May 6

1691 – New York becomes a royal colony and the 1665 buggery law is replaced by the English buggery statute.

1856 – Sigmund Freud (d.1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis.

In a letter written in English to the mother of a homosexual man, Freud made it clear that "homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness."

Despite these reassuring words, however, Freud's next phrase reveals his assessment of "perversions" in general: "we consider it [that is, homosexuality] to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development."

To Freud, homosexuality appears as a falling short of or a deviancy from heterosexual development that leads to procreation. Even if Freud underlines in his letter that several of the "greatest men" were homosexuals and that it is a "great injustice" to persecute homosexuality as a crime, his theoretical approach to the issue amounts at most to a tolerant attitude, not a radical dismantling of the attitudes that insist on heterosexuality as the only option.

Freud himself assumes that heterosexuality is the most appropriate choice, for it ensures the propagation of the species. From this perspective, a homosexual urge in the adult is considered a deficiency that hinders the deployment of sexuality toward the aims of procreation.

However, he emphasized that the elimination of homosexual tendencies is never an easy task and that the attempt to transform a fully developed homosexual person into a heterosexual would be as little promising as the other way around.

1869 – Marks the first known published use of terms homosexuality and heterosexuality by Käroly-Maria Kertbeny, a German-Hungarian advocate, in a letter to Karl Ulrichs.

1895 – Born: Rudolph Valentino, romantic silent film actor. Born Rudolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina Antonguolla (d.1926), Valentino was such a slab of packed beef that it is difficult to know where fact begins and legend leaves off. His undeniable good looks and animal appeal, his foreignness in the land of the WASP, and the very plots of his films made women dream of submitting to the fate worse than death if Valentino would only draw his sword.

A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik. He had applied for American citizenship shortly before his death. His sudden death at age 31 caused mass hysteria among his female fans, propelling him into icon status. Though his films are not as well known today, his name is still widely known.

From the time he died until the 1960s, Valentino's sexuality was not generally questioned in print. At least four books, including Hollywood Babylon, suggested that he may have been gay despite his marriage with Jean Acker and Natasha Rambova. In fact, the marriages to Acker and Rambova, as well as the relationship with Pola Negri, only serve to add to the suspicion that Valentino was gay and that these were "lavender marriages", as all have documented lesbian relationships. Such books gave rise to claims that Valentino had a relationship with Ramón Novarro, despite Novarro stating they barely knew each other.

Hollywood Babylon recounts a story that Valentino had given Novarro an art deco dildo as a gift, which was found stuffed in his throat at the time of his murder. No such gift existed.

These books also gave rise to claims that he may have had relationships with both roommates Paul Ivano and Douglas Gerrad, as well as Norman Kerry, openly gay French actor Jacques Herbertot and André Daven. However, Ivano maintained that it was untrue and both he and Valentino were heterosexual. Biographers Emily Leider and Allan Ellenberger generally agree that he was most likely straight.

Further supposed evidence that Valentino was gay are documents in the estate of the late author Samuel Steward indicating that Valentino was a sexual partner of his. However, evidence found in Steward's claim was subsequently found to be false, as Valentino was in New York on the date Steward claimed a sexual encounter occurred in Ohio.

And rumor had it that he wielded a weapon even longer than his name.

But the press, and men in general, would have nothing of this un-American dream. He was ridiculed as a "pink powder puff." The consensus is that Valentino was most likely gay. But there are those who disagree. The film historian Kevin Brownlow is one of them. In one of the strangest passages ever written by a serious scholar, Brownlow, who was born many years after Valentino died, tells us that the Latin Lover couldn't have been that way since he had a sense of humor. Huh?

1897 - The California Supreme Court rules that fellatio is not a "crime against nature."

1913 – Stewart Granger was an English film actor mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s (d.1993).

He was born James Lablache Stewart. When he became an actor, he was obliged to change his name in order to avoid being confused with the American actor James Stewart. (Granger was his Scottish grandmother's maiden name.) Off-screen friends and colleagues continued to call him Jimmy for the rest of his life, but to the general public he became Stewart Granger.

