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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

1650 – William III was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth, and he governed Holland from 1672. From 1689 he also reigned as William III over England and Ireland. By coincidence, his regnal number (III) was the same for both Orange and England. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II. He is informally known by sections of the population in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy". In what became known as the "Glorious Revolution", on 5 November 1688 William invaded England in an action that ultimately deposed King James II and won him the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland. In the British Isles, William ruled jointly with his wife, Mary II, until her death on 28 December 1694. The period of their joint reign is often referred to as "William and Mary".

A Protestant, William participated in several wars against the powerful Catholic king of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants heralded him as a champion of their faith. Largely because of that reputation, William was able to take the British crowns when many were fearful of a revival of Catholicism under James. William's victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is still commemorated by the Orange Order. His reign marked the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the Stuarts to the more Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover.

During the 1690s rumours grew of William's alleged homosexual inclinations and led to the publication of many satirical pamphlets by his Jacobite detractors. He did have several close, male associates, including two Dutch courtiers to whom he granted English titles: Hans Willem Bentinck became Earl of Portland, and Arnold Joost van Keppel was created Earl of Albemarle. These relationships with male friends, and his apparent lack of more than one female mistress, led William's enemies to suggest that he might prefer homosexual relationships. William's modern biographers, however, still disagree on the veracity of these allegations, with many contending that they were just figments of his enemies' imaginations, and others suggesting there may have been some truth to the rumours.

A spate of political satires accusing William of intimate relations with both men circulated during his reign. These scurrilous poems are quite explicit in their allegations, and are obviously the work of Tory partisans who favored James. For this reason they have been discounted by William's defenders.

One satire begins:

"For the case, Sir, is such, That the people think much, That your love is Italian, your government Dutch. Ah! Who would have thought that a Low-Country Stallion and Protestant Prince should prove an Italian?"

(*Italy was the country most notably associated with sodomy in the seventeenth century.) Bentinck's closeness to William did arouse jealousies in the Royal Court at the time, but most modern historians doubt that there was a homosexual element in their relationship. But William's young protege, Keppel, aroused more gossip and suspicion, being 20 years William's junior and strikingly handsome, and having risen from being a royal page to an earldom with some ease. Portland wrote to William in 1697 that "the kindness which your Majesty has for a young man, and the way in which you seem to authorise his liberties … make the world say things I am ashamed to hear". This, he said, was "tarnishing a reputation which has never before been subject to such accusations". William tersely dismissed these suggestions, however, saying, "It seems to me very extraordinary that it should be impossible to have esteem and regard for a young man without it being criminal."

Most telling, however, are the remarks of Bishop Gilbert Burnet, who praised William unstintingly as "a person raised up by God to resist the power of France and the progress of tyranny and persecution." Yet in considering matters that might make it difficult for William to assume the English throne, Burnet refers to one "particular . . . too tender to be put in writing," which under the circumstances can only be interpreted as a reference to William's sexual nature.

Wagstaff (L) with Mapplethorpe

1921 – Sam Wagstaff Jr. (d.1987) was an American art curator and collector as well as the artistic mentor and benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (who was also his lifetime companion) and poet-punk rocker Patti Smith. Wagstaff is known in part for his support of Minimalism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Earthworks, but his aesthetic acceptance and support of photography presaged the acceptance of the medium as a fine art.

Born to a wealthy family, after growing up on Central Park South, attending the Hotchkiss School and graduating from Yale University, and being a fixture on the debutante circuit, Wagstaff joined the US Navy in 1941 as an ensign, where he took part in the D-day landing at Omaha Beach in World War II.

In 1959, an art history fellowship took him to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He served as curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1961 to 1968, and then at the Detroit Institute of Arts from 1968 to 1971.

After seeing the exhibition "The Painterly Photograph, 1890-1914" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972, Wagstaff became convinced that photographs were the most unrecognized and, possibly, the most valuable works of art. He began selling his collection of paintings, using the proceeds to buy 19th-century American, British, and French photography. Then, influenced by Mapplethorpe, Wagstaff's taste veered toward the daring, and he began to depart from established names in search of new talent. His collection was soon recognized as one of the finest private holdings in the United States. In 1984 Wagstaff's photography holdings - comprising at least 2,500 masterworks - went to the J. Paul Getty Museum, for a reported price said to be in the neighborhood of $5 million.

Sam Wagstaff met his lifetime companion and protégé, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972 at a party. Mapplethorpe, whom Wagstaff called his shy pornographer, was also his guide to the gay demimonde of extreme sex and drugs that flourished in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, Wagstaff gave Mapplethorpe $500,000 to purchase the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where the photographer lived and had his shooting space.

Wagstaff died of pneumonia arising from AIDS at his home in Manhattan on January 14, 1987, two years before Mapplethorpe.

1946 – Robert Mapplethorpe (d.1989) was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men. The frank homoeroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks.

