September 16

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1730 – Amsterdam – Navy Chief of Detectives Laurens Hospuijn is executed for Sodomy in Amsterdam. He is executed by being strangled and thrown into the water with a 100-pound weight.

1856 – Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (d.1931) was a German photographer who worked mainly in Italy. He is mostly known for his pastoral nude studies of Sicilian boys, which usually featured props such as wreaths or amphoras, suggesting a setting in the Greece or Italy of antiquity. From a modern standpoint, his work is commendable due to his controlled use of lighting as well as the often elegant poses of his models. Innovative use of photographic filters and special body make-up contribute to the artistic perfection of his works.

Von Gloeden was a minor German aristocrat from Mecklenburg who, suffering from what appears to have been tuberculosis, came to Taormina in Sicily in 1876. He was wealthy and provided a considerable economic boost in this comparatively poor region of Italy, which might explain why the homosexual aspects of his life and work were generally tolerated by the locals.

Von Gloeden, who in the 1880s had started photographing boys, but had also made portrait studies of local peasants and engaged in some landscape photography, turned his hobby into a profitable business in the 1890s when his family fell on hard times financially. Already a local celebrity in Taormina, his work (and his models) drew to Sicily such luminaries of the times as Oscar Wilde, the 'cannon king' Alfred Krupp, Richard Strauss, as well as the German Kaiser.

(Click for larger)

The bulk of von Gloeden's work stems from this time period up until the beginning of World War I. His idyllic 'illustrations of Homer and Theocritus', i.e. pictures of skimpily clad boys in classical poses, were also reproduced as postcards and enjoyed popularity as souvenirs for tourists.

Von Gloeden generally made different kinds of photographs: the ones that garnered the most widespread attention in Europe and overseas were usually relatively chaste, featured clothes such as togas and generally downplayed their homoerotic implications.

More explicit photos in which the boys were nude and which, because of eye contact or physical contact were more sexually suggestive were traded by the Baron 'under the counter' to close friends.

Still, considering the prudish and homophobic atmosphere of the time, it is remarkable that von Gloeden and large parts of his work were generally accepted and respected. The popularity of his work in Germany, England, and America can possibly be attributed to four major reasons:
- He was a consummate and talented photographer.
- The Classical and painterly themes in which his work wreathed itself served as a cultural 'badge of protection'.
- At that time male-male-love 'did not speak its name' and was thus totally unthinkable to many who saw his images.
- New printing technologies enabled the mass reproduction and sale of his work in postcard form.

In total the Baron took over 3,000 images, which after his death were left to one of his models, Pancrazio Bucini, also known as Il Moro for his North African looks. In 1936, over 2,500 of the pictures were destroyed by Mussolini's police under the allegation that they constituted pornography. Most of the surviving images therefore come from private collections.

1901 – Zhenya Gay, born Eleanor Byrnes (d.1978), was a famous childrens book illustrator and animal lover. She was also the long time companion and lover of Helen Reitman, aka Jan Gay.

The couple met in about 1927 and began collaborating on children's books in 1930. Eleanor briefly took Helen's surname of Reitman as her own before the couple changed both of their names to Jan and Zhenya Gay in about 1929. They lived together in New York until at least 1933 and established a nudist colony together in Highlands, New York.

Her travels throughout Europe and America introduced Gay to many interesting people and animals. Among her primary interests was a fascination for animals, particularly baby animals. To be nearer to her subjects, Gay gave up her New York apartment in 1954 and moved to a wooded area in the Catskill Mountain foothills. There she delighted in drawing the woodland creatures of the surrounding region. Gay became convinced that writing and illustrating children's books was a more proper venue to share her discoveries and delights. Her first children's book, Pancho and His Burro, written by Jan Gay, was published in 1930. Over the next thirty-five years, Zhenya Gay wrote and/or illustrated more than forty-five books, most of them children's books with either animal or Latin American themes.

Zhenya Gay is best known for her delightful illustrations of baby animals, the result of her lifetime fascination with animals and the discoveries surrounding her woodland home in the Catskill Mountain foothills. The Zhenya Gay Papers include early illustrations and a galley for four animal-themed books published between 1953 and 1961.

