THEGAYUK

Tag: Today In Gay History

  • TODAY IN GAY | Will And Grace First Airs

    TODAY IN GAY | Will And Grace First Airs

    TODAY IN GAY HISTORY: Will And Grace makes TV History, by becoming the longest-running mainstream sitcom in which storylines revolved around gay principal characters.

    Airing on the 21st September 1998, Will And Grace made TV History. Over the course of 194 episodes over 8 seasons, American audiences began to love and accept openly gay storylines and characters.

    It gave birth to characters such as Karen Walker and Jack McFarland.

    Although the show opened to a certain amount of criticism the show became a staple on the NBC network and enjoyed a peak of 17.3 million viewers in the US. The first episode aired on the 18th May 2006.

    The show’s popularity and reach were credited to opening the door to a wave of gay-themed programming such as Queer As Folk.

    Former US Vice President Joe Biden said that the series had had a profound impact on how LGBT rights and how Americans viewed gay people. He said, “I think Will & Grace did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has ever done. People fear that which is different. Now they’re beginning to understand”, in an interview during Meet The Press.

  • TODAY IN GAY | The first member of the UK’s Royal Family comes out as gay

    TODAY IN GAY | The first member of the UK’s Royal Family comes out as gay

    The first member of the extended Royal Family came out as gay in an interview with the Mail On Sunday in 2016.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The Queen’s cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, then 53 years old, (pictured on the right) revealed that he was gay and in a relationship with his now-husband James Coyle (not in picture) in an interview.

    He is the first member of the extended Royal Family to have come out as openly gay. He is the great-great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria.

    Lord Mountbatten, had been previously married to Penelope Anne Vere Thompson and together they had three children, although they separated in 2010. Lord Mountbatten went on to marry Mr Coyle in 2018, becoming the first Royal to have a gay wedding.

    Speaking about his family’s reaction to his news and to his then-boyfriend, he said, “Now everyone in our family knows and could not be more supportive. Neither of us wanted to have relationships which were transitory; the stereotypical view of gay relationships is that they are too fleeting, too frequent”.

    CHECK OUT THE LGBT+ HISTORY ARCHIVE
  • TODAY IN GAY | Author Edward Albee passes away

    TODAY IN GAY | Author Edward Albee passes away

    The openly gay author and playwright Edward Albee died at the age of 88 in 2016.

    Albee was probably best known for his works of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The American Dream. He died in his New York home. He was a three times Pulitzer Prize winner.

    The news of his death was announced by his assistant. He died from a short illness, however, no cause of death has been revealed.

    Embed from Getty Images Embed from Getty Images

    Born in 1928 Albee became a well-known playwright after his play The Zoo Story was staged in Berlin. However, it wasn’t until Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf , a play that he wrote in 1962, that Albee had really struck gold.

    His last play was written in 2007 and was called, Me Myself and I.

    He was an openly gay writer who revealed that he knew he was gay from the age of 12, but did not want to be known as a “gay writer”.

    He survived his longtime partner, Jonathan Thomas, who was a sculptor,  and who died on May 2, 2005, from bladder cancer.

    They had been partners since 1971.

  • TODAY IN GAY | Cyndi Lauper Releases True Colors

    TODAY IN GAY | Cyndi Lauper Releases True Colors

    Iconic singer Cyndi Lauper releases the album True Colors and donates a proportion of the proceeds to AIDS research.

    The single became a worldwide hit, reaching number 1 in the US and Canada and Number 12 in the UK. The album was also massively successful reaching number 4 in the US and becoming a top 50 album in 12 countries. It sold over 2 million copies in the US.

    In interviews, Lauper described that the song resonated with her because of the death her friend Gregory Natal, who passed away from HIV/AIDS. Many years later Lauper founded the True Colors Fund, a non-profit organisation dedicated to eradicating LGBT youth homelessness.

  • TODAY IN GAY: Marsha P Johnson born

    TODAY IN GAY: Marsha P Johnson born

    Marsha P Johnson was born in August 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was also known as Malcomn Michaels Jr. Johnson and had six brothers and sisters.

    Before “Marsha P Johnson” became the icon that we now know, Michael’s took the drag name, “Black Marsha”, before adopting Johnson as her surname. According to reports, the Johnson name was taken from the Howard Johnson’s restaurant on 42nd Street in NYC and the P standing for “pay it no mind”.

