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01/09/2022

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02/07/2020

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10/31/2017

Workplace Pioneer

b. September 8, 1947

“I seem to have been a pioneer in realizing the idea for what are now called domestic partnership benefits. It took years for the idea to catch on.”

Jeffrey Weinstein is a writer, editor and critic. As a union representative, he won the first employee healthcare benefits for same-s*x couples from a private employer.

Born in Manhattan, Weinstein was raised in Brooklyn and Queens. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brandeis University before enrolling at the University of California in San Diego, where he pursued graduate work in English and American literature. Shortly after the Stonewell Riots in 1969, Weinstein came out to his family and friends and taught the first class in gay literature in California.

Weinstein started his career as a food critic at the San Diego Reader in 1972 and became a restaurant critic for New York’s Soho Weekly News in 1977. He joined the Village Voice in 1981 as editor of visual arts and architecture criticism, where he remained until 1995.

In his first year with the Village Voice, Weinstein founded the National Writers Union. In 1982 he helped negotiate the union contract agreement to extend health, life insurance and disability benefits to same-s*x partners and other spousal equivalents of the newspaper’s employees.

From 1997 to 2006, he served as the fine arts editor and cultural columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and, subsequently, as arts and culture editor for Bloomberg News.

In 2009 the University of Southern California named Weinstein deputy director of its Annenberg Getty Arts Journalism Program. The following year, the National Endowment for the Arts named him associate director of its Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater. In 2013 and 2014, he served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

Weinstein writes frequently about gay issues. He created the “Out There” column about LGBT culture on artsjournal.com and wrote a culinary coming-out story, “A Jean-Marie Cookbook,” which earned him a Pushcart Prize. He serves on the board of directors of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Le***an Art in New York City.

Weinstein married his partner of 32 years, the artist John Perreault, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 2008.

10/31/2017

Federal Judge

b. 1944

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and le***ans for denial of a marriage license.”

As a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, Vaughn Walker ruled as unconstitutional California’s Prop 8 prohibition of same s*x-marriage.

Born in Watseka, Illinois, Walker attended the University of Michigan and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He attended Stanford Law School and practiced law in San Francisco.

In 1987 President Ronald Reagan nominated Walker for a judgeship. The nomination was stalled due to Walker’s previous representation of the U.S. Olympic Committee in a lawsuit that disallowed the use of the title “Gay Olympics.” House Democrats, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, accused him of being insensitive to the LGBT community.

In 1989 when President George H. W. Bush renominated Walker for a seat on the federal district court, Walker was confirmed unanimously. He presided over numerous important cases, including drug legalization, NSA surveillance without a warrant, antitrust, mergers and copyright infringement.

In 2010 Walker presided over Hollingsworth v. Perry, the landmark case that challenged California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative eliminating the right of same-s*x couples to marry. Walker ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional. His decision influenced subsequent state and federal marriage equality cases, including Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that legalized same-s*x marriage nationwide.

After retiring from the bench in 2011, Walker came out and acknowledged his decade-long same-s*x relationship. He maintained a private practice in San Francisco and lectured at Stanford University Law School and the University of California Berkeley School of Law. The Bar Association of San Francisco honored him with its the Tara J. Riedley Barristers Choice Award.

10/31/2017

AIDS Activist

b. January 9, 1961

“I was a bond trader by day and an AIDS activist by night.”

Peter Staley is a pioneering American AIDS activist who founded the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and AIDSmeds.com. He is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague.”

Staley was born in Sacramento, California. He attended Oberlin College, where he studied classical piano. He later studied economics and government, which led to a job as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan.

Though Staley was out to his family, he was closeted at his job on Wall Street. After he was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex (ARC) in 1985, he joined the advocacy group ACT-UP to help fund-raise. In 1988 he took part in an ACT-UP protest on Wall Street and talked about his diagnosis on the local news.

After giving up his career in banking, Staley became a prominent AIDS activist. He was one of three men who barricaded themselves at a drug research company to protest the exorbitant price of AZT, one of the first marketed AIDS drugs. He worked with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of AIDS drugs and raised large contributions for AIDS clinical trials and charities. Staley spoke at many of the earliest AIDS conferences around the globe.

In 1991 Staley founded TAG to help find AIDS treatments. He is famous for draping a giant condom over the home of North Carolina Senator Jess Helms, after the senator criticized the use of federal money for AIDS research.

From 1991 to 2004, Staley served on the board of amfAR, the foundation for AIDS research. During that period, President Bill Clinton named him to the AIDS Task Force on AIDS Drug Development. The Task Force honored him with the Award of Courage in 2000.

In 1999 Staley created AIDSmeds.com, a portal offering information and resources on HIV/AIDS drugs and gay health. In 2006 the website merged with POZ, a publication for people living with the virus. Staley became an advisory editor and blogger for the site.