Zhenya died in 1978.

1906 – Maurice Sachs, born Maurice Ettinghausen, (d.1945) was a French writer. He was the son of a Jewish family of jewelers. French writer, adventurer, worldly, careful observer of intellectual and political life of the 20s and the Occupation, collaborator of the Gestapo, Maurice Sachs was the author of the Sabbath, a largely autobiographical novel.

Sachs was educated in an English-style boarding-school, lived for a year in London and worked in a bookshop, and returned to Paris.

In 1925 he converted to Catholicism and decided to become a priest, though this didn't last upon meeting a young man on the beach at Juan-les-Pins, with whom he had an affair.

After involvement in a number of dubious business activities, he traveled to New York, where he passed himself off as an art dealer. Facing prosecution for fraud, he returned to France, having given up everything except the young man who accompanied him, Henry Wibbels, who was his lover from 1933 to 1937. Returning to Paris, he associated himself with leading homosexual writers of the time - Cocteau, Gide, Max Jacob and Proust - with all of whom he had stormy relationships whose precise nature is unclear. At various times he worked for Jean Cocteau and Coco Chanel, in both cases stealing from them.

He associated with Violette Leduc who describes her friendship with him in her autobiography La Batarde. She describes the writing, and her reading of the first version of Le Sabbat in La Batarde and how she tried to get him, unsuccessfully, to remove harsh references to Jean Cocteau.

Sachs was mobilized at the start of World War II, but was discharged for sexual misconduct. In 1940, Maurice Sachs spoke live on Global Radio on a Resistance program intended to convince the United States of America to go to war against Germany, which puts him on the German kill list. During the early years of the Occupation, he made money out of helping Jewish families escape to the Unoccupied Zone. But he may also have been an informer for the Gestapo. In 1943, to survive, under a false name, he offered his services to the Gestapo to infiltrate the gay community; however, he only stole from the Gestapo, lied, and refused to denounce gays. He was finally arrested and imprisoned in Fuhlsbüttel.

In 1945, before the advance of British troops, the prison of Fuhlsbüttel was evacuated and its inmates moved to the city of Kiel. The evacuation consisted of a long march that took many days to complete. On the third day of the journey, April 14, 1945, at 11:00 in the morning, Sachs became too exhausted to continue the march. He was killed by a bullet through his neck, and his body was abandoned at the side of the road with the body of another "companion of the same misfortune."

1922 – Lord Peter Henderson of Brompton (d.2000) was a hero of British gay rights. With his wispy white hair, wrinkled brow, weak voice, and even feebler body, Lord Henderson of Brompton was not a heroic-seeming figure, but he was one of the House of Lords' under-sung heroes. In 1944 he had been dragged from an Anzio minefield and, having lost the use of many of his internal organs, was signed off from the forces as "100% disabled" - which, he joked, should have meant he was dead.

Educated at the Dragon and Stowe schools and Magdalen College, Oxford, he completed his English degree post-war under CS Lewis, despite pain and operations. After a brief spell at Lloyd's, he became a clerk in the Lords. By 1960 he was private secretary to Lord Home, then leader of the Lords. In 1974 he took the top job, clerk of the parliaments, and was knighted in 1975. Quite exceptionally, on his retirement in 1984 he became a crossbench life peer.

His battle for gay rights - as against article 28 - was part of his crusade for those underprivileged by discrimination, including young criminals, schizophrenics and homeless mothers with children.

   James Merrill and David Jackson

1922 – David Noyes Jackson (d.2001) was the life partner of poet James Merrill.

A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill. The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill's play, "The Bait." They shared homes in Stonington, Connecticut, Key West, Florida, and Athens, Greece. "It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew," wrote Alison Lurie, who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001).

Over the course of decades conducting séances with a Ouija board, Merrill and Jackson took down supernatural transcriptions and messages from otherworldly entities. Merrill's and Jackson's ouija transcriptions were first published in verse form in The Book of Ephraim (printed for the first time in Divine Comedies, 1976, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977).

