July 31

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1532 – Étienne Jodelle — properly Seigneur de Limodin – (d.1573) was a member of the circle of poets, under Jean Daurat, that sought to reform the French language and literature in imitation of the classical writers of Greece. The group called itself La Pléiade in emulation of the seven Greek poets of Alexandria.

Jodelle's first play, Cléopâtre captive, was presented before the court of Reims in 1552, with the effeminate playwright in the title role. By all reports he was a smash hit and every inch a queen. In honor of the play's success, his friends organized a Gay little fête at Arcueil, where a goat garlanded with flowers was led in a procession and presented to the delighted Jodelle, himself decked out in laurel leaves and other frou-frou, a ceremony exaggerated by his enemies into a renewal of the pagan rites of the worship of Bacchus.

These green-room frolics seriously damaged Jodelle's reputation, and, after two more plays, he more or less folded on the road and died in abject poverty long before the days of Actor's Equity Fund.

1889 – Nels Anderson (d.1986) is born. He was an early American sociologist who studied hobos, urban culture, and work culture. The word "fag" is first used in print in reference to gays in Nels Anderson’s 1923 monograph "The Hobo: Fairies or Fags," defining the words as "men or boys who exploit sex for profit."

Anderson studied at the University of Chicago under Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, whose Concentric zone model was one of the earliest models developed to explain the organization of urban areas. Anderson’s first publication, The Hobo (1923), was a work that helped pioneer participant observation as a research method to reveal the features of a society and was the first field research monograph of the famed Chicago School of Sociology, marking a significant milepost in the discipline of Sociology.

Willson (R) with Robert Wagner (L)

1911 – Henry Willson (d.1978) was an American Hollywood talent agent who played a large role in popularising the beefcake craze of the 1950s. Willson was known for his stable of young, attractive, oddly-named, sometimes marginally talented clients, including: Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Nick Adams, Guy Madison, Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun , Clint Walker, Ty Hardin, Robert Wagner, and Chad Everett.

Willson was born into a prominent show business family in Lansdown, Pennsylvania. His father Horace was president of the Columbia Gramophone Mfg. Co. He came in close contact with many Broadway theatre, opera, and vaudeville performers, and Will Rogers and Fred Stone numbered among the family friends once they moved to Forest Hills in Queens.

Concerned about his son's interest in tap dance, his father enrolled Henry in the Asheville School in North Carolina, where he hoped the school's many team sports and rugged weekend activities such as rock climbing and backpacking would have a positive influence on the boy, not realising the all-male atmosphere would more likely stimulate his budding homosexuality. Willson later attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, spending weekends in Manhattan, where he wrote weekly gossip columns for Variety.

In 1933, Willson emigrated to Hollywood via a cruise ship through the Panama Canal. On board he cultivated a friendship with Bing Crosby's wife Dixie Lee, who introduced him to the Hollywood elite and secured him a job with Photoplay, where his first article was about newborn Gary Crosby. He began writing for The Hollywood Reporter and The New Movie Magazine, became a junior agent at the Joyce & Polimer Agency, moved into a Beverly Hills home purchased by his father, and became a regular at the Sunset Strip clubs, where he wooed young men for both professional and personal reasons. One of his first clients (and lovers) was Junior Durkin, whose promising career was cut short by an automobile accident in which he was killed.

Willson joined the Zeppo Marx Agency, where he represented newcomers Margery Bell, Jon Hall, and William T Orr. He was introduced to Hollywood High School student Judy Turner, who he rechristened Lana and got cast in small roles, finally introducing her to Mervyn LeRoy. In 1943, David O Selznick hired Willson to head the talent division of his newly formed Vanguard Pictures. The first film he cast was the World War II drama Since You Went Away. He placed Guy Madison, Craig Stevens, and John Derek (billed as Dare Harris) in small supporting roles.

Willson eventually opened his own talent agency, where he nurtured the careers of his young finds, frequently coercing them into sexual relationships in exchange for publicity and film roles.

His most prominent client was Rock Hudson, whom he transformed from a clumsy, naive, Midwestern truck driver named Roy Fitzgerald into one of Hollywood's most popular leading men. The two shared an occasional sexual relationship and were teamed professionally until 1966.