Staley created an educational campaign about crystal m**h addiction in the gay community. A former addict, he talked publicly about his recovery and launched an ad campaign, funded with his own money, to highlight the dangers of the drug and its relationship to HIV transmission.

The 2012 documentary “How to Survive a Plague” chronicles Staley’s activism. The film earned critical acclaim, including best documentary from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Boston Society of Film Critics and nominations from the Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards. GLAAD Media named it the outstanding documentary of the year.

10/31/2017

Congresswoman

b. July 12, 1976

“How often can you say a kid who was homeless is going to Congress?”

Kyrsten Sinema is the first openly bis*xual person elected to the U.S. Congress.

Sinema was born to a Morman family in Tucson, Arizona. Her parents divorced and her mother remarried. When her stepfather lost his job, the family moved into an abandoned gas station without running water or electricity.

Despite many hardships, Sinema graduated at 16 as valedictorian of her high school. By 18 she had earned a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University on a full scholarship. She subsequently earned a master’s degree, a law degree and a doctorate—all from Arizona State University.

From 1995 to 2002, Sinema was employed as a school social worker, helping struggling families. In 2000 she lobbied at the state capitol against budget cuts in her school district. The visit inspired her interest in politics. Running as an Independent, her first bid for the State Legislature was unsuccessful.

Sinema subsequently registered as a Democrat. In 2005 she was elected to the Arizona State House of Representatives, where she served for a year as the assistant minority leader for the Democratic Caucus. She was elected to the Arizona State Senate in 2010 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012.

In office, Sinema worked for the adoption of the Dream Act, a proposal that gives illegal immigrants conditional residency, and actively campaigned against two voter referenda that sought to ban same-s*x marriage and civil unions in Arizona. In 2013 she co-sponsored the bipartisan LIBERT-E Act, which sought to prevent the NSA’s mass collection of electronic information from innocent Americans.

Sinema was named Legislator of the Year by the Stonewall Democrats, the Arizona Public Health Association and the National Association of Social Workers. She received Planned Parenthood’s CHOICE Award, and in 2010 was named to TIME magazine’s list of 40 Under 40.

In addition to politics, Sinema has served as an adjunct instructor at the Arizona State University School of Social Work. In 2013 she completed an Ironman Triathlon and summited Mount Kilimanjaro.

10/31/2017

Gay Pioneer

b. October 31, 1940
d. June 18, 1993

“There was no one thing that happened or one person. There was just … mass anger.”

Craig Rodwell was a Gay Pioneer and the leading New York activist of the 1960s. He founded the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the nation’s first gay bookstore, and the New York Pride Parade.

Born in Chicago, Rodwell attended an all-male Christian Science boarding school, where he experimented with same-s*x relationships. After graduating from a public high school, he accepted a scholarship in 1958 to the American Ballet School in New York City. In New York he volunteered for The Mattachine Society, one of the nation’s first gay organizations.

In 1962 Rodwell developed a relationship with Harvey Milk. It was his first serious romance.

In 1964 Rodwell protested against the exclusion of g**s from the military. It was the first gay rights demonstration in New York City. The same year, he and fellow Gay Pioneer Frank Kameny conceived the first organized public demonstrations for gay and le***an equality. Known as Annual Reminders, the protests took place in Philadelphia each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall. Demonstrators participated from Philadelphia, New York and Washington.

During those seminal years, Rodwell was involved in numerous gay rights organizations. He was an early member of East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) and started the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods, which held rallies and published the periodical HYMNAL.

In 1965 Rodwell led a protest at the United Nations Plaza against the detention of gay Cubans in work camps. The following year, he participated in a “sip in” at Julius, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, to protest a State Liquor Authority rule prohibiting homos*xuals from congregating in places that served alcohol. Continuing protests ended the rule in New York State.

Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in 1967. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, it became a mecca for gay activists.

In 1969 Rodwell took part in the Stonewall Rebellion and was the first to shout “Gay Power!” At an ECHO meeting thereafter, he proposed a resolution to suspend the Annual Reminders in favor of an event commemorating the anniversary of Stonewall. Rodwell, Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings and other pioneering activists organized a march. Held on June 28, 1970, it is remembered as the first New York Gay Pride Parade.

Rodwell remained a consequential figure in the gay liberation movement of the ’70s and ’80s. He was honored with the Lambda Literary Award for Publisher’s Service in 1992. He sold his bookstore the following year. It remained open until 2009.

Rodwell died of stomach cancer at age 52.

10/31/2017

Japanese Author

b. January 14, 1925
d. November 25, 1970

“When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on a new meaning.”

Yukio Mishima is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, one of the most prolific and influential Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was the first living Japanese writer to gain broad recognition in the West.