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic in Queens, New York. He majored in graphic arts, though he dropped out in 1969 before finishing his degree. Mapplethorpe lived with his partner Patti Smith from 1967-1974, and she supported him by working. They created art together, and even after he realized he was gay, they maintained a close relationship.

Mapplethorpe took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still-lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. In the 1980s, his mentor and lifetime companion art curator Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space.

Mapplethorpe worked primarily in the studio, particularly toward the end of his career. Common subjects include flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies, and celebrities, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith. Smith was a longtime roommate of Mapplethorpe and a frequent subject in his photography, including a stark, iconic photograph that appears on the cover of Smith's first album, Horses.

Other work includes homoerotic and BDSM acts (including coprophagia), and classical nudes. Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio series sparked national attention in the early 1990s when it was included in The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition funded by National Endowment for the Arts. The portfolio includes some of Mapplethorpe's most explicit imagery, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus.

Though his work had been regularly displayed in publicly funded exhibitions, conservative and religious organizations, such as the American Family Association, seized on this exhibition to vocally oppose government support for what they called "nothing more than the sensational presentation of potentially obscene material." As a result, Mapplethorpe became something of a cause célèbre for both sides of the American Culture war. The installation of The Perfect Moment in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and its director, Dennis Barrie, on charges of "pandering obscenity". His photographs of black men have also been criticized as exploitative.

Bob Love

Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, 42 years old, in a Boston, Massachusetts, hospital from complications arising from AIDS. His body was cremated and the ashes buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked "Maxey".

Nearly a year before his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be "the appropriate vehicle to protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared about". Since his death, the Foundation has not only functioned as his official estate and helped promote his work throughout the world, it has also raised and donated millions of dollars to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV infection.

1960 – Tom Ryan, FDNY Firefighter, president emeritus of FireFLAG/EMT and LGBT Rights activist, is born. Ryan retired from FDNY in 2003, after a distinguished FDNY career, and is a veteran of 9/11. He has worked tirelessly for the issues effecting LGBT Firefighters and Emergency Workers, continues to speak out on issues of homophobia in the fire services, the rights of domestic partners, and discrimination toward the gay community.

September 11, 2001, started out as a picture-perfect day in New York City, Tom Ryan recalls. The sun was shining brightly. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Ryan, a firefighter with Ladder Company 12, a house located in the Chelsea District of Manhattan, was off that day, busying himself in the Bronx home he shared with his partner of 11 years, Scott Arigot, and two of their children.

An instant message alerted him that the beauty of the day was about to be shattered, altering life in America, and the world, as we had known it.

Ryan made a quick call to the firehouse and spoke with his fellow firefighter, Angel Juarde, who told Ryan he was about to leave the station for the enflamed World Trade Center. It turned out to be the last time the two men would speak.

Moments later, all firefighters and police officers were called in to work in the city.

By the time he got to Ladder Company 12 in Manhattan, motorcycling in and out of the steady flow of traffic driving against him, Ryan was not yet aware that both World Trade Center towers had collapsed.

"I was trying to figure out what I should expect when I got down there. Have you ever been in New York to see the ticker-tape parades?" Ryan said in a recent phone conversation, searching for a metaphor to adequately explain the nightmarish specter.

"This was like an evil ticker tape parade. Paper was going everywhere. And dust—that grey dust went everywhere.

"The whole week I felt very isolated, and I know a lot of the other firefighters did, too," Ryan said.

"Basically, you went to the site, you came back to the firehouse. You tried to sleep but ended up walking the floors for a couple hours. Then you went back. You caught little naps, 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there. Your mind was racing. We really thought people were still alive in there."

Saturday morning, September 15, was the first time after the attacks that Ryan had any appreciable time off.

Before leaving the firehouse, he sat in the station's communal kitchen, reading that morning's edition of the New York Times. One of the first articles he read chronicled Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blaming the attacks on gays and lesbians, and liberals in general.

"I just went nuts. I could not believe I had just had the week that I had had, and these two supposed-Christians were going to condemn me," Ryan said, the timbre of his voice raising. "I started ranting and raving, and the people in the firehouse kitchen were saying 'What's the problem?'"

Ryan told them the problem. His colleagues' response was, "Well, it's only words."

"But it's not only words," Ryan said. "People believe what they say."

Despite his anger and frustration, Ryan decided to attend the funeral that day of gay fire chaplain Mychal Judge, thought to be the first rescue worker to perish when the World Trade Center Towers fell. A former Catholic, Ryan said he knew Mychal Judge was gay, but had no other connection with him.

The firefighters from the house located across the street from the church were to be Judge's pallbearers. Immediately in front of Ryan, one of the pallbearers began to falter, losing his grip on the coffin.