In 1933, he made his film debut as an extra. It was at this time he met Michael Wilding and they remained friends until Wilding's death. In 1949, Granger made Adam and Evelyne, starring with Jean Simmons. They married the following year in a bizarre wedding ceremony organised by Howard Hughes – one of his private aircraft flew the couple to Tucson, Arizona, where they were married, mainly among strangers, with Michael Wilding as Granger's best man.

In 1949, Granger made the move to Hollywood: MGM was looking for someone to play H. Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in a film version of King Solomon's Mines. On the basis of the huge success of this film, released in 1950, he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. Following two less successful assignments, Soldiers Three and The Light Touch, in 1952, he starred in Scaramouche. Soon after this came the remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). In 1952 exhibitors voted him the 19th most popular star in the US.

He also starred in Moonfleet (1955), Footsteps in the Fog , the third and final film Granger and Jean Simmons made together - and Bhowani Junction (1956). His films The Little Hut (1957), a coy sex comedy, and Gun Glory (1957), a Western, both bombed. North to Alaska with John Wayne, ' a brawling comedy western', was the last Hollywood movie Granger made.

Although, Granger was married three times and was a hearthtrob for teeanged girls, there were rumors of his homosexual inclinations. Both Cary Grant and Marlon Brando are said to have had a sexual relationship with Granger at about the same time.

While Michael Wilding was married to Elizabeth Taylor and Granger was married to Jean Simmons, a Hollywood gossip columnist informed Taylor and Simmons that their respective husbands had been gay lovers for years. Taylor divorced Wilding soon after, and Simmons and Granger were divorced three years later. Granger and Wilding continued to be "friends" until Wilding's death in 1979.

1933 – Nazis ransacked the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and thousands of books pertaining to homosexuality were deemed 'un-German' and were removed from the Institute's library and thrown into a huge bonfire as part of a public ceremony.

1942 – The New York Post reports that Senator David Walsh, Chair of the Senate Naval Intelligence Committee, is the Senator mentioned as a frequenter of the New York City male brothel raided by police earlier in the year.

1947 – Jon Sims was the founder of the  San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corp, world’s first openly gay musical group (d.1948). Sims was an American choir conductor born in Smith Center, Kansas.Sims studied music composition at Wichita State University, and received his master’s degree in music from Indiana University.

Moving to San Francisco, he became a music teacher by profession, serving for a time as a high school band teacher in Daly City but soon became involved in the developing gay community. He formed the San Francisco band in response to Anita Bryant‘s anti-gay campaign in the late 1970s. Upon its founding in 1978, it became the first openly-gay musical group in the world.

In successive years, Sims created the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, Lambda Pro Musica orchestra (now defunct), and encouraged the formation of the Big Apple Corps GLBT band in New York by Nancy Corporon and The Great American Yankee Freedom Band of Los Angeles by Wayne Love.

1948 – Robert L. Donaghe, American author, whose first novel tells of the effect of "coming out" in a small rural community, was born in New Mexico.

He grew up in a large farming family, did chores on the farm, went to a country school of about 110 children from first grade to eighth grade. He "came out of the closet" to himself in high school, mainly because he had a crush on a boy there mhis own age. He dated girls and was one of the "popular" students among the girls, though among the student body as a whole, he was also kind of an odd-ball. A friend and he formed Deming High's first chess club, which it is still going almost 40 years later!

Donaghe went to college at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he studied English and majored in education. He came out of the closet to others and, for about six months frequented the gay bars in El Paso, Texas, 45 south of Las Cruces. There, he had a couple of stormy, youthful affairs, and then in 1970, like taking a wrong turn into the Twilight Zone, he married a woman he had barely met. Within another six months, he realized his horrible mistake and joined the Air Force during the waning days of Vietnam.

During hi short time in the Air Force, he came out again, this time to everybody in his flight (in the Army, it's called "company"). He met a fellow airman and went into a 14 year relationship with him. He finished his bachelor's at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Later, he returned to Las Cruces, went in and out of the bookstore business, and went to graduate school at New Mexico State, where he majored in technical writing and computer science.