Born in Tokyo, Mishima was not allowed to play sports or interact with other children his age. He attended an elite Japanese school, studied several languages and was exposed to European culture. His early experiences played an important role in shaping his writing.

Mishima’s first opportunity at professional writing came as a teenager, when he was invited to write a short story for a prestigious literary magazine. He based the story on the bullying he suffered at school. To avoid scandal, he adopted the pseudonym Yukio Mishima, which he continued to use for the rest of his life.

In 1947 Mishima graduated from the University of Tokyo and began work in the government finance ministry. He quit to focus on his writing.

Mishima wrote 50 plays, 34 novels, 25 books of short stories and 35 books of essays. One of his most famous works, “Confession of a Mask,” tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young gay man who must hide behind a mask in order to be accepted by society. He wrote the book when he was 24 and found fame shortly thereafter.

In addition to writing, Mishima worked as a model and a movie actor. In 1958 he married a woman and fathered two children, before exploring the underground gay culture in Japan. Although his widow denied his homos*xuality, a gay writer published an account of his relationship with Mishima.

Mishima practiced martial arts and strove to live by the ancient samurai code. In the late 1960s, he became a radical nationalist and formed a private militia called the Tatenokai. In 1970 he and several of its members captured the commandant of the Japanese army in an attempted coup. When the coup failed, Mishima committed the ritual samurai honor su***de, seppuku (also known as hara-kiri), a self-evisceration followed by decapitation. He was buried in Tokyo.

Mishima received many awards and was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. A biographical film, “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” was released in 1985, and in 1988 the Mishima Yukio Prize, a literary award, was created in his memory. In 1999 the Mishima Yukio Literary Museum opened in Japan.

10/31/2017

Singer

b. September 30, 1935

“Sometimes being famous gets in the way of doing what you want to do.”

Johnny Mathis is a Grammy Award-winning American singer who sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. One of the most popular solo artists of the 20th century, he released more than 200 singles. “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson called him “the best ballad singer in the world.”

Mathis’s family moved to San Francisco when he was a boy. His father, a vaudeville performer, spotted his young son’s talent and encouraged his singing. Also a star athlete, Mathis excelled in high jump and basketball. In 1954 he enrolled at San Francisco State University on an athletic scholarship.

As a teenager, Mathis caught the attention of a club owner who offered to become his manager. After she invited a talent agent from Columbia Records to see him perform, the company signed him.

Despite a recording deal, Mathis was torn between music and sports. The U.S. Olympic Team invited him to try out at the same time he secured the contract with Columbia.

On his father’s advice, Mathis recorded his first album, “Johnny Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Song” in 1956. He recorded two of his most famous songs, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and “It’s Not For Me to Say,” that same year. By the end of the 1960s, he had released a greatest hits album, which spent an unprecedented 461 consecutive weeks on the Billboard charts.

Mathis struggled with drugs and alcohol. He was candid about his addiction and rehabilitation. He was reluctant, however, to discuss his s*xuality. In 1982 he told US magazine, “Homos*xuality is a way of life that I’ve grown accustomed to.” He received death threats over of the comment.

Mathis’s music has been featured in movie soundtracks and in more than a hundred television series. His 1978 song “The Last Time I Felt Like This” was nominated for an Academy Award. He has appeared in films and more than 300 times on TV, including in his own specials.

In 2003 the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honored Mathis with its Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame.

In 2016 Mathis performed a sold-out show as part of his 60th Anniversary Concert Tour. A year later, he came out on “CBS Sunday Morning.” “I come from San Francisco,” he said. “It’s not unusual to be gay in San Francisco … I knew that I was gay.”

10/31/2017

Singer and Songwriter

b. June 17, 1943

“I’m so private. I always have been.”

Barry Manilow is an award-winning American singer and songwriter. He has recorded 47 Top 40 singles and sold more than 80 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.

Born Barry Alan Pincus in Brooklyn, New York, he adopted his mother’s maiden name, Manilow, at the time of his bar mitzvah. He attended the New York College of Music and studied musical theater at Julliard.

Early in his career, Manilow earned a living as a pianist, producer and arranger for CBS. He also wrote advertising jingles for clients such as State Farm (“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”) and Band-Aid (“I’m stuck on Band-Aid, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me”) and sang jingles for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi and McDonald’s, including for the hamburger chain’s famous “You deserve a break” campaign.

By 1971 Manilow was playing piano for a then-unknown singer, Bette Midler, in the Continental Baths—a gay bathhouse in New York. He wrote and recorded his own music and arranged and co-produced Midler’s chart-topping 1972 debut album, “The Divine Miss M.”