In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson's secret homosexual life, and Willson disclosed information about Rory Calhoun's years in prison and Tab Hunter's arrest at a gay party in 1950 in exchange for the tabloid not printing the Hudson story. At his agent's urging, Hudson married Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates in order to put the rumours to rest and maintain a macho image, but the union dissolved after three years.

In his later years, Willson struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, paranoia, and weight problems. Because his own homosexuality had become public knowledge, many of his clients, both gay and straight, distanced themselves from him for fear of being branded the same. In 1974, the unemployed and destitute agent moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, where he remained until he died of cirrhosis of the liver. With no money to cover the cost of a tombstone, he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.

1932 – Barbara Gittings (d.2007) was a prominent American activist for gay equality born on this date. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries.

In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, forming the first gay caucus in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality that associated it with crime and mental illness.

She was awarded a lifetime membership in the American Library Association, and the ALA named an annual award for the best gay or lesbian novel the The Barbara Gittings Award. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also named an activist award for her. Gittings died in 2007 and is survived by her life partner of 46 years, Kay Tobin Lahusen. At her memorial service, Matt Foreman, the directory of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said, "What do we owe Barbara? Everything."

1937 – Robert Nugent (d.2003) was a Catholic priest who became nationally known for his pastoral work with gay men and lesbians, a ministry that was officially ended in 1999 when the Vatican declared it "erroneous and dangerous."

Charles Robert Nugent was born in Norristown, Pa., the son of a railroad worker and a homemaker. He attended Catholic schools and discovered his vocation at an early age.

"I decided that if I wanted to do something with my life, being a priest was a good way to affect people for the good," he said in 1999.

Early in his career, he sought out untraditional pastoral assignments — including one at a skid row shelter — despite pressure from church superiors who steered him toward parish work.

In the early 1970s, while working in Philadelphia, Father Nugent read a newspaper article about Sister Jeannine Gramick, a Catholic nun, and the ministry she had begun with gay men and lesbians. He sent her a letter expressing his encouragement and extending an offer to help. To his surprise, and initially to his trepidation, Gramick invited him to celebrate Mass with the group she had convened.

"I grew up with all the fears and anxieties about homosexuality that . . . most Irish Catholics do," Father Nugent recalled. "I came away really changed by the stories of the people, who spoke of loving the church, wanting to be part of the church and feeling the church didn't want them [because] they were sick, they were sinful."

According to church doctrine, homosexuality is not sinful, but homosexuals acts are — a stance that has alienated many gay Catholics and others. When he began working with gay Catholics in the early 1970s, Father Nugent said, he was profoundly moved by the experience.

"What I found was people who loved the church very much," he once said. "It was their family, their home. But they felt like the church didn't want them. There was a great love-hate relationship."

In 1977, Father Nugent joined Sister Jeannine in founding the New Ways Ministry in Mount Rainier, in Washington's Maryland suburbs. Working through that organization, they launched what might be described as a grass-roots effort to reconcile the gay community and the church.

In 1999, the Catholic Church found that Father Nugent and Gramick had failed to adhere to Catholic doctrine on "the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts" and, thereby, had "caused confusion among the Catholic people and … harmed the community of the church."

They were banned permanently from pastoral work with gays.

Later, Father Nugent explained his decision to obey the Vatican's order.

1940 – The German Reich Commissar of the occupied Netherlands territories makes all sexual activities between men illegal.

1944 – Richard Rodriguez, is a Mexican-American writer who became famous for his 1981 book, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, a narrative about his development as a literate, American student.

Rodriguez received a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.A. from Columbia University, was a Ph.D. candidate in English Renaissance literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and attended the Warburg Institute in London on a Fulbright fellowship. A noted prose stylist, Rodriguez has worked as a teacher, international journalist, and educational consultant, in addition to writing, lecturing and appearing regularly on the PBS program, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, for which he received the 1997 George Foster Peabody Award.

Rodriguez's books include Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), a collection of autobiographical essays; Mexico's Children (1990); Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Brown: The Last Discovery of America. In addition, he has been published in The American Scholar, Change, College English, Harper's Magazine, Mother Jones, and Time.

