP is to the Negro.” As he explained to New York activist Randy Wicker two years later:

For us, education is not really what we are seeking to do. As the Negro found out, simple presentation fo truth does not eliminate prejudice. It never has. That is what education is. We are seeking to eliminate prejudice. … We are NOT and educational organization; we are a civil liberties organization. What we are engaged in never was education, per se, and is … rapidly becoming politics.

[Additional Sources: Lillian Faderman. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015): 132-133.

Michael G. Long (ed.) Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014): 20-21.]

Today In History, 1965: Washington Post Reveals Civil Service Offering Disability Retirement for “Alcoholics and Homosexuals”

Jerry Kluttz, writing for the Washington Post’s “Federal Diary” column, revealed that more than fifty alcoholic federal employees, who would have normally been fired, were instead placed on retirement “for physical disability” over the past year, Kluttz described this as “a more liberal approach to their problems.” He noted that the disability program was also available for gay employees:

It is also possible for homosexuals to be given disability retirements; not because they are sex deviates but in spite of it. Their disabilities must qualify them for retirement and the disabilities may or may not have had some connection with or contributed to their sex behavior.

The longtime Government policy to fire overt homosexuals remains unchanged under the policy that their conduct tends to discredit the Federal service. Known homosexuals would probably be ousted before the could be retired on either physical or mental disabilities.

Fired employees, however, have the year following their dismissal to file for disability retirement, and several sex deviates have taken advantage of this provision.

Kluttz didn’t have a breakdown on the number of gay people who filed for disability retirement, but overall more than 17,000 employees out of 50,000 who were retired in the previous year were ruled disabled. The civil service had previously ruled “unconventional sex behavior” as willful misconduct, and were thus ineligible for disability retirements under federal law. But with the commission’s decision to extend disability retirement benefits for those suffering from mental illnesses, gay employees were increasingly falling under that category in accordance with the APA’s classification of homosexuality as a mental illness.

[Source: Jerry Kluttz. “The Federal Diary: Disability Retiring Given Alcoholics and Homosexuals.” The Washington Post (August 1, 1965): B1.]

Today In History, 1983: Gay Activists and People With AIDS Attack Slow Federal Response Before House Subcommittee

Angered over the Reagan Administration’s lack of a coherent response to the AIDS crisis more than two years after health officials first noticed the emerging epidemic (Jun 5), gay activists and people with AIDS converged on the Capitol to testify before the House Government Operations subcommittee to demand a substantial increase in government efforts to combat AIDS. Activists demanded more money be allocated to combat the crisis, but they also warned that money alone wouldn’t be enough.

Stanley Matek

“It must be acknowledged that AIDS-related efforts in all quarters of our system thus far have been ad hoc, largely expedient, and gravely incomplete,” said Stanley Matek, an openly gay past president of the American Public Health Association. “These inadequacies stem … clearly and almost completely from a lack of resources. It is clear … that the Administration’s marching orders to [National Institutes for Health and federal Centers for Disease Control] program directors is unequivocal: ‘Don’t ask for money; make us look as good as you can with what you’ve got’.” Matek urged that a commission be created and charged with developing a master plan for AIDS research, budget requirements, and recommendations for prioritized funding.

Activists complained of bureaucratic red tape, infighting, inadequate funding, and a lax response from the Reagan Administration for preventing an effective efforts to combat the epidemic from getting off the ground. Marcus Conant, a physician at the University of California-San Francisco, complained, “If the Jonas Salk of this epidemic were to appear today with a proposal that all of us thought worthy, it would take him 18 months to two years to buy his first test tube.” Steve Endean, of the Gay Rights National Lobby found the government’s response a “cruel joke.” He noted that that the National Institutes of Health had only spent $12 million on AIDS research to date, and said, “Whether the reason — or excuse — is the inherent bureaucratic delays in responding to public health emergencies or another example of a far too common institutional homophobia by the federal government, the response to date by the federal government has been inexcusable. National Gay Task Force executive director Virginia Appuzzo blasted the Administration for forcing the CDC “to beg, borrow, and steal from other vital programs to support their work on AIDS.” In contrast, she said, AIDS service organizations within the gay community had already budgeted $2.5 million for 1983 and another $6.8 million for 1984.

Former NGTF director Bruce Voeller said it was “imperative” to “develop a comprehensive master plan and to convene a major council of advisors to review and comment upon the plan. … In the absence of the federal leadership so badly needed in the form of such a master plan and its correlated budgets, we have seen more than two years of fragmented and ill coordinated research conducted on AIDS”

Mel Rosen, of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, blasted government agencies for not working to help people with AIDS and forcing gay groups like GMHC to develop their own social service capabilities. “Most of these services would have been automatic for any terminally iII patient,” he said. “In the cases of the AIDS patients those services were not forthcoming. Fear of the diseases, fear of death, fear of disenfranchised minorities all added to the lack of services by private and government agencies.”