    Johnson was found dead on the 6th of July 1992. She was 46-years-old at the time of her death.

    Johnson was a drag performer and LGBT+ activist and usually used female pronouns for herself, but also referred to herself as “gay, as a transvestite or simply as a queen” She was a well-known character in the New York Greenwich district and is widely considered to be a key figure in the Stonewall Riots of June 1969.

    She was heavily involved in the advocacy of AIDS patients and homeless LGBT+ folx.

    In 1992 Ms Johnson went missing on the 4th July, two days later her body turned up in the Hudson River, New York. Police and an autopsy ruled her death a suicide, but friends and relatives believe that she would never end her own life.

    The authorities, under pressure from the community, reclassified her death as “death to drowning from undetermined causes”.

    In the David France documentary film, The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, her death and its possible causes are discussed as large (available to stream on Netflix)

    Was her death an accident, suicide or something more sinister? This is the question that activist and crime victim advocate Victoria Cruz from the New York Anti-Violence Project has set out to determine as she launches her own investigation into the death of one of New York‘s most prominent LGBT figures.

  • TODAY IN GAY: Hackers Take Over God Hates Fags Website

    TODAY IN GAY: Hackers Take Over God Hates Fags Website

    Today in 1999 the infamous GodHatesFags.com was re-routed to godlovesfags.com. The hate website, which is run by the Westboro Baptist Church was hacked numerous times. One particular attempt was undertaken by the hacking collective Anonymous and managed to knock the website off and have its user linked to an entirely different website for several days.

    In 1999 godhatesfags.com was just two years old and according to CNN, owner of godlovesfags.com, where the hate site was re-routed to, Kris Haight said,

    The website was re-routed for a couple of days.

    Speaking about the hack, Shirley Phelps-Roper said,

    “It’s just another fag ploy to try to bury the truth of God and the Earth. It’s a temporary inconvenience.

    “Hate will not be tolerated on the Internet,

    “Phelps teaches hate and a lot of it is untrue. People who go to their site and want to find hate aren’t going to find it, at least until he gets the domain back.”

    The website is still online today, but its visitor numbers are so low, that SimilarWeb which estimates a website’s online traffic says there’s insufficient data to accurately determine the website’s visitor numbers.

  • TODAY IN GAY: Journalist Liz MacKean dies, 52

    TODAY IN GAY: Journalist Liz MacKean dies, 52

    Today in 2017, the award-winning journalist, Liz MacKean dies at the age of 52.

    Liz MacKean was a veteran journalist who worked for both Channel 4 and BBC. She worked hard to expose the injustices faced by people, including LGBT people suffering absolute hate in Russia and Africa.

    One of her most notable films was her shocking Dispatches documentary Hunted on Channel 4. It was a stark view of how hate mobs hunted gay men with dating apps and hook up websites to lure them to beatings and humiliating angry encounters.

    In 2014 she was crowned Journalist of the Year in 2014 and then Journalist of the Decade in 2015 by Stonewall.

    She was married, to her wife Donna Rowlands and together they had two children.

  • TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | Homosexuality is decriminalised in England and Wales

    TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | Homosexuality is decriminalised in England and Wales

    By the time the Stonewall riots took the modern LGBT+ fight for equality into the public arena, the fight for gay rights, in the UK, had actually become over a decade before, when a report into homosexuality recommended that it be criminalised. It took over ten years for that report to be acted upon.

    Laws around homosexuality differ from region to region in the UK meaning that gay people in Scotland and Northern Ireland had to wait a lot longer for equality.

    Homosexuality became legal in Scotland in 1980 and in Northern in 1982.

    Homosexuality was legalised in England and Wales on the 27th July 1967, a decade after the Wolfenden Report recommended that homosexuality should be decriminalised. The Sexual Offences Act was changed to decriminalise homosexuality, up to a point and only if three conditions were met:

    1. that the act was consensual
    2. that both parties were 21 or over
    3. and the act was done in private.

    Up until that point, men who were found to be having sex with other men were often charged with Gross Indecency or Buggery charges.

    Thousands of men were criminalised because of this law. They were often sent to prison.

    In 2017 a pardon was issued, as an apology to those men who served time for their “crime”.

    When the law changed being gay still wasn’t equal to being straight. The age of consent was 21 and all sexual acts had to be done in private. it wasn’t until the new millennium, that laws pertaining to gay and straight sexual acts were equalised.