Rodriguez is a homosexual. He came out in his book of essays, Days of Obligation. This caused some readers and critics, especially Latinos, to be less willing to be critical of his ideas.

1947 – Richard Griffiths, British actor, was born in Thornaby-on-Tees, North Yorkshire (d.2013). His father, Thomas, was a steelworker who also fought for money in pubs and, like his mother, the former Jane Denmark, was deaf-mute.

Griffiths appeared in many films, from Gandhi (1982) to Naked Gun 2 1/2 (1991), and also became well known to viewers of Pie in the Sky as Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe, a food-loving policeman who longs to retire from the force and set up his own restaurant.

He was memorable in a host of different genres, with a range and subtlety that belied his giant physique. A natural in Shakespeare's comic roles, notably Falstaff, he later captured the imagination of young filmgoers with his performances as the hideous Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter series. But it was, perhaps oddly, for his portrayal of two sexual predators that he was best-loved.

As Uncle Monty in Withnail and I (1987) he erupted, cheeks lightly rouged, into the bedroom of his nephew's terrified flatmate, declaring that "I mean to have you, boy, even if it must be burglary." Like the film's other stars, Paul McGann and Richard E Grant, Griffiths would have such memorable snippets of dialogue quoted at him by legions of fans for the rest of his career. ("They're all a bit silly about it, and they quote stuff and expect me to know it. I find that very odd.")

Almost two decades later he played Hector, an inspirational teacher who fondles his pupils while giving them lifts home on his motorcycle, in Alan Bennett's The History Boys (2004). The play was a smash hit in London, and went on to repeat the success on Broadway. Like Withnail it contained some lines that left audiences helpless with laughter (notably when one boy sighs: "I'm a Jew ... I'm small ... I'm homosexual ... and I live in Sheffield ... I'm fucked.") A large part of its appeal, however was what its director Nicholas Hytner called Griffiths's "masterpiece of wit, delicacy, mischief and desolation".

Griffiths was always at pains to insist that Hector is not a paedophile - the boys in the play are all over 18. "I'd feed all paedophiles into a tree-shredder," he told interviewers.

Griffiths became so associated with gay roles that many assumed he was gay himself. "Look, I'm just acting," he said. In fact he was married and declared a pronounced preference for women of a fuller figure, preferring women like Jane Russell.

Once, asked what he would like his epitaph to be, he replied: "Richard Griffiths. Actor. Born 1947. Died 2947."

He didn't quite make it. The straight actor most remembered for gay roles died March 29, 2013.

1965 – The Australian athlete and rugby star Ian Roberts was born on this date. Late in his football career he announced he was Gay which gained him much attention in Australia and worldwide as a result. Well known in Sydney Gay circles for some time, Roberts came out publicly in 1995, discussing his sexuality in magazines and on television over the following year. The rugby league world was generally very supportive, with other players commenting that it was important to be "true to yourself", while The NRL Footy Show principals Paul Vautin, Peter Sterling and Steve Roach appeared in a poster campaign against homophobia conducted by the Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project. He has been praised for helping to question prevailing myths about Gays and sport. Paul Freeman's book Ian Roberts - Finding Out was published in 1997.

Roberts finished playing professional football in 1998, and began studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney. Early in 2005, he appeared in the second series of the Australian television series Dancing With The Stars, dancing with Natalie Lowe. He became the runner up in the competition, losing out to Tom Williams. He also appeared in the 2006 motion picture Superman Returns as Riley, a henchman of Lex Luthor.

Roberts has stated he's a sex abuse victim, and gave evidence to the State Coroner of New South Wales in regard to the murder of Arron Light, a street prostitute who was set to give evidence against a paedophile syndicate. Light disappeared in 1997, and his remains were recovered in 2002. Roberts accused the same man who molested him in his teens of being behind Light's death. This story was the subject of an episode of the Australian TV program Australian Story, entitled "The Lost Boy", which first aired on 26 September 2005.

On 1 July 2006, Roberts was charged over an incident involving his former partner, Ben Prideaux; the 30-year-old male was alleged to have suffered cuts and bruises on his forearms in the incident. On 25 May 2007, Roberts was cleared of these charges by a court in Sydney.

Roberts appeared on the 17 April 2007 cover of The Advocate magazine in an exclusive interview with Canadian author and journalist Michael Rowe, along with a photo layout by celebrity photographer Eric Schwabel.

