Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1939: Ian McKellen

His roots are in theater, mainly Shakespeare, where he continues to perform in a number of state productions in Britain. But beginning in 1969, he branched out in film and television, covering a wide range of genres from drama (And the Band Played On, Gods and Monsters), to mystery (Six Degrees of Separation, The Da Vinci Code), to action and fantasy (X-Men, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, as Gandolf).

McKellen was among the earliest actors to come out publicly as gay. He came out in 1988 during a BBC interview while discussing the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Bill, which stated that local governments “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” (see May 24). According to a 2003 interview, McKellen said he visited Environment Secretary Michael Howard (who was responsible for local governments) to lobby against the bill. Howard reaffirmed his approval of Section 28, and in a defining moment of chutzpah, asked McKellen to leave an autograph for Howard’s children. He did. It read, “Fuck off, I’m gay.” McKellen remained politically active and co-founded the British gay-rights group Stonewall in 1989. In 2007, he became a patron of The Albert Kennedy Trust, an organization that provides support to homeless and troubled LGBT youth.

McKellen is properly called Sir Ian McKellen. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1979, was knighted in 1991 for services to the performing arts. He was also named a Companion of Honour for services to drama and to LGBT equality in 2008.

Born On This Day, 1969: Anne Heche

She got her start on the NBC soap opera Another World, where she won a Daytime Emmy in 1991. Appropriate, given that so much of her life reads like a soap opera. She was the daughter of a Baptist choir director who disclosed his homosexuality to his family just before dying of AIDS in 1983. That same year, her brother died in a car accident. Four years later, Heche launched her acting career with Another World as soon as she got out of high school. From there she took a series of roles in television and film, including If These Walls Could Talk (1996), Walking and Talking (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).

It was at about that time that Heche began dating comedian Ellen DeGeneres. They had said they would get a civil union if it became legal in Vermont, but they broke up in August, 2000. Just hours after news broke of their relationship ending, she appeared that the rear door of a house in Fresno County wearing nothing by shorts and a bra, asking if she could take a shower. She had curled up on the couch for a nap when sheriff deputies arrived. She told officers that she was “God, and was going to take everyone back to heaven in a spaceship.” She was taken by ambulance to a hospital, but was released a few hours later.

That episode became the stuff of tabloid headlines and served as a turning point in her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy (which she wrote in only six weeks), where she described the her sexual abuse by her father, and her subsequent emotional problems and drug abuse. Meanwhile, her mother, Nancy Heche capitalized on her daughter’s fame and became an important speaker at ex-gay conferences where she claimed that her prayers “cured” Anne’s lesbianism. Anne, who is bisexual, says that her mother’s campaign is “a way to keep the pain of the truth out.” In 2011, Anne said that she doubted that she would ever reconcile with her mother.

In 2001, Heche married a cameraman who she met during DeGeneres’s 2000 standup comedy tour, and had a son the following year.  They divorced in 2007. That same year, she moved in with actor James Tupper, who was her co-star in the ABC comedy-drama Men in Trees (2006-2008). She had her second son with Tupper in 2009.

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Today in History, 1610: Virginia Colony Enacts North America’s First Sodomy Statute

Jamestown, Virginia Colony, abt 1610.

Jamestown was founded in 1607, and for the first several years, the plan was for its survival depending on regular resupply ships from England. This would give the colony time to begin mining for minerals and, it was hoped, gold. Or if that didn’t pan out, it could trade with the Native Americans and develop crops for export.

The First Supply and Second Supply expeditions went as planned in 1608, but the Third Supply, sent in 1609, was a disaster. Of the nine ships that set out from England that summer, only seven made it to Virginia Colony. They did so after enduring 44 hours in a hurricane, and losing numerous sailor and colonists to yellow fever and the plague. The problem, though, was that these ships carried mostly colonists and had relatively little in the way of supplies. One of those supply ships was lost in the hurricane.

The other, the fleet’s flagship, Sea Venture, ran aground into Bermuda after being nearly sunk during the storm. That ship also carried Sir Thomas Gates, who was supposed to act as Virginia Colony’s acting governor until King James I’s appointed governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (later, Lord Delaware), could make the voyage. But stuck in Bermuda, Gates had more immediate concerns, namely establishing a colony there (and leaving behind a portion of the Sea Venture’s supplies and crew to maintain it), and building two new ships so he could continue on to Virginia.