“I sit before you a very changed man from a year ago,” Rosen continued. “I have discovered that medicine, research, and the so-called safeguards we have in place to
warn us about pending disasters are political and do not work when disenfranchised minorities are involved. When toxic shock and Legionnaire’s disease first came on the scene there was an immediate response by government and press. Why did hundreds of people have to die before anyone moved in this case?”

Michael Callen of New York City, NY, Roger Lyon of San Francisco, and Anthony Ferrara of Washington, D.C.

The testimony by gay and lesbian leaders were reinforced by three people with AIDS who testified before the subcommittee. Roger Lyon of San Francisco told the panel, “I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.” All three testified about the importance of gay groups that formed to help take care of those with AIDS, and urged the government to work directly with those groups. “For example,” said Anthony Ferrera of Washington, D.C., “the doctors and nurses at NIH are very compassionate and supportive. But they’re not gay. They don’t understand the special psychological needs of gay people.” He also was concerned that some institutions appeared to be hindering the efforts of gay groups to work with people with AIDS.

Subcommittee Republicans aggressively attacked the anti-Reagan Administration testimonies of gay leaders and people with AIDS, although, for the most part, they were far more deferential toward the men with AIDS. Except for Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID). He didn’t defer to anyone. He immediately linked AIDS to the “homosexual lifestyle” and asked whether there had been “an exodus” from the gay community because of AIDS.

Ferrara cut him off: “It’s impossible to leave the gay community,” he said. Lyon chimed in. “What we’re finding in the gay community is a very strong bonding, a coming together,” said Lyon. “I think AIDS has strengthened the gay community.” Michael Callen from New York City added: “Many of us moved to the cities to escape the prejudice we had experienced as gay and lesbian people. Where are we going
to go?”

This was the second time a congressional committee held hearings on the AIDS crisis. The first hearing was conducted by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) in Los Angeles three months earlier (Apr 13). It would take another four years before the Reagan Administration would finally acknowledge the demands of AIDS activists and convene a presidential commission to devise a national strategy for AIDS (Jul 23).

[Sources: Steve Martz. “Gay leaders Rap Federal AIDS Response At Hearing.” Washington Blade (August 5, 1983): 1, 21.

Steve Martz. “I Don’t Want To Die of Red Tape.” Washington Blade (August 5, 1983): 1, 21.

“Excerpts from AIDS Hearing testimony.” Washington Blade (August 5, 1983): 19-20.]

Today In History, 1996: Rep. Jim Kolbe Comes Out

20 YEARS AGO: On July 12, 342 Congressional representatives rushed to pass the so-called Defense of Marriage Act into law. The three openly gay representatives, Steve Gunderson (R-WI), Barney Frank (D-MA), and Gerry Studds (D-MA) spoke passionately against the bill, making their status as gay men relevant to the debate. Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) and Mark Foley (R-FL), who were closeted, quietly voted for the bill. Almost immediately after the vote, San Fransisco activist Michael Petrelis began an email campaign to urge other activists, journalists and publications to reveal the two congressmen’s secrets. The Advocate had a policy against outing public officials, but since they were following up prior reports and rumors from other media, they felt that if those reports could be independently verified through three different sources, the next step would be to approach the lawmakers and ask if they were gay. They were verified, and The Advocate asked Kolbe and Foley to explain their votes and verify the truth about their sexual orientation. The Advocate continued:

Both men objected to the latter line of questioning. “Even members of Congress should be allowed to have personal lives,” Kolbe, 54, said in a telephone interview. “The issue of my sexuality has nothing to do with the votes I cast in Congress or my work for the constituents of Arizona’s fifth congressional district.” Upon reflection, however, Kolbe decided to come out soon after talking to The Advocate, saying the magazine’s questioning of him was a chief factor. Foley, in written answers to The Advocate‘s questions, stated his belief that “a lawmaker’s sexual orientation is…irrelevant.”

Kolbe decided to beat The Advocate to the punch. (Foley wouldn’t come out until 2006, when he resigned after sexually suggestive instant messages between him and a 16-year-old page came to light.) On August 1, Kolbe revealed that he was indeed gay. “That I am a gay person has never affected the way that I legislate,” he said in a statement. “The fact that I am gay has never, nor will it ever, change my commitment to represent all the people of Arizona’s Fifth District,” which included most of Tucson and the southeastern corner of the state. Rep. Frank came to Kolbe’s defense. “In general, Kolbe has voted against bigotry and discrimination,” he said, “so his overall record is intellectually honest on this issue.” Petrellis reacted positively to the outing as well. “I think it’s a terrific development that we now have an equal number of openly gay G.O.P. members of Congress.”