He broke up with his male lover in 1986, and worked all over the U.S. His first novel, Common Sons, was published in 1989.

He has been a writer of fiction ever since, while also maintaining his day job as a technical writer, living with his husband Cliff and two cats.

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1952 – Herbert Rusche, born in Bad Neuenahr, is a German politician and LGBT activist.

After his schooling, he lived in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Berlin, Hamburg, Offenbach am Main and Frankfurt am Main. Rusche left the Protestant Church in 1970 and became a Buddhist in 1977. In 1977 he also opened the first health food store in Offenbach with a friend. In the 1990s he was self-employed with a telecommunication business. He encountered severe health issues and retired permanently disabled in 2004.

Rusche has been openly gay since 1970. He, with some other friends, founded the organisation Homo Heidelbergensis in 1972, the first gay group in Heidelberg. In 1973 Rusche became a member of the organisation Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW). Later he worked in Frankfurt as an activist with Anderes Ufer. He then became a member in Aktionsgemeinschaft Unabhängiger Deutscher in Offenbach/Frankfurt and also became a member of the Green List Hessen (GLH). In 1978 Rusche was a GLH candidate for the parliamentof Hesse, but lost with the GLH only getting 1.1% of the vote.

Later Rusche became a founding member of Sonstige politische Vereinigung DIE GRÜNEN and of the party Die GRÜNEN. Rusche was Landesgeschäftsführer of the Greens in Hesse. In 1982 the party won 8.6% of the vote in Hesse and the party was in parliament in Hesse (Hessischer Landtag) for the first time. The Green party later also won in federal elections and became a member of the Bundestag for the first time. Rusche was a member of the Bundestag from 1985 to 1987.

During his time in Bundestag, Rusche, who is openly gay, worked for the equalizing of the age of consent, AIDS causes, and financial help for people with AIDS. After he left the Bundestag, Rusche has worked for AIDS organisations and for Homosexuelle Selbsthilfe.

1957 – Duncan T. Osborne is an American journalist who writes extensively on LGBT issues, especially AIDS. In March 2003, he wrote a positive review of J. Michael Bailey‘s anti-transgender book The Man Who Would Be Queen for Out magazine, later cited in promotional materials from the publisher.

Osborne grew up in the Boston area. His father taught physics at MIT, and his mother eventually was editor at MIT Press. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in theater from University of Colorado, then moved to New York in 1984. He began writing in 1987.

In his review, Mr. Osborne noted that Bailey “focuses exclusively on men, and he covers a broad spectrum—gay men, male-to-female transsexuals, and men who identify as neither gay nor transgender but engage in behaviors that are typically associated with those who do.”

He was forced by pressure in the press to defend his positive review for the anti-transgender book and wrote:

I was hired by Out to write the review because I have written a number of stories, including one for Out, on gender identity disorder as well as reparative therapy. I was required to make a recommendation for or against the book with little opportunity to explore it in any depth. I chose to recommend it because I believed, and I still believe, that it is a good primer on the topics of sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity.  

My only contact with Michael Bailey, if it may be called that, was a failed effort to interview him in 1997 for a story on gender identity disorder that I wrote for a gay paper here in New York City. He never returned my phone call.

1959 – The Cooper’s Donuts Riot is the first documented LGBT uprising in the U.S. A group of drag queens and hustlers fought the police in the donut shop in downtown Los Angeles, furious that LAPD officers were arresting their friends for legally congregating in Cooper’s, a popular gay meeting place. Cooper’s was located on Main Street, the Los Angeles “gay ghetto” of the 1950s and ‘60s. The event is chronicled in detail in Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians, by Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons , a meticulously researched book that positions Los Angeles—and not New York—as the most influential gay city of modern times. By Harry Hay’s recollection, there were even earlier riots and uprisings in which gay and transgender Angelenos were instrumental in resisting police, but Cooper’s was the first such uprising specifically against police treatment of LGBT people. 

1976 – Two Members of Ontario Provincial Parliament, Margaret Campbell and Ted Bounsell , introduce private members' bills to amend Ontario Human Rights Code to include sexual orientation. The bills are defeated.