Gates made it to Jamestown ten months late, and with far less provisions than the Virginia Colonists needed. Since the Second Supply, Virginia Colony’s mining attempts came up empty, trading with the Native American population was largely nonexistent as relations went from bad to worse, the Colony was essentially leaderless (Captain John Smith had returned to England as a result of a severe accidental wound) and was rife with “insubordination and idleness,” and, finally, a severe drought decimated the 1609 harvest. And with almost no provisions making it from England, the Colony sank into a severe famine. Colonists would speak of this period as The Starving Time, and of  500 colonists in 1609, only about sixty survived when Gates arrived. Some had even turned to cannibalism.

Sir Thomas Gates

Gate’s first task was to re-organize Virginia Colony and place it under martial law. On May 24, 1610, Gates issued the colony’s first “Articles, Laws and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martial.” The ninth article of this legal code read:

No man shall commit the horrible, detestable sins of Sodomie upon pain of death; & he or she that can be lawfully convict of Adultery shall be punished with death. No man shall ravish or force any woman, maid or Indian, or other, upon pain of death…

The article went on the punish “Fornication”, by a whipping for the first two offenses, and for the third offense, a whipping three times a week for a month and a public apology in church.

Soon after, the colonists made the decision to abandon Jamestown and return to England on the two Bermuda-built ships. As they were leaving the mouth of the James river, they were met with an emergency resupply flotilla sent from England, with food, a doctor, more colonists, and Lord De La Warr on board. Virginia Colony was saved, though Gate’s martial law code remained in place until 1618, when Virginia Colony finally ended martial law and apparently reverted to following the laws of England until 1661.

Today In History, 1983: Pat Buchanan Says AIDS Is Nature’s “Awful Retribution”

“The sexual revolution has begun to devour its children,” proclaimed Pat Buchanan in a New York Post op-ed that was relayed in newspapers across America. “And among the revolutionary vanguard, the Gay Rights activists, the mortality rate is higher and climbing.”

By 1983, the known AIDS epidemic was about to reach its two-year mark. A general panic was spreading in the gay community, and a general backlash was brewing everywhere else. Buchanan fueled that backlash with this op-ed, warning that no gay person should be permitted to handle food. He also warned that the Democratic party’s decision to hold their 1984 convention in San Francisco would leave their delegates’ wives and children at the mercy of “homosexuals who belong to a community that is a common carrier of dangerous, communicable and sometimes fatal diseases.” And he attributed all of it to divine retribution with his now-infamous money-quote: “The poor homosexuals… they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.”

Buchanan had a flair for the dramatic turn of the phrase, having served as an opposition researcher and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon. He would go on to become communications director for the Reagan White House from 1985 to 1987. In 1992, as Buchanan ran for the Republican nomination for President, he again called AIDS “nature’s retribution for violating the laws of nature in many ways” (Feb 27). His speech before the Republican National Convention later that summer brought the term “culture war” to a nationwide audience.

Today In History, 1988: Britain Enacts Section 28

When Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party was swept into Government in 1979, it brought with it massive changes throughout Britain, touching on all levels of society. With “Thatcherism” came a wholesale transformation of the economy, widespread cuts in social programs, open warfare with trade unions, and a retrenchment on a wide range of social issues including homosexuality. British society’s attitudes towards gay people hardened further during the early 1980s as AIDS began to take root in the U.K.

But in areas where either the Labour or Liberal Party held sway, gay rights activists were able to get a number of local councils to include sexual orientation in their anti-discrimination policies. The Greater London Council authorized several grants between 1981 and 1984 to the London Lesbian and Gay Community Centre in Islington and other LGBT groups, and in 1985, the Labour Party called for an end to all legal discrimination against gays and lesbians.

But when the Daily Mail, with its characteristic alarmist fashion, plastered a condemnation on its pages of a children’s book, Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin by the Danish author Susanne Bösche, which it discovered in a school library, all hell broke loose. On December 2, 1987, Conservative MP David Wilshire proposed an amendment to the Local Government Act to prohibit local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” or teaching “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” in schools. The clause which later became known as Section 28, was inserted at the committee stage on December 7, debated in Committee on December 8, and was adopted by the full House of Commons on December 15. The House of Lords approved it the following spring, and the law took effect on May 24, 1988.