In 2009, Roberts appeared in the Australian television mini-series Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, which retells real life events of the drug trade in the New South Wales town of Griffith between 1976–1987. The mini-series is a prequel to the 2008 mini-series Underbelly, which was about Melbourne gangland killings. Roberts has a role as a body guard for George Freeman (played by Peter O'Brien). The series began airing in NSW on 9 February 2009. Also in 2009, he starred in The Cut on ABC1 and had a small role in the film Cedar Boys. In 2012 Ian landed his first starring role in the film Saltwater, starring opposite Ronnie Kerr, which is also Ian's first role playing a gay man.

1965 – First Lesbian and gay protest of the Pentagon. Twelve male and four female veterans of the armed services picket the Pentagon to protest discrimination in the military. Coverage airs on CBS in Washington that evening.

1966 – Dean Cain (born Dean George Tanaka) is an American actor. He is most widely known for his role as Clark Kent / Superman in the popular American television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

He is of French Canadian, Irish, Welsh, and Japanese (from his paternal grandfather) descent. In 1969, Cain's mother married film director Christopher Cain, who adopted Dean and his brother (musician Roger Cain), and the family moved to Malibu, California

He played baseball as a child, and Chad and Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen – who played on the same team - were among his schoolmates. Cain graduated from high school in 1984 and was offered athletic scholarships to 17 universities, but decided to attend Princeton University.

Immediately after graduating, Cain signed on as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills, an NFL football team, but a knee injury during training camp ended his football career before it began.With little hope of returning to sports, he turned to screenwriting and then acting. In 1993, Cain took on his biggest role to date as Superman in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He has also starred in several films, including The Broken Hearts Club (2000).

Dean Cain has advice for closeted gay actors working in Hollywood: If anyone asks, don't tell - at least if you value your career. "I think [it's] difficult for an actor who is gay to openly say that they are gay, because I think that it will absolutely hurt their career. It will hurt their career horribly because they won't get offered the same roles.

However, Cain didn't hesitate to accept the role of love-'em-and-leave-'em Cole in Broken Hearts - despite the fact that some people have wondered about his own sexual orientation. "Honestly, I never thought there was any speculation as to my sexuality," admits Cain, who has a son with model Samantha Torres. "Literally, I am not aware of that. But I knew there was a large gay audience that liked to watch Superman. And that was wonderful.

The actor-turned-conservative pundit has made it clear that he’s not a fan of queer Jon Kent. In the upcoming issue of Superman: Son of Kal-El #5, the son of legendary DC Comics characters Clark Kent and Lois Lane comes out as bisexual.

"They said it’s a bold new direction, I say they’re bandwagoning," the 55-year-old said. "Robin just came out as bi — who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in [The CW series] Supergirl, where I played the father, was gay. So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would be bold or brave. Brave would be having him fighting for the rights of gay people in Iran where they’ll throw you off a building for the offense of being gay. "

1969 – The first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front was held in New York City at Alternative U. Gay militants separate from the more moderate homophile movement to form a counterculture-inspired group they vote to call Gay Liberation front.The meeting was advertised with a leaflet which read, DO YOU THINK HOMOSEXUALS ARE REVOLTING? YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS WE ARE. About 50 people attended.

1986 – Sean Eldridge, Political Director of Freedom to Marry, and life partner of Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook. Eldridge, born on July 31, 1986, the son of two physicians, grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

After his graduation from high school, Eldridge enrolled at Deep Springs College, a small, highly-selective, all-male two-year institution located in the high desert of California. The college typically admits from 10 to 15 students per year.

At Deep Springs, which is founded on the three pillars of academics, labor, and self-governance, students must do farm chores on the campus ranch in addition to taking classes and participating in decisions about curriculum, faculty hiring, and admissions. Furthermore, they must abstain from drinking alcohol, smoking, and using narcotics, in keeping with founder Lucien Nunn's vision of training bright young men to become leaders at an academic venue devoid of the temptations of liquor and women.

