1983: Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli comes out in an interview with The Advocate, saying, “I’m gay…. This is the first time I’ve talked about it openly. I don’t like to talk about my sexual inclinations. People are not special because they like one thing better than another in bed.” 1990: John Brownell, deputy managing editor … Read More
1981: The first official documentation of the condition to be known as AIDS is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The L.A. Times reports the first mention of AIDS in the mainstream American press. 1983: Torch Song Trilogy-Harvey Fierstein’s poignant, autobiographical four-hour comedy about … Read More
1980: Three local gay rights measures in California-in Davis, San Jose, and Santa Clara County are defeated in referendum elections. 1984: Harvey Fierstein wins his third Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical for La Cage aux Folles. In open defiance of the Tonys’ executive producer-who had begged everyone to “please, please … Read More
1987: Michael Bennett, choreographer of A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls, dies of AIDS at the age of forty-four in Tucson, Arizona. 1989: Lambda Book Report presents the first Lambda Literary AWARDS as part of the American Booksellers Association convention in Washington, DC Armistead Maupin emcees; “Lammy” winners include Dorothy Allison, Paul Monette, Michael Nava, Karen … Read More
1973: An officially sanctioned gay student dance at Princeton University draws three hundred participants. 1975: Gay porn phenomenon “Jack Wrangler” is born when a sometimes struggling twenty-eight-year-old actor, Jack Stillman, steps onstage between porn films at the Paris Theater in Los Angeles and performs a live striptease in Western drag. The son of an established … Read More
1921: Patrick Dennis, author of Auntie Mame, is born. 1934: Artist and Christopher Isherwood’s muse and partner, Don Bachardy, is born. 1981: Lawrence Mass, a gay physician and writer, publishes the first media mention of AIDS in an article in the New York Native, “Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded”.
1982: Voters in Lincoln, Nebraska, go to the polls to decide whether or not to accept a proposed gay rights ordinance for the city. Leading the fight against the initiative is local psychologist Paul Cameron who has asserted, among other things, that gay and lesbian teachers are forty-three times more likely to molest a child than … Read More
1987: Stewart McKinney, a Republican from Connecticut, becomes the first U.S. congressman to die of AIDS. He is fifty-six. His widow subsequently establishes a foundation in his name and eventually sets up a medical scholarship for college students interested in working with people with AIDS. It is later revealed that McKinney was actively, if not … Read More