Kolbe was reelected to his seat in 1998, and in 2000, he became the first openly gay person to address the Republican National Convention. His speech was about free trade and he didn’t come within ten miles of addressing gay rights, but the Texas delegation protested by bowing their heads, purportedly in prayer. Ohio anti-gay activist Phil Burress called for Kolbe’s arrest on sodomy charges. Meanwhile, Kolbe continued to defend his vote for DOMA on states rights grounds. “My vote on the Defense of Marriage Act was cast because of my view that states should be allowed to make that decision, about whether or not they would recognize gay marriages,” he said. “Certainly, I believe that states should have the right, as Vermont did, to provide for protections for such unions.” He voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and 2006. By the time he was wrapping up his congressional service in 2006, Kolbe telling local audiences in Tucson that “in a few years,” same-sex marriage would be normal and uncontroversial. He retired from Congress in 2007.

Today In History, 2003: Ex-Gay Leader Experiences “Moral Fall”

Not gay: Michael Johnston and his mother in a 1998 television commercial.

Michael Johnston was literally the poster boy of the ex-gay movement. Five years earlier, he was one of the stars of a high profile national print and television ad campaign claiming that gays could change their sexual orientation (Jul 13). Johnston, who is HIV-positive, appeared with his mother in a controversial print ad under the headline “From innocence to AIDS.” He and his mother also appeared in a television commercial, in which she said, “My son Michael found out the truth — he could walk away from homosexuality. But he found out too late — he has AIDS.” Johnston founded Kerusso Ministries in Newport News, Virginia, started a program called the National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day, and he was featured in the widely-distributed ex-gay propaganda video, It’s Not Gay.

But all that ended when it was revealed that while Johnston was the public face of the ex-gay movement, he was privately engaging in anonymous sex with men without disclosing his HIV status. One man said that he had met Johnston, who called himself Sean, in a gay chat room in 2001 and had a six month relationship with him. “What we did was unsafe,” the man said, “I brought it up all the time, but [Johnston] didn’t seem to think it mattered. He would have these parties, get a hotel room, get online and invite tons of people — he just wouldn’t care.” When the story came to light, Johnston quickly shuttered his ministry and fled to Pure Life Ministries, an ex-gay residential program in rural Kentucky. He soon became director of Donor and Media Relations and became part of Pure Life’s speaker’s team. Meanwhile, his propaganda video is still for sale at the American Family Association.

Today In History, 2013: Marriage Equality Begins in Minnesota and Rhode Island

Margaret Miles and Cathy ten Broeke were the first to marry in Minneapolis.

After successful legislative campaigns, Minnesota and Rhode Island became the twelth and thirteen states, (in addition to the the District of Columbia), to provide marriage equality for its residents. Marriage equality went into effect in both states effective midnight on the morning of August 1.

In Minnesota, couples lined up to marry in Minneapolis, St. Paul and elsewhere across the state at the stroke of midnight. Three of those lucky couples received free Betty Crocker wedding cakes from General Mills, which is based in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley.

Rep. Frank Ferri, lead sponsor of the marriage equality bill in the Rhode Island House, marries his partner Tony Caparco.

Rhode Island didn’t see quite the rush of couples looking to  marry right away as Minnesota did. With the rest of the northeastern United States and Canada having offered same-sex marriages for a number of years, there were already thousands of legally married same-sex couples residing in the Ocean State. So when their local clerks offices started opening between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m., couples arrived at a much more leisurely pace. Some got marriage licenses so they could marry at a later date, some held wedding ceremonies later that day, and others filled out the paperwork to convert their civil unions into marriages.

Born On This Day, 1930: Lionel Bart

(d. 1999) His professional songwriting career began in the 1950s when he began churning out pop hits for several British singers. But he is best known as the author for the book, music and lyrics for the smash 1960 London musical Oliver!, based on the Charles Dickens novel. When the show opened on Broadway two years later, it earned him a Tony for Best Original Score. In 1963, he wrote the theme song for the the James Bond film From Russia With Love. Bart’s style — and lifestyle — came to epitomize early 1960s Britain: palling around with Noel Coward, Brian Epstein, Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey, and even Princess Margaret, who called him a “silly bugger” for squandering his money.

Bart continued writing for the West End, scoring respectable successes with Blitz! (1962) and Maggie May (1964), but Twang! (1965) was a horrible flop, and La Strada (1960) closed on Broadway after only one performance. By then, he has broke and in serious decline due to alcoholism and LSD use. By 1972, he was bankrupt and slid further into drinking and depression. He sobered up in the early 1990s, but between his diabetes and nearly-destroyed liver, his health was permanently damaged. He died in 1999 after a long battle with cancer.