The law had its intended effect. Where local governments had previously allowed gay groups to meet on government property, and where public libraries made LGBT publications available, many now were reluctant to do so. Gay web sites were blocked from school computers, and the Glyndebourne Touring Opera was even forced to abandon a staging of Death in Venice. The law also had an unintended effect: Section 28 almost singlehandedly revived the gay rights movement on a national scale. Ian McKellen came out on the BBC and helped to found Stonewall, while Peter Tatchell established OutRage!. The two organizations spent the next decade campaigning against Section 28.

In 1997, Labour was swept back into Government in a landslide victory, but the first legislative attempt to repeal Section 28 in 2000, were defeated in the House of Lords. The Scottish Parliament did manage to repeal it that year, but they had to overcome a nasty campaign waged by Scottish millionaire businessman Brian Souter.

After another Labour landslide in the 2001 elections, opponents of Section 28 made another run at repeal for England and Wales in 2003. This time, the Tories were badly split over the measure and Conservative leadership allowed a free vote. Commons voted 356-127 to repeal the notorious law, and Lords agreed, 180-130. Local Government Minister Nick Raynsford, said, “For over a decade, Section 28 has cast a cloud of confusion and ambiguity over local authorities’ ability to support and provide services to the whole of their community. Repeal means this cloud has been lifted.” The repeal received Royal Assent on November 18, 2003.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From Wilde Side (Boston, MA), September 1, 1976, page 22.

From 1957-1995, Sporters was a gay bar at 228 Cambridge St. It was descriny [sic] sort of sign, Sporters was hidden in plain sight. Often called on by its many aliases’ Sporters adopted one “The Beacon Hill tennis club” and used that name as the title of its monthly newsletter to its patrons. Sporters provided what a lot of gay bars of the time provided, a place where gay men could safely be themselves. The bar was termed by one of its patrons as a friendly Beacon Hill dive. Known only by the deep red doors that blended almost perfectly in the Cambridge St. landscape, unmarked by a sign. Come one come all comes to mind when thinking of Sporters, because it catered to everyone: the young and old, the employed and unemployed, black and white, college kids and professors, and the in and out of the closet men.

The atmosphere of Sporters was made by the staff, the management, bartenders, and waiters. According to the memory of a long time Sporters customer, on most any night from 1972-1976 you could find a waiter named Anthony working at Sporters. He would apparently scurry around the place with “drinks in one hand, the other hand on his hip, dispensing tongue-in-cheek witticisms and good-natured cutting remarks to patrons as he sped around the bar…all the while, singing alone – off key – to one of his favorite tunes on the jukebox, either “Dancing Queen” or “Fame” (David Bowie, NOT the other one.) or some other mid 70’s pop gem.” He was a “free spirit” with “a smile for any and everyone.” There is a photograph of Anthony posing on a bumper pool table with platform heels on, showing just how relaxed Sporters was.

The link to the photo takes you to a flickr page which also includes seven comments from people who remember going to Sporters. In 1974, it was named Boston’s Best Gay Bar by Boston magazine because “since there’s no dancing, this smoke-filled room is a cruiser’s paradise—as long as you’re male.” The building today houses a sushi restaurant.

Today In History, 1920: Harvard Establishes Secret Court To Investigate “This Pernicious Scourge”

Cyril Wilcox,  the Harvard undergrad whose suicide launched Harvard’s ant-gay Secret Court.

Cyril Wilcox, a Harvard sophomore, killed himself on May 13, 1920, . He had been struggling with his grades and with his health, and returned home to recover. While at home, he told his older brother, George, that he had been having an affair with another man. George apparently reacted very badly to the news, m and Cyril killed himself by breathing gas shortly after. A few days after Cyril died, George intercepted two letters. One was a gossipy letter from a gay classmate, and another was from a recent graduate. Armed with those letters, George demanded that Harvard’s acting Dean, Chester N Greenough rid the college “of this pernicious scourge.” Greenough consulted with Harvard President Abbot Lowell and formed a special five-man tribunal on this date in history which became known as the Secret Court.

Acting Dean Chester N. Greenough, who led the investigations for the Secret Court.

The court launched a wide-ranging witch hunt, with Greenough summoning each witness one-by-one with a brief note. The Court’s inquiry was exhaustive, posing questions about masturbation practices, sex with women or men, cross-dressing, overnight guests, parties, and reading habits. The scope of the inquiry soon expanded to area businesses, cafés and bars. Eight students were expelled, ordered to leave Cambridge and reported to their families. They were also told that Harvard would disclose the reasons for their expulsion if employers or other schools sought references. At least one student committed suicide following his expulsion. Four others unconnected to Harvard were also deemed guilty. The school couldn’t punish them directly, but they did pressure one café to fire a waiter.

In 2002, a researcher from Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson, came across a box of files labeled “Secret Court” in the University’s archives. After pressure from newspaper staff, the University finally released five hundred documents related to the Court’s work, and The Crimson published its findings in November of that year. Harvard’s president Lawrence H. Summers called the reports “extremely disturbing” and the court’s actions “abhorrent.”, and expressed deep regret for the anguish the students and families experienced. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan responded to Summers’s statement, saying that “Harvard embraces bathhouse values”:

Harvard’s code is now based on Summers’ values, which hold that the old moral code of Christianity, which teaches that sexual relations between men are unnatural and immoral, is “abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university.” Harvard has not only turned its back on its Christian past, it has just renounced its Christian roots as poisoned and perverted. If Harvard is educating America’s leaders, this country is not Slouching Toward Gomorrah, we are sprinting there.

[More information can be found in William Wright’s Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals]

Today In History, 1975: LAPD Chief Declines Gay Pride Invite, Proposes “Gay Conversion Week” Instead

L.A. Police Chief Edward M. Davis

Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. Davis was a real piece of work. As LAPD chief from 1969 through 1978, he dramatically expanded the department’s investigations against political groups Davis considered subversive. The LAPD even enrolled officers as students on college campuses. Those covert officers then took notes on political discussions in and out of the classrooms, and filed police reports based on those discussions. In 1972, UCLA history professor Hayden White filed a lawsuit, which ended with a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision against the LAPD placing limits on police political surveillance activity nationwide.

The LAPD was also famous for conducting aggressive and sometimes violent acts against gay people and known gay gathering places (Mar 9). In 1970, Davis tried to block first Gay Pride celebration in Los Angeles, saying “As far as I’m concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.” His Police Commission did grant the permit, but with fees of more than $1.5 million. It took intervention by the ACLU and the California Superior Court before all of those fees were dismissed.

When 1975 came around, the Christopher Street West Association invited Chief Davis to attend that year’s Gay Pride Celebration. Davis declined:

Chief Davis disrespectfully declines. (Click to enlarge)

LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT

May 23, 1975

Ms. Sharon D. Cornelison, President
Christopher Street West Association
P.O. Box 3949
Hollywood, California 90028

Dear Ms. Cornelison:

As you no doubt expected, I am declining your invitation to participate in the celebration of “GAY PRIDE WEEK.” While I support your organization’s constitutional right to express your feelings on the subject of homosexuality, I am obviously not in sympathy with your views on the subject. I would much rather celebrate “GAY CONVERSION WEEK” which I will gladly sponsor when the medical practitioners in this country find a way to convert gays to heterosexuals.

Very truly yours,

(Signed)

E. M. DAVIS
Chief of Police

Today In History, 1978: Eugene, Oregon, Voters Defeat Gay Rights Ordinance

Supporters of Eugene’s gay rights ordinance gather for a candlelight protest on election night. (Source.)

Anita Bryant’s successful campaign to defeat a Miami non-discrimination ordinance in 1977 (Jun 7) launched a wave of ballot measures in cities across the country the following year. Voters in St. Paul, Minnesota repealed their ordinance by more than a two-to-one margin (see Apr 25) and Wichita, Kansas voters bested that two weeks later with a five-to-one vote (see May 9). Anita Bryant’s Protect America’s Children had poured $20,000 into those battles ($74,000 in today’s dollars), which were enormous sums for city elections.

The juggernaut next moved on to Eugene, Oregon two weeks later, where residents would decide whether to approve a gay rights amendment to the city’s human rights ordinance. The amendment would have extended existing prohibitions of discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations include sexual orientation. The Eugene City Council had passed the amendment on November 28, and it would have gone into effect thirty days later, but a quickly-formed group, calling themselves the Volunteer Organization Involved in Community Enactments (VOICE), and collected 10,000 signatures in less than two weeks to place the amendment on the next primary election ballot.

From The Eugene Register-Guard, May 21, 1978, page 3A.

Eugene is home to the University of Oregon and was known then for its friendliness to progressive politics. Gay leaders felt that this fight would give them the best chance of turning back the tide. Early polling showing voters about evenly split was promising. According to local news reports, VOICE and the pro-gay Eugene Citizens for Human Rights (ECHR) “conducted vigorous but restrained campaigns that lacked the inflammatory rhetoric of campaigns on similar gay rights proposals in other communities.” While VOICE sought examples of brochures and advertisements from the other campaigns, they elected to focus their message less on morality and religious beliefs, and more about whether gay people deserved “special” protections under the law. ECHR, similarly, shunned assistance from outside groups. ECHR coordinator Candy Hansen said, “Eugene is Eugene and we want to win this for the people of Eugene.”

From The Eugene Register-Guard, May 21, 1978, page 7A.

That didn’t happen. The vote was 22,898 to 13,427 — 63 to 37 percent. If there was a silver lining, it was this slim one: it was the best margin yet for the gay community. But a landslide was still a landslide. Turnout among college students was low, which may  partly explain why the polling looked so much more favorable.

Lynn Greene, a campaign coordinator for VOICE was ecstatic. “We’ve shown that a liberal community will oppose legislation destructive to moral standards. It shows that you don’t have to be religious to see that this kind of ordinance can negatively affect the community. The idea that this is a human rights issue is a facade, and people recognize that.” VOICE director Larry Dean said the vote was a reaction against a “swing in morals,” and even liberal Eugene voters weren’t ready to endorse an “acceptance of homosexuality.” “If they (the gay community) cannot win here, they can’t win anyplace, except perhaps San Francisco.”

That night, Anita Bryant sent Dean a congratulatory telegram praising “the Christian public and all the citizens of Eugene who worked and voted against legalized immorality. Let us continue to reach out in Godly love to all homosexuals who want deliverance, while opposing at the threshold every attempt of the militant homosexuals to represent their lifestyle as ‘normal’ and to impose it on us and our children.”  Meanwhile, Edward Rowe, the Executive Director for Bryant’s Protect American’s Children repeated his denial that his group was directly involved with VOICE’s campaign. “We worked only indirectly with the people in Eugene. There was consultation with our office in Miami Beach and the groups in Wichita and St. Paul. There was no funding in this case.”

While VOICE supporters were celebrating at a Chuckwagon steak house, the gay community and its allies marched quietly from the Eugene Hotel to the courthouse in a candlelight parade.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1979: First Gay Couple To Attend High School Prom

Randy Rohl and Grady Quinn.

Randy Rohl, a 17-year-old senior at a Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, embarked on the most quintessential high school rite of passage: attending the senior prom. His date wasn’t so quintessential: his friend, 20-year-old Grady Quinn. The couple wore matching powder blue tuxes, rose boutonnieres and matching silver pierced earrings.

Rohl wore his sexuality rather lightly, especially considering the times and the locale. He later told a friend that it wasn’t meant to be a political act. He just wanted to go to the prom. The school’s principal, Fred Stephens, granted permission for the couple to attend the dance, saying “My belief is that people need their rights protected. Homosexuals have rights.” Rohl told reporters, “The principal was very concerned for my well-being.”

And aside from a few pre-prom threats (which brought out a police presence in case anything came from those threats), and some raised eyebrows and a heavy media presence with glaring bright lights, it all went off without a hitch. . The couple danced five times. “The first one was a slow dance,” Rohl told reporters, “and people were a little surprised to see two guys dancing together.” The Washington Post reported that they got was a lot of extra room on the dance floor. But when the faster disco tunes were played, they attracted less attention.

“I think it’s rather sad that my date and I have to get more publicity or more acknowledgement from the press than any other couple,” he said. “I don’t think we’re any more worthy of special attention. Yes, maybe it’s a milestone in gay rights, but it’s being made into more of a freak show.” He also said that despite the threats, several students came over and congratulated the couple. “A lot of people were really glad we stuck to your guns and went.”