    As it stands today, it is currently legal to be gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender across the UK, whether you’re in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Laws surrounding discriminating because of sexuality or gender expression are very strict in the UK and include employment and business services.

  • TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | John Barrowman kisses a man during the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony

    TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | John Barrowman kisses a man during the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony

    Considering that homosexuality is banned in the majority of Commonwealth nations John Barrowman‘s gay kiss certainly raised a few eyebrows back in 2014.

    During a live performance in Scotland for the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, actor and singer John Barrowman grabs a dancer in a kilt and kisses him in front of millions of viewers around the world.

    Although the kiss is brief, it’s a pivotal moment, as it’s never been done before during the opening ceremony, which has a global audience of millions. At the time 40 of 53 nations in the Commonwealth have laws against homosexuality. There are still around 35 countries where same-sex relationships are illegal.

    The kiss mirrored a number of other same-sex kisses that have happened during a live TV broadcast. In 2012, the Eurovision showed two same-sex kisses during its live broadcast, and during the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, the first lesbian kiss ever on a British soap was replayed.

    The Barrowman 2014 kiss causes quite an uproar on social media, dividing viewers on whether the action was appropriate.

    Watch the moment John kisses a dancer here.

  • TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | Serial murderer Andrew Cunanan kills himself

    TODAY IN GAY HISTORY | Serial murderer Andrew Cunanan kills himself

    Back in 1997, Andrew Cunanan committed suicide after killing at least five men, including the fashion designer, Gianni Versace and the Chicago tycoon Lee Miglin, during a three-month period in mid-1997.

    The story of his murders was recently turned into a TV drama called The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

    His victims

    Cunanan’s gruesome killing spree began in the spring of 1997. Warning the below description contain’s graphic details, which some may find disturbing.

    Born in August 1969, Andrew Cunanan’s killing spree started with Jeffrey Trail, whom he murdered on April 27th 1997. Cunanan beat Trail with a claw hammer.

    Cunanan then went on to murder an architect, David Madson. The pair had previously been lovers. He was shot in the head and back. Madson’s body was found on the 3rd May.

    On the 4th May, Lee Miglin became Cunanan’s next victim. Miglin was 72-year-old and was a successful real estate developer. He was stabbed over 20 with a screwdriver and his throat sawed open with a hacksaw.

    Less than a week later, Cunanan shot and killed Finn’s Point National Cemetary’s caretaker, William Reese, who was 45-year-old.

    Cunanan would then wait 2 months before his next murder, that of Gianni Versace. On 15th July, Cunanan shot Versace on the front steps of Versace’s beachfront mansion.

    His own death

    Cunanan would go on to kill himself eight days after his last known murder, that of Versace. He used the same gun he has used to kill, Madson, Reese and Versace. This was the gun he had stolen from his first known victim, Jeffrey Trail. He shot himself through the mouth. He was on a Miami Beach houseboat. He left no suicide note and very few personal belongings.

  • TODAY IN LGBT HISTORY | Gay marriage becomes legal on the Isle of Man

    TODAY IN LGBT HISTORY | Gay marriage becomes legal on the Isle of Man

    A brand new law allowed people in same-sex relationships to become legally married on the Isle of Man in 2016.

    Chief Minister Allan Bell CBE MHK welcomed the new law and described it as a “historic moment” for the island, which is just off the coast of England.

    The Act enables same-sex couples to marry either in a civil ceremony, in a registry office or approved premises, or in religious premises (except those of the Church of England) subject to the agreement of the religious organisation in question.

    Mr Bell commented,

    “Recognition of marriage for same-sex couples in Manx law is a truly historic moment, showing just how far the Island has travelled over the past 30 years. It sends out a clear message that the Isle of Man today is a modern, open and inclusive society where equal rights are respected. I believe that the values of fairness and tolerance reflected in this legislation are shared by the overwhelming majority of our population.”

    Gay marriage becomes legal in Isle of Man
    Photo by Wallace Araujo on Pexels.com

    The first in the UK to allow heterosexual couples to get civilly partnered

    The legislation also makes the Isle of Man the first place in the British Isles to allow opposite-sex couples to enter into civil partnerships as an alternative to marriage. Civil partnerships have been available to same-sex couples in the Isle of Man since 2011.

    The Marriage and Civil Partnership Amendment Act took effect from July 22 under an appointed day order made after Royal Assent was announced in Tynwald.