"I don't know what happened. I don't know if he couldn't emotionally do it, or if he was just physically exhausted, or what," Ryan said. "The coffin was rocking, and someone shouted, 'Step out, step out!'"

Ryan immediately jumped forward, took the weakened pallbearer's place, and began carrying Judge's coffin into the church.

"I felt like it was such a clear message from [Mychal Judge]," Ryan said. "Here he was, the gay chaplain of the New York City Fire Department. What are the odds of me being the firefighter who jumps out and grabs his coffin? I felt like it was a message from him, that there's no difference between any of us."

Ryan retired from FDNY in 2003, having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome. He also suffers from respiratory problems he associates with the contaminated air that lingered for weeks at Ground Zero.

After that he attended classes at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey, near the Jersey shore where he and Arigot moved, to earn a his teaching degree. They have two sons and a daughter. The men also opened their home to care for a set of twins, who were seniors in high school.

Ryan continues his association with FireFLAG/EMS, a national support group for gay firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and their friends and families. Ryan is a past president of the organization. What started as a local group for rescue workers within the five New York City boroughs in 1991 has now blossomed into a national organization with as many as 500 members. Ryan estimates that among those members, four lost their lives in the 9/11 tragedy.

"I've been told there were a couple of [gay] police officers, too. Unfortunately, they were very closeted, so nobody stepped forward claiming to be a partner," he said. "I have [gay] friends who were in the Twin Towers," he said, marveling at the irony of the closeted rescue workers. "But they're still afraid to come out of the closet. I say, 'How could you be afraid of anything anymore?'

"It just speaks volumes about the pressures that society puts on you when you're still afraid to come out of the closet even though you lived through this horrendous experience."

1971 – Perry Moore (d.2011) was an American author, screenwriter, and film director. He was an executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia film series and the author of Hero, an award-winning novel about a homosexual teenage superhero.

He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1994, and while in college interned at the Virginia Film Festival. He also served as an intern in the White House and at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in New York City.He worked on the production team for The Rosie O'Donnell Show, then joined Walden Media (a media production company created by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz to produce family-friendly movies, documentaries, and television programs). He was the executive in charge of production for the film I Am David, an adaptation the Anne Holm novel North to Freedom.

He co-wrote and co-directed (with life partner Hunter Hill) the 2008 film Lake City, a drama that tells the story of a mother (Sissy Spacek) and son (Troy Garity) who reunite under desperate circumstances years after a family tragedy drove them apart. He also co-produced (again with Hill) a Spike Jonze-directed 2010 documentary (Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak) about children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak

Moore had a personal mission: although he was glad that comic books had been introducing Gay superhero characters for some time, he wanted to see them portrayed in a better light. What particularly disturbed him as the death of Northstar, a member of the Marvel Comics’ X-Men, whose announcement in the Marvel comic book that he was gay made headlines in 1992. In 2005, Northstar was killed by a brainwashed Wolverine. Moore said he felt that the murder of Marvel’s biggest gay hero by one of its most popular characters had sent the wrong message.

He began giving speeches in which he cited his own research showing that more than 60 gay and lesbian comic book characters had been ignored, maimed or murdered. "Yes, bad things happen to all people," Mr. Moore said. "But are there positive representations of gay characters to counterbalance these negative ones?" His answer was "Not enough." So Moore wrote Hero (2007), a novel about Thom Creed, a teen-ager coping with high school, a strained home life and his budding superpowers as well as his sexuality.

A longtime fan of children's literature and comic books, Moore's novel Hero was first published by Hyperion Books in August 2007. The young adult novel tells the story of a closeted homosexual teenager who becomes a superhero. In May 2008, Hero won a Lambda Literary Award as the best LGBT Children's/Young Adult novel of the past year. In 2008, Moore was in talks with veteran comic book writer Stan Lee about producing a television series based on the book. Moore began writing a sequel to Hero in 2009. Moore's father said that in early 2011 his son was working on turning Hero into a movie on the Starz cable television channel.

Openly gay, Moore lived in New York City with life partner Hunter Hill, a writer for Paper magazine. Moore was also a Christian and spoke publicly about his faith. According to family members, Moore had suffered knee and back problems before his death, which required pain medication and corrective surgery, but which he had put off to continue working. Moore died on February 17, 2011 at age 39 of a drug overdose, his body discovered by Hill in their SoHo apartment. While an initial autopsy proved inconclusive, his death was subsequently attributed to a lethal combination of benzodiazepine, methadone, and morphine.

1976 – Syndicated columnist Nicholas von Hoffman's column "Out of TV's Sitcom Closet" appeared. It stated that Americans were experiencing the "Year of the Fag" and claimed the National Gay Task Force was controlling at least one sitcom.

2001 – On this date the openly Lesbian comedienne Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards-TV show. It was the first awards show after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. DeGeneres received several standing ovations for her performance that evening which included the line: "We're told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a Gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?"

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