Born On This Day, 1936: Yves Saint Laurent

80 YEARS AGO: (d. 2008) One of the greatest names in fashion got his start at another storied fashion house, Christian Dior. In 1957, Dior was so impressed with Saint Laurent’s designs that Dior named Saint Laurent to succeed him as designer. When Dior died suddenly later that year, Saint Laurent became head designer at the age of 21. Saint Laurent’s 1958 collection is credited for saving the firm. In 1958 and 1959, the firm’s owner, Marcel Boussac, reportedly pressured the French government not to draft Saint Laurent into the army to fight in the Algerian War of Independence. But after the critically panned 1960 season, Saint Laurent suddenly found himself without a job, conscripted and undergoing combat training.

This would be Saint Laurent’s low point. Hazed by fellow soldiers, he lasted only 20 days in the military before he was sent to a military hospital due to stress. While there, he was placed under sedation and given psychoactive drugs and electroconvulsive therapy. Years later, he would point to this period as the genesis for his later problems with drinking and drug addictions.

After he was released later that year, Saint Laurnet and his partner, Pierre Bergé, founded their own fashion house under Saint Laurent’s name. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Saint Laurent would set several fashion trends: safari jackets, tall thigh-high boots, and the Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women. He was the first major French designer to come out with a full ready-to-wear line, and he was the first designer to feature non-Caucasian models on his runway. His personal life also followed several 1960s and 1970s trends: partying at Regine’s and Studio 54, drinking and snorting cocaine. He nevertheless maintained a hectic schedule of designing two full haute couture and ready-to-wear lines each year even though, because of his drug use, he could barely walk down the runway at the end of some of his shows. After 1987, he began turning his design work over to his assistants. He retired completely in 2002 and died in 2008 of brain cancer in Paris.

Today In History, 1965: First Gay Rights Protest at the Pentagon

Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen (see Jan 5. Source.)

That year marked several important milestones in the history of organized gay protest. The year of gay protests actually got a head start in 1964 when Randophe Wicker (Feb 3) led a small band of activists protesting in front of a New York City army induction center (Sep 19).  In April of 1965, gay rights advocates held the first White House protests demanding equal treatment in federal employment and other areas of discrimination (Apr 17),  A string of other protests followed: at the United Nations (Apr 18), another one at the White House (May 29), the Civil Service Commission (Jun 26), and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall (Jul 4), and, on this date, the Pentagon.

Participants at the Pentagon picket included gay rights pioneers Frank Kameny (May 21), Barbara Gittings (whose birthday is also today; see below), Jack Nichols (Mar 16) and about a dozen others. CBS cameras were on the scene to capture it, and a report on the protest was featured on the local affiliate’s evening news.

Born On This Day, 1911: Henry Wilson

Henry Willson (left) with Rock Hudson.

(d. 1978) The future Hollywood agent was born for show business: his father was vice president of the Columbia Phonograph Company and president of Columbia Gramophone Manufacturing Co. Alarmed at his son’s interest in tap dance, he sent Henry to a boarding school in Asheville, North Carolina where he thought rough sports, rock climbing and backpacking would straighten his son out. Needless to day, it didn’t. In 1933, Henry moved to Hollywood and became a talent scout for Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick, discovering Lana Turner (although not at a drug store counter, as legend had it), Joan Fontaine and Natalie Wood.

But his real claim to fame was his uncanny knack for finding (and often, allegedly, bedding) the hottest beefcake stars of the 1950s. His “Adonis factory” transformed Robert Moseley into Guy Madison, Francis Cuthbert into Rory Calhoun, Merle Johnson into Troy Donahue, Arthur Kelm into Tab Hunter, Robert Wagner into, well, Robert Wagner, and most famously, Roy Fitzgerald into Rock Hudson. That minor detail about some of them lacking discernible talent proved to be of little hinderance to breaking into show business. Willson personally coached his charges in how to act, how to behave, and how to butch it up if they were lacking in that particular area. He staged “dates” for his gay stars when needed, and he even talked Hudson into a three-year marriage to his secretary when rumors began to become a little too active.

While most of his male clients were heterosexual, the disproportionate number of gay male leads in his stable led many to assume that all of his clients were gay. And as Willson’s own homosexuality was public knowledge, many of his clients, gay and straight, began distancing themselves from him as he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and also as he became increasingly paranoid. His influenced waned through the 1960s, and by 1974 he became a ward of the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, where he died of cirrhosis of the liver. With nothing left of his estate, he was buried in an unmarked grave in North Hollywood. In 2005, Willson became the subject of Robert Hofler’s biography, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson.