Katherine Philips (January 1, 1632 – June 22, 1664)

Katherine Philips (1 January 1632 – 22 June 1664) was an Anglo-Welsh poet.

Katherine Philips was the first Englishwoman to enjoy widespread public acclaim as a poet during her lifetime. Born in London, she was daughter of John Fowler, a Presbyterian, and a merchant of Bucklersbury, London. Philips is said to have read the Bible through before she was five years old. Additionally, she acquired remarkable fluency in several languages. She broke with Presbyterian traditions in both religion and politics, and became an ardent admirer of the king and his church policy. In 1647, when she was sixteen, she married a Welsh Parliamentarian named James Philips who was thought to be fifty-four years old. However, it has been proven, by the marriage certificate, that James was actually twenty-four years old.

She attended boarding school from 1640 to 1645 where she began to write verse within a circle of friends and to appreciate French romances and Cavalier plays from which she would later choose many of the pet names she gave members of her Society of Friendship.

The Society of Friendship had its origins in the cult of Neoplatonic love imported from the continent in the 1630s by Charles I’s French wife, Henrietta Maria. Members adopted pseudonyms drawn from French pastoral romances of Cavalier dramas. With wit, elegance, and clarity, Philips dramatized in her Society of Friendship the ideals, as well as the realities and tribulations, of Platonic love. Thus the Society helped establish a literary standard for her generation and Orinda herself as a model for the female writers who followed her. Her home at the Priory, Cardigan, Wales became the centre of the Society of Friendship, the members of which were known to one another by pastoral names: Philips was "Orinda", her husband "Antenor", and Sir Charles Cotterel "Poliarchus". "The Matchless Orinda", as her admirers called her, was regarded as the apostle of female friendship, and inspired great respect. She was widely considered an exemplar of the ideal woman writer: virtuous, proper, and chaste. She was frequently contrasted to the more daring Aphra Behn, to the latter's detriment. Her poems, frequently occasional, typically celebrate the refined pleasures of platonic love. Jeremy Taylor in 1659 dedicated to her his Discourse on the Nature, Offices and Measures of Friendship, and Cowley, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, the Earl of Roscommon and the Earl of Cork and Orrery all celebrated her talent.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Philips

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Leonard Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988)

Technical Sergeant Leonard P. Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. On June 22, 1988, less than a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died in Los Angeles of complications from HIV/AIDS beneath a large photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. His tombstone, meant to be a memorial to all gay veterans, does not bear his name. It reads, “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. Matlovich was the first openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point." In October 2006, Matlovich was honored by LGBT History Month as a leader in the history of the LGBT community.


AIDS Quilt

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Matlovich

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Murray Gitlin (1927 - June 22, 1994)

Murray Gitlin, a dancer and stage manager, died on June 22, 1994, at St. Clare's Hospital due to AIDS complications. He was 67 and lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Gitlin, who was born in West Hartford, Conn., studied with Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Martha Graham and Jose Limon, and danced with the New York City Opera, the companies of Mr. Nikolais and Pearl Lang, and in such musicals as "The King and I," "The Golden Apple," "Can-Can" and "Irma la Douce."

He was stage manager for Off Broadway revivals of "On the Town," "The Boys From Syracuse" and "Private Lives," and was production stage manager for "The Boys in the Band" from its first workshop production throughout its initial Off Broadway run and first national tour. He was also production stage manager for the Broadway revival of "Blithe Spirit" with Richard Chamberlain, and for touring productions of "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Death Trap" and Brian Bedford's one-man show, "Poets, Lunatics and Lovers."

I knew Murray when I first moved to NY to study at Juilliard. He was warm and charismatic, welcoming to a very young, naive gay man trying to figure out how the culture worked. It was 1973, New York was scary, rough, and Murray was a friendly face who clearly knew the ropes. I'll never forget him. --Gilbert Cole

A class photo at the Henry Street Playhouse taken in 1949. Identified persons are, on left standing: Luke Bragg, Sheldon Ossosky, and Murray Louis; front seated: Anita Lynn, Phyllis Lamhut, ***, Nancy Robb (front), Martha Howe (rear), Murray Gitlin, and ***; on right: Alwin Nikolais and Gladys Bailin.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/25/obituaries/murray-gitlin-67-a-former-dancer.html

Instead of office buildings, Third Avenue was lined with brownstones, and it was dominated by the Elevated. The nooks and shadows created by this shaft down the center of the avenue played a significant role in gay life in New York before the war: they offered a multitude of discreetly darkened meeting places right in the heart of the metropolis. "It was a little bit spooky," said Murray Gitlin, a Broadway dancer who remembered Third Avenue as "one of the only cruisy places" in the 1940s. "It was like being under palm trees on a summer night," Franklin Macfie quipped. "You could very easily feel you were in Rio!"
[...]
"Malingerers" were those who pretended to be gay to avoid duty at the front; "reverse malingerers"-a term invented by military psychiatrists-described gay recruits who pretended to be heterosexual so they could perform their patriotic duty. By 1943 doctors had devised the Cornell Selectee Index, which used "occupational choice" questions to screen out dancers, window dressers, and interior decorators because they would have difficulty with their "acceptance of the male pattern." The media periodically spread this new official prejudice. The Washington Star noted that navy psychiatrists would "be on the lookout for any number of mental illnesses or deficiencies that would make the recruit a misfit," including homosexuality, and Time reported that "How do you get along with girls?" was one of the questions "machine-gunned" at the inductee during his physical. These press reports produced all kinds of unlikely fears. When Murray Gitlin enlisted in the navy, he was "very afraid that they would undress me during the physical examination, and they'd know, looking at me, that I was gay. That's how innocent I was. Well they didn't-and they couldn't have cared less."
[...]
MURRAY GITLIN was working in the terminal cancer ward of the Brooklyn Naval Hospital and dreaming about becoming a dancer when he got out of the navy. "On nights off I would come into Manhattan. Servicemen-all of us in uniform-were treated like royalty. You were given tickets to movies and concerts." When he was eighteen he went to Radio City Music Hall "alone, in my uniform. I wasn't what you'd call a hot sailor. I was too fat. Anyway, I sat there, and this tall blond man came-not old-and sat next to me. "I felt something and I began to tremble. And he put his hand on my thigh, and I thought to myself, Well, I've got to do something. So he kept fooling around. In the orchestra of the Music Hall! I believe the movie was Abe Lincoln in Illinois. So he asked me if I would like to come to his hotel room, and I said yes. It was called the Hotel America, on 47th, between Sixth and Seventh. It was like a hotel that Tennessee Williams would have stayed in, in New Orleans-louvered doors and very rinky-dink. I was as nervous as a cat. And when we got to the hotel, he said, `You wait down here for a few minutes and I'll go up.' He told me the room number, and then he said, `You can come up and I'll let you in.' I said, `Great.' And then I went up and I knocked on his door and he opened the louvers and we hugged one another and kissed. And I said, `I love you!' He turned out to be a cocktail pianist from Asbury Park. There was nothing unusual about him. He was very corn-fed and very middle of the road. For me it was a great release and a great experience. And we saw one another several times after."
[...]
Thousands of gay Americans fell in love with West Side Story when they were children in the fifties. And for legions of kids of all persuasions, the show provided them with their first concrete notion of romantic love. To many gay adults coming of age in the sixties, the romance, violence, danger, and mystery so audible on the original cast album all felt like integral parts of the gay life they had embraced. The lyrics of "Somewhere" in particular seemed to speak directly to the gay experience before the age of liberation. In 1996, it was one of the songs chosen for the first mass gay wedding of two hundred couples in San Francisco, presided over by the city's mayor, Willie Brown. But none of the collaborators (or their 1950S contemporaries) ever suspected there was anything gay about their very heterosexual love story. (Coincidentally, Larry Kert, who starred as Tony, was also gay.) "It was never an issue that we talked about," said Murray Gitlin, who fell in love with the show when it opened. "I never thought about it as gay."
[...]
MURRAY GITLIN had black hair and a long, attractive Semitic face. His low, warm, carefully modulated voice and precise diction made him sound almost British. His close friend Stanley Posthorn remarked that Gitlin was so charming that he could convert anyone he met into a friend. In 1949 Gitlin moved back to New York. His first temporary residence was the elegant apartment belonging to his uncle Aaron and aunt Helen on the Grand Concourse, still a magnificent Bronx boulevard right after the war. He didn't have time to look for his own place because he "just had to become a dancer," Gitlin explained. "I was a late starter, and I didn't have time to waste. I was twenty-two." His aunt Helen was a "very powerful woman" who was seeing a psychiatrist because she was having terrible abdominal pain that her doctor thought was psychosomatic. One night after dinner, she said, "`You know, Murray, Aaron and I know that among male dancers, there are many who are homosexual.' She was suspicious of me. `And we wonder, since you're a dancer now, what your relationship is to those men.' "I thought she had balls. You know: 1950. And I said, `Well, Helen, I am.' And Aaron was there. She said, `Oh.' I said, `Oh yes.' And I said, `I've accepted it, and I think I understand it.' And she said, `Well!' "She insisted I go to her psychiatrist and have a preliminary consultation with him. And then we'd see." Gitlin went to the psychiatrist, but it had no effect. "I think there was never any choice for me, which is, you know, par for the course. And as far as I know, as far as I can remember, there was never another way for me. I felt confident because I'd thought it through." Soon he found a magnificent cold-water flat at 426 West 56th Street with a bathtub in the kitchen and the bathroom in the hall. The rent was $16 a month. During the next forty-four years, Gitlin would never leave the neighborhood, although he did move once to another apartment six blocks away. He was very good-looking, but too chubby to think of himself as really attractive. His first job was in the chorus of The King and I. "I was very happy to be in that show-it was a very glamorous thing to be in. It was just