According to the National Gay Task Force, this was the first time an acknowledged gay couple attended a high school prom together in the U.S., even though the two were just friends. (Grady Quinn was the partner of a local gay rights activist.) This would be Randy Rohl’s only act as an activist. After high school, he moved to Minneapolis to attend college, and retreated back into private life. He died on December 31, 1993 of AIDS.

[Additional source: “‘It’s a Good Feeling,’ Says Gay Who Took Boyfriend to His Prom.” The Advocate, no. 271 (July 12, 1979): 7.]

Today In History, 1980: Anita Bryant Files for Divorce

The Associated Press described her as a “strong-principled advocate of God, family and flag.” Nevertheless, she announced that she was divorcing her husband and manager, Bob Green because he “violated my most precious asset: my very conscience.”

Bryant’s statement, which the AP reported she released “from her 25-room Miami Beach home,” charged that Green cooperated “with certain hired staff members who conspired to control me and to use my name and reputation to build their personal careers instead of my ministry.” Her statement brought to a close their twenty year marriage. She also announced that she was resigning from Anita Bryant Ministries.

Green answered Bryant with an open letter, which was also released to the press:

Dear Anita:

I love you with all my heart and I am awaiting your return as my wife and the mother of our children. God’s love and forgiveness is open to both of us if we will but seek it.

Let us both put aside all other earthly considerations and reunite our lives in Christian love.

Your husband,
Bob

Bryant wasn’t interested in Green’s overture, such as it was, and she went ahead with the divorce, even though it was “against everything I believe in.” Green, citing his religious beliefs, refused to recognize the divorce, saying they were still married “in God’s eyes.” He also blamed gay people: “Blame gay people? I do. Their stated goal was to put [Bryant] out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.” He died, an embittered old man, in 2012.

Bryant married again and relaunched her career in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. When that failed, she moved to Branson, Missouri. When that failed, she declared bankruptcy and moved to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to start over one more time. That also failed, leaving a pile of unpaid creditors and abused employees in the wake.

Born On This Day, 1930: Harvey Milk

fourth) openly gay non-incumbent candidate to win a political office for two reasons: he refused to hide who he was; and he made it his mission to build alliances with groups that other gay activists thought were impossible to reach. So to those who knew Harvey well weren’t surprised when his 1977 as San Francisco City Supervisor that he was good terms with conservative supervisor Dan White. White, a former cop, was supported by the city’s police union whose leaders were angry over city policies which they considered to be soft on crime and homosexuals. The local media ate it up as the two made joint appearances on local talk shows where they both talked warmly of each other. Harvey began to privately telling friends that he thought White was “educatable,” and that the two might actually be able to work together.

But all that changed when Milk wound up voting against White’s proposal to bar a psychiatric treatment center from opening in White’s district. White retaliated by voting against Milk’s gay rights bill (it passed anyway), and for the next several months, White would not speak to Milk or his aides. Other supervisors noticed that White stopped spending as much time at his office in City Hall, and he was sullen during the weekly board meetings. White abruptly resigned on November 10, 1978. When he had a change of heart a few days later, Mayor George Moscone refused to commit to re-appointing him to the board. On November 27, 1978, White snuck into City Hall and confronted Moscone in his office, and shot him twice in the abdomen, then twice more in the head. He then walked down the hall to Milk’s office. After arguing with Milk, White shot him three times in the chest, once in the back and twice in the head. (Nov 27)

Milk’s short political career changed the face of LGBT politics. During the 1978 campaign against the Briggs Amendment which would have required the firing of gay teachers and any school employee who supported gay rights, Milk insisted on aggressively confronting the anti-gay campaign by raising the visibility of the gay community (Nov 7). The campaign against the Briggs Amendment was also a campaign against the closet. He told a crowd during San Francisco’s Gay Pride that year:

“On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets… We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.”

Born On This Day, 1970: Mark Bingham

(d. 2001) A true hero, Mark Bingham was among the passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 after it had been hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001. His personal bravery was well known before that fateful day. His boyfriend of six years, Paul Holm, recalled that Bingham had thwarted two attempted muggings, one at gunpoint. His friends recalled that he proudly showed off the scars he received during a running of the bulls in Pamplona. During the hijacking, Bingham, who was sitting in first class, made a brief call to his mother. She later called him back after learning of the other 9/11 attacks and said the flight was being used on a suicide mission. Bingham has been honored with several others for bringing the aircraft down and preventing a much greater loss of life.