It is thus somewhat ironic that Eldridge came out as a gay man at Deep Springs, something he had not felt able to do in Ohio. "Growing up I really didn't see out people, so it just didn't seem like an option," he told JC Reindl of the Toledo Blade. "There were no out students or out faculty or real out adults that I knew growing up in Ottawa Hills and Toledo."

In Boston, a fellow Deep Springs alumnus introduced him to Hughes in 2005. Their romance blossomed immediately, and they quickly became a committed couple.

Following Eldridge's graduation from Brown in 2009, the couple moved to New York City, where Eldridge entered the law school at Columbia University.

In early 2010, after the New York legislature failed to pass a bill that would have brought marriage equality to the state, Eldridge left Columbia to become an advocate for the cause. He accepted a position as Political Director of Freedom to Marry, a non-profit organization devoted to securing equal rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Hughes and Eldridge have been generous donors to the drive for marriage equality; in 2010, the couple announced a $225,000 challenge grant by which they would match donations to the cause, including $100,000 to Freedom to Marry. Indeed, they made the public announcement of their engagement in January 2011 at their loft home in lower Manhattan a fundraiser for marriage equality.

In his capacity as Political Director of Freedom to Marry, Eldridge participated in the events that culminated in the victory of June 24, 2011, when the New York Senate voted in favor of marriage equality and Governor Andrew Cuomo soon after signed the bill into a law that became effective on July 24.

In July 2012, Sean and Chris were married.

1988 – Charles Carver Martensen, known professionally as Charlie Carver, is an American actor. His best known roles include Porter Scavo on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives, Ethan on the MTV television series Teen Wolf, Scott Frost on the first season of the HBO television series The Leftovers, and as Cowboy in both The Boys in the Band on Broadway and the subsequent 2020 film of the same name. His identical twin brother Max Carver has frequently portrayed the twin of his characters.

Carver was born in San Francisco, California. His identical twin brother, Max, was born seven minutes later on August 1. Before he began acting professionally, he was known as Charlie Martensen. His father was physician, historian, and author Robert Martensen, and his mother, Anne Carver, is a philanthropist and community activist. In 1992, Anne and her new husband Denis Sutro moved the family to Calistoga in Napa Valley. He attended high school at St. Paul’s Boarding School in Concord, New Hampshire, but left to attend Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan his sophomore year. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 2012. He also studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. He came out as gay on Instagram in 2016.

His screen debut was with his brother in the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives; they played Porter and Preston Scavo, sons to Lynette Scavo and Tom Scavo. The brothers also appeared together in season 3 of Teen Wolf on MTV as a pair of twin alpha werewolves – Charlie plays Ethan Steiner, and Max plays Aiden Steiner.

Carver's Broadway debut is as Cowboy in both the 2018 revival of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band and the 2020 film of the same name, alongside fellow openly gay actors Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Robin de Jesús, Tuc Watkins and Michael Benjamin Washington.

1989 – Marshall Williams is a Canadian actor, model and musician.

This actor has real life experience playing football. He used to be a player at St. Paul High School, all all boys college prep institution in which the team had perfect seasons for 2004, 2005 and 2006. He also played during his college years at the University of Manitoba where the team won the Vanier Cup.

Williams was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Williams was a contestant on Canadian Idol in 2007. Williams went to Toronto to try out for Canadian Idol. He finished in the top 40 and earned the nickname of Kelly Clarkson from his buddies on his football team back at University of Manitoba. During this time of his life, he was desperate to make money, sleeping on a bare mattress and unable to buy simple things – like sheets.

As a model, he has worked with Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Diesel, Mattel and M.A.C. Cosmetics, in addition to walking the runway in both Toronto Fashion Week and Los Angeles Fashion Week.

In his latest TV movie, Marshall Williams stars in the Disney Channel Original Movie, How to Build a Better Boy, about two high school girls who want to build the perfect boyfriend. Using a computer to make it happen, they produce Albert Banks (Marshall Williams). Williams has been cast in Glee during its sixth and final season where he plays Spencer Porter, a football player who is gay.

Marshall Williams loves being active. In a Disney interview, he shared that when he’s not acting, he’s doing things outdoors and working out. He also plays music and has a degree in psychology. He appears to be an all-around, multi-talented stud!

2003 – The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ottawa warns Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien that if he continues to support same-sex marriage he could be denied the sacraments.