beautiful. I've directed it since and played roles in it since, but that was the most important." In the chorus line, Gitlin replaced Otis Bigelow-the best-looking man in Manhattan in 1940, the one who had chosen a beautiful sailor over a suntanned millionaire. A year earlier at Martha Graham's dancing school in Vermont, Gitlin spotted a "tall beautiful young man, who looked like a swimmer-which he was. I'll never forget my first impression of him. After class, I asked Martha if she would introduce me to him, and she did. He was very shy. And I said I was living in New York. I said when you come to New York-and I knew he would-look me up if you want to. I'd be very happy to see you. One day Gitlin was leaving the St James Theatre, where The King and I was playing, and he recognized the same young man. "He was sitting out there just waiting for me. And he said, `Hi. Remember me?' In a small voice. I said, `Yes, I do remember you.' And that's when our friendship really began." The young man was Paul Taylor, who became one of Manhattan's most famous modern dancers and choreographers, as well as the founder of his own dance company, which is still flourishing. Gitlin found him an apartment in his building, and soon Taylor was bringing over a painter friend named Bob Rauschenberg. "Rauschenberg used to come over and he would go to the bathroom," Gitlin remembered. "And I would keep painting that bathroom-to cheer it up a little bit. And I painted it red and orange and it would peel almost immediately. And one day, I'll never forget, Rauschenberg went to the bathroom, and he came in, and said, `When I become famous'-not if, but `when I become famous'-that bathroom is going to be part of the exhibit I have. Because I think it's so beautiful the way the paint's peeling off so delicately."' Another frequent visitor was Jerome Robbins, whom Gitlin knew slightly because Robbins had choreographed The King and I. A couple of years later, Robbins would choose a photograph of Larry Kert and Carol Lawrence standing in front of Gitlin's West Side apartment building to illustrate the cast album of his most spectacular musical. "Jerry used to come over and visit and we'd laugh," said Gitlin. "But he was always weird. We always got along in those days. I don't know; something happened. He does this to people. He turns people off. Something snaps. Somewhere along the line, something must have happened between him and nie. I mean we really liked one another. And in some of my early days on Fire Island, he was out there. He loved the island as much as I did. He loved games and I loved games. And we played with some of the ballet people who were out there. And it was so much fun. He loved to have fun."
[...]
The Penn Post baths across the street from Penn Station were popular at lunchtime and with the commuter crowd in the late afternoon. Murray Gitlin remembered "a room with a lot of double bunks and a steam room slippery with slime. I was lying on the upper bunk at the end of Penn Post, and I heard this very erudite conversation, and I looked down and it was Lincoln Kirstein."
[...]
Victim never got into general release in America. Always alert to the dangerous connections between culture and politics, the Catholic-dominated censorship office in Hollywood refused to give Victim its seal of approval. According to the film historian Vito Russo, the first objection was to the use of the words homosexual and homosexuality, "which had never before been uttered on screen." A spokesman for the Production Code Administration explained that the film was unacceptable because of its "candid and clinical discussion of homosexuality" and its "overtly expressed plea for social acceptance of the homosexual, to the extent that he be made socially tolerable." A handful of art houses in big cities did exhibit Victim, despite the absence of censorship office endorsement. Murray Gitlin went to see the film in Chicago with an actor friend. "We came out, and Woody said to me, `Well, our secret is out!"' Gitlin remembered. "This is, like, sixty-two. And that may have been the beginning of an awareness that had not been around before. A very important moment."
[...]
The Boys in the Band was the first "uncloseted" look at gay life inside a New York closet-with all the brittle intelligence, bitter humor and exaggerated pathos on which white, male, middle-class gay life thrived in this era. Crowley took his title from A Star Is Born, in which James Mason tells Judy Garland, "Relax, it's three A.M. at the Downbeat Club, and you're singing for yourself and the boys in the band." The title worked. The action takes place in a single evening, at a birthday party hosted by Michael, a profligate writer who is briefly on the wagon. Leonard Frey gave a brilliant performance as Harold, the guest of honor whose introduction of himself at the beginning of the second act immediately became famous: "What I am, Michael, is a thirty-two-year-old, ugly, pock-marked Jew fairy-and if it takes me a while to pull myself together and if I smoke a little grass before I can get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it's nobody's goddamn business but my own.... And how are you this evening?" When Crowley first showed the script to his agent, she was so embarrassed that she couldn't even look him in the eye. She whispered, "I can't send this out with my name on it. Why, it's like a weekend on Fire Island!" But the agent hadn't absorbed the changes already wrought by an amazing decade, while Crowley had perfect timing and perfect pitch. Twenty-four hours after leaving his agent's office he was in Richard Barr's apartment; Barr and Charles Woodward, Jr., agreed to produce his new play on the spot.* Then Crowley sat down with the director Bob Moore, whom he had known at Catholic University in Washington, and together they cut the script in half. "It worked as a play when Bob and Mart together trimmed it down to a workable size," said Murray Gitlin, the former Broadway chorus boy who stage-managed the first workshop production of Boys on Vandam Street.
[...]
Harold's birthday present in the play is a laconic $20-a-night hustler whom Harold immediately nicknames Tex. Murray Gitlin had asked Robert La Tourneaux to audition for the part after he met him at the Westside YMCA. "He was one of the most beautiful young men," Gitlin recalled. La Tourneaux hesitated at first because he thought it was demeaning to play a hustler. But after the play became a hit, he repeated the role in London and Los Angeles, and again for the film. --Charles Kaiser. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America. Kindle Edition.

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David B. Goodstein (June 7, 1932 - June 22, 1985)

David Goodstein was born in Denver, Colorado in 1932. After graduating from Cornell University in 1954 he earned an LLB degree from Columbia University. He practiced for a time in New York City as a criminal attorney. In 1960 his career moved to Wall Street, where he founded Compufund, a mutual fund that introduced statistical analysis of common stocks using computers. During this period, Goodstein became involved in social issues, serving on the boards of Grand Street Settlement Houses and the United Settlement Houses of New York, and Cornell University's Special Education Program for racial minorities. While in New York City, he served on the Cornell University Council, and was president of the Friends of the Andrew D. White Museum.

He was a collector and dealer of art, and with his brother Edward, established one of the finest collections of Italian Baroque painting in the United States. Goodstein was also an avid amateur horseman and American Saddlebred Horse owner and exhibitor. Goodstein moved to California in 1971 and there became active in the gay rights movement and the California Democratic party. He was instrumental in attaining the passage of California's consensual sex legislation in 1974, and was responsible for the creation of the Gay Rights National Lobby in 1976. He was a co-founder of Concerned Voters of California, a gay rights group which helped defeat a 1978 initiative that would have banned homosexuals from teaching or working in public schools. In the early 1980s, Goodstein made a highly successful national tour to establish a network of gay political fundraisers. He was also the founder and chairman of the Whitman-Radclyffe Foundation, a gay service organization dealing with drug abuse.

In 1975 Goodstein bought the Advocate, a Los Angeles-based gay magazine. Within ten years it was the largest circulation gay news magazine in the country. He served as president of Liberation Publications, Inc., publisher of the Advocate. He also founded the "Advocate Experience," an EST-derived workshop designed primarily for gays and lesbians. He also served as a member of the National Democratic Finance Council, the California State Democratic Central Committee, and the Hunger Project Council. Goodstein died on 22 June 1985 of complications arising from cancer.