Manilow’s first big hit came in 1974 with “Mandy,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts. He followed it with a string of hits, albums and television appearances. His international hit “Ready to Take a Chance Again” was nominated for the Oscar for Best Song in 1978. The same year, he met Garry Kief, the man he would marry in 2014 after California legalized same-s*x marriage. The longtime couple kept their relationship secret for most of Manilow’s career.

In the early 1980s, Manilow hosted his own variety show on ABC for which he won an Emmy Award. He went on to win another Emmy, four Academy Awards, two American Music Awards and a special Tony Award. He has been nominated for 15 Grammys.

Manilow has toured worldwide. He has performed at many charity events for health organizations and to benefit victims of natural disasters. He created the Barry Manilow Scholarship for the six highest-achieving lyric-writing students at UCLA.

Manilow officially came out two years after making headlines for marrying his longtime partner. He told People magazine that he kept his s*xuality secret for fear of disappointing his female fans. Manilow’s first marriage, to a woman, was annulled in 1966.

10/31/2017

Father of the Harlem Renaissance

b. Sept. 13, 1885
d. June 9, 1954

“Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid.”

Alain Locke was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, a writer, an educator and a philosopher of race and culture. He is considered the father of the Harlem Renaissance.

Locke graduated second in his class from Philadelphia’s Central High School and earned an undergraduate degree with honors from Harvard University. He received a Rhodes Scholarship—the prestigious international award for study at the University of Oxford in England.

At Oxford Locke faced rampant racial discrimination. He was denied admission to several colleges at the university before Hertford College admitted him. Thereafter, he studied at the University of Berlin.

Locke worked as an assistant professor at Howard University, then an all-black college, before leaving to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the theory of social bias and returned to Howard in 1918 as chair of the Philosophy Department. He held the position until he retired in 1953. Locke introduced the first classes taught on race relations.

Locke wrote for journals and guest edited a special issue of Survey Graphic devoted to the Harlem Renaissance—an African-American literary and artistic movement that flourished in New York City during the ’20s and ’30s. He published “The New Negro” in 1925, an anthology of work by black writers, including his own. It remains one of the most influential projects of his career, helping to define the cultural period.

Locke wrote, reviewed or edited scores of important books and publications by or about African-Americans. He influenced and promoted blacks in the arts and urged them to look to Africa for inspiration and identity. He used “cultural pluralism” to define his philosophy, calling for a “new spirit” among African-Americans that would defy social and racial impediments. His work helped launched the careers of legendary black writers, including Zora Neale Hurston.

Although he never publically disclosed his s*xual orientation, Locke once referred to being gay as his point of “vulnerable/invulnerability;” it brought him both risk and strength.

Locke’s ashes are buried in the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The memorial inscription calls him a “Herald of the Harlem Renaissance” and an “Exponent of Cultural Pluralism.” It also features a lambda, a symbol of gay rights.

Howard University named Locke Hall in the College of Arts and Sciences in his honor and public schools across the country bear his name. In 2002 Locke was included in the 100 Greatest African Americans and The Black 100.

10/31/2017

Stonewall Veteran

b. August 24, 1945
d. July 6, 1992

“I may be crazy but that don’t make me wrong.”

Born Malcolm Michaels, Marsha P. Johnson was a well-known New York City drag queen who fought police at the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and became a trailblazing transgender, gay rights and AIDS activist.

Immediately after Stonewall, Johnson joined the nascent Gay Liberation Front. In 1970 she cofounded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.) with fellow Stonewall agitator, Sylvia Rivera. At the time, transvestitism was illegal in New York. Gender-nonconforming people, particularly those of color, faced intolerance, harassment and violence. Like Johnson, many lived on the streets and resorted to s*x work for their survival.

S.T.A.R. created a shelter where transgender adults and youth could share food, clothing and support in relative safety. At the residence, Johnson’s maternal behavior earned her the nickname “queen mother.”

Johnson performed at local clubs and became a visible presence at gay rights events and protests. Andy Warhol photographed her and produced screen prints of her portrait. Although she favored the pronoun “she,” Johnson described herself as a “gay transvestite.” When asked about her middle initial, she would reply that “P” stood for “pay it no mind”— words that helped her persevere.

Johnson struggled with drug addition. She contracted AIDS and joined ACT UP, an organization founded in the 1980s to combat the epidemic. She was instrumental in raising awareness about issues impacting people with the virus.

In 1992, shortly after New York’s Gay Pride Parade, Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River. Although police initially ruled the death a su***de, she was last seen being harassed by a group of men. Despite a grassroots campaign to investigate her death, the N.Y.P.D. did not reopen the case until 2012. It remains unsolved.

Johnson has been the subject of multiple plays and films. Ten days before she died, she was interviewed for what became the 2012 documentary, “Pay it No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson.” Johnson was also featured in the Oscar-nominated 2012 documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” about the early years of the AIDS crisis. A new documentary, “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson,” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2017.