1985 – New Zealand, Lesbians and Gays commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust at the National War Memorial, Wellington.

1994 – Noah Galvin is an American actor. He played the role of Kenny O'Neal in the ABC sitcom The Real O'Neals.

Before starring on The Real O'Neals, he also appeared off Broadway at theaters such as the Signature, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, The Vineyard, The Public, The Culture Project, The Flea, The Wild Project, New York Theater Workshop, the Barrow Street Theater, Rattlestick, Ensemble Studio Theater, and many others. He is a recipient of Audio file Magazine's Earphones Award for his narration of Hollis Seamon's novel Somebody Up There Hates You. His other audiobook work includes Perks of Being a Wallflower, Matthew Quick's Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, and more. Additional credits include the celebrated short films Promised Land and Welcome to the Wayne. He currently lives in both New York City, New York, and Los Angeles, California.

Galvin was born and raised in Katonah, New York. In his early teenage years, Galvin was asked by his mother, Abbie (née Fink), several times if he was gay. He came out to her when he was fourteen. Galvin has two siblings. His father is Catholic and his mother is Jewish; he was raised "both Jewish and Catholic going to CCD, Hebrew School and church", and has described himself as Jewish. In June of 2016 Galvin ignited a controversy when, in an interview with Vulture, he accused Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family of perpetuating stereotypes through caricature (though conceding Stonestreet's acting talent), ridiculed an interview that Colton Haynes had with Entertainment Weekly, and accused director Bryan Singer of preying on underaged boys.

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2002 – Luke Prokop is a Canadian ice hockey defenceman for the Edmonton Oil Kings of the Western Hockey League. He is a prospect for the Nashville Predators of the National Hockey League (NHL), who selected him in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft. In 2021, Prokop came out as gay, becoming the first player under contract with an NHL team to do so.

Prokop is from Edmonton, Alberta. He became a fan of Shea Weber, a right-handed defenceman, when he watched Weber playing ice hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics for the Canadian men's national ice hockey team. Prokop became a fan of Weber's team, the Nashville Predators of the National Hockey League (NHL), and began wearing jersey number 6 in his honour.

Prokop attended the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy in Kelowna, British Columbia. The Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League (WHL) selected Prokop with their first round selection, the seventh overall, of the 2017 WHL Bantam Draft. He played for Canada's national under-18 ice hockey team in the 2018 IIHF World U18 Championships.

The Predators selected Prokop in the third round, with the 73rd overall selection, of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft. In December 2020, he signed a three-year entry-level contract with the Predators, and spent the 2020–21 season with Calgary. Prokop was traded from the Hitmen to the Edmonton Oil Kings on October 13, 2021.

Luke's older brother, Josh, is also an ice hockey player. The Calgary Hitmen signed Josh in September 2018. They both spent time playing with Calgary, before Luke was traded to the Edmonton Oil Kings.

On July 19, 2021, Luke Prokop came out as gay, becoming the first player under contract with an NHL team to do so.

2002 – Out Gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated by Volkert van der Graaf, not because he was gay, but because of his attitudes against Muslims.

2005 – Died: Jonathan Thomas (b.1946) was a Canadian-born sculptor who exhibited widely in North America. His life-partner was playwright Edward Albee.

He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and earned a bachelor's degree in science and mathematics in 1968 and another in art history in 1969, both from McMaster University in Ontario. He did graduate studies in art history at the University of Toronto.

Mr. Thomas worked in wood, wood pulp, polymer resin and steel to create a series of abstract, African-inspired totems. He also exhibited related works called language robes, which were bannerlike constructions draped over armatures.

2012 – The Family Equality Council hosted its first International Family Equality Day. All over the world, more and more children are growing up in families where one or both of their parents identify as LGBTQ. Yet, each of these "rainbow families" have very different lived equality experiences, often depending not only on what country they live in but what street they live on. In some countries, our families enjoy equal rights and social recognition but in far too many others both parents and their children face overt discrimination and have to live under a constant threat of violence. By celebrating IFED, Family Equality Council and their partners across the globe raise awareness among politicians and the general public about the need for equal treatment and recognition for all families, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of their family’s members.