Source: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07311.html

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John Herbert (October 13, 1926 - June 22, 2001)

John Herbert aka Jack Brundage (13 October 1926 – 22 June 2001) was a Canadian playwright. Best known for Fortune and Men's Eyes, he wrote 24 plays, six of which were published. A Toronto maverick and Gay pioneer, playwright and actor, he talked the talk AND he walked the walk. (Picture: John Herbert (Jack Brundage), 1926-2001, shown here around 1950)

John Herbert was born in Toronto on October 13th 1926. He died June 22nd 2001. he was 75 years of age. He Attended York Memorial Collegiate Institute, Toronto 1939-44. Ontario College of Art 1948-50, National Ballet School 1954-57, Boris Volkoff Ballet School 1953-57, and New Play Society Theatre School 1956-59. Was inspired by American films and actresses like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Crawford. Spending time at the Guelph reformatory prison he was raped beaten and physically assaulted day in and day out which gave him his raw material for his best known play “Fortune and Men's Eyes” which was performed 30 years later. Bill Glassco Director of “Fortune and Mens eye's” said John Herbert was "the single most important figure of the decade" "Fortune and Men's eyes” won the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1975.

Source: http://prezi.com/5lb0qhp1mgbf/john-herbert-playwright/

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Jennifer Finney Boylan (born June 22, 1958)

Jennifer Finney Boylan (born James Boylan, June 22, 1958) is an American author, political activist, and professor of English at Colby College in Maine. She is a trans woman. Her 2003 autobiography, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, was the first book by a transgender American to become a bestseller.

Boylan was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She graduated from The Haverford School, a private, all-boys prep school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in 1976, making her now one of only a few female graduates of the school. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1980 before completing graduate work in English at Johns Hopkins University. Boylan became a professor at Colby College in 1988, where she works to this day.

Boylan has written a total of 13 books, including novels, collections of short stories, and her autobiography. She has also written contributions to the op-ed section of The New York Times. Her autobiography, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, was positively reviewed by Scott Tobias of the AV Club, who described it as a "candid and exuberantly funny memoir of self-actualization." Publishers Weekly was more critical. It lauded the book as "frequently poignant" but also said Boylan too readily glossed over the difficult prejudice that transgender individuals must face from others, and this caused the book to feel "incomplete."

Boylan has made appearances in a variety of media outlets to discuss her life, books, and activism. She's been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, The Today Show, 48 Hours, and NPR.

She also serves on the Policy Advisory Board of Gender Rights Maryland.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Finney_Boylan

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Kevin Aviance (born June 22, 1968)

Kevin Aviance (born Eric Snead on June 22, 1968 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American female impressionist, Club/Dance musician, and fashion designer and nightclub personality. He is a very popular personality in New York City's gay scene and has performed throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He is a member of the House of Aviance, a local gay performer's group. He is known for his trademark phrase, "Work. Fierce. Over. Aviance!" He won the 1998 and 1999 Glammy Awards, the award for nightlife personalities in New York City.

Aviance was raised in Richmond, Virginia, in a close-knit family of eight siblings. His father provided for them as a landscape contractor. From an early age, Aviance dedicated himself to the study of music and theatre, his first experience in drag was in the seventh grade. His early influences were "punk, Boy George, Devo, and Grace Jones". He moved to Washington D.C. where he worked as a hairdresser and did drag performances. He developed a bad crack habit but with help of the House of Aviance he was able to overcome it, after his initiation in the house he took the name Kevin Aviance. He later moved to New York City and made a name for himself as a dancer/performer at Sound Factory, a club mainly for queer Latinos and blacks. Major DJs and club promoters saw him performing and started hiring him, he became one of a handful of drag performers in NYC able to support themselves solely on performances. His career as a performance artist and club personality began in Washington, DC, continued in Miami, and eventually landed him in New York City. In 1989, the House of Aviance  was founded in Washington by Mother Juan Aviance. In July 1999 Aviance performed as part of Billboard's sixth annual Dance Music Summit.

Aviance has appeared in several films, including Flawless starring Robert De Niro and the independent film Punks. Besides his feature-film work he has made guest appearances on such shows as The Tyra Banks Show, and America's Next Top Model, also hosted by Tyra Banks. His songs Din Da Da, Rhythm Is My Bitch, Alive, Give It Up and Strut, have all reached Number 1 of the Billboard dance chart. The only one of his singles not to peak at Number 1 to date is Dance For Love. Aviance's most successful dance radio hit to date is Give It Up released in 2004. His second album, Entity is a more consistent effort than his first.



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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Aviance

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