Many critics consider Jackson to be a kind of co-writer, certainly the catalyst if not the medium, for much of James Merrill's most significant poetic output. The Book of Ephraim (1976), Mirabell: Books of Number (1978), and Scripts for the Pageant (1980) were all written with Jackson's assistance. Together, they constitute the epic trilogy The Changing Light at Sandover, a 560-page apocalyptic poem published in its entirety in 1982.

He and James Merrill are buried side by side at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington. Jackson's former wife and Merrill's friend, Doris Sewell Jackson is buried behind them.

Billy Glover (R) and Melvin Cain

1932 – (William Edward) Billy Glover , founding member of the Homosexual Information Center, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He played flute in the band, which traveled over the summers to Lion Club meetings. Glover graduated in 1950 and went to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he says he "had more fun than learning." He had been religious throughout high school and most of college, but by the time he left LSU he sought elsewhere for answers to complex issues such regarding race, gender, and his own sexuality.

Glover graduated in 1955 and was immediately drafted into the Army. He later went to Fort Benjamin Harrison for further training, with the understanding that he would go to Germany for his time remaining. When that didn't happen, he got upset and started "acting up," as he put it. In 1956, he was caught in an alleged sexual encounter with another man and was promptly discharged.

Glover had seen ONE Magazine on the newsstands, so now he contacted the publishers at ONE Inc. He decided to attend the 1959 convention of Mattachine in Denver, then spent a few weeks working with Hal Call and Don Lucas and Mattachine in San Francisco. He soon returned to Los Angeles and started volunteering at ONE, becoming the first paid employee shortly after Jim Kepner left in late 1960. His first assignment was the unglorious task of painting the library floor (bright red—the only color on hand).

Billy Glover met Melvin Cain on the day of President Kennedy's assasination, Nov. 22, 1963, and they became lovers and life-long friends.

Glover worked in all areas and might be considered the office gofer. He was most helpful when it came to distributing issues of ONE to the local newsstands, as Don Slater and Dorr Legg were often without a car. He was also a part of the committee that slipped the magazines into their brown paper wrappers, and it was often Glover who toted the bundeld magazines to the post office.

Later, Glover joined with Don Slater, Tony Sanchez, Joseph and Jane Hansen, and Jim Schneider to incorporate the Homosexual Information Center, founded as a Calfiornia non-profit organization in 1968

Glover, who over the years had also worked through temporary jobs to support himself and to raise funds for HIC, returned to Louisiana. Until recently, he lived in his boyhood home, close to his old school and surounded by old friends and neighbors. He still works daily on bahalf of the HIC and for the gay rights movement, distributing information on homosexuality through the Internet from his home in Bossier.

Glover recalls the excitement of picketing of the Los Angeles Times and Fort MacArthur, and he was a key organizer for the Motorcade in 1966 over homosexuals and the military, appearing afterward on television shows such as Regis Philbin and Louis Lomax.

1954 – Writer Michael Nava, author of award-winning mystery novels with gay themes, has increasingly been recognized as an important novelist whose mature work transcends the limited expectations of a popular and highly specialized genre.

Nava was born on September 16, 1954, in Sacramento, California, the second of six children in what he calls a "tragically unhappy" Chicano family. He was the son of a man with whom his mother, then married, had had an affair, and though he was given his stepfather's last name, he knew from an early age that his mother was not married to his father, who in effect abandoned him.

Molested by a family member at age eleven and realizing his gayness at age twelve, Nava knew that he had to escape his mother's religiosity and his stepfather's physical abuse. The one path open to him, an intellectually precocious student, was education. Determining early on that he wanted to be both a writer and a lawyer, he attended Colorado College on a scholarship, earning a B. A. in history in 1976. He then went to law school at Stanford University, where he earned a J. D. in 1981. All the while, he was writing poetry and fiction.

In 1980, Nava met Bill Weinberger, who became his first lover. He lived with Weinberger until 1989. Moving to the Los Angeles area in 1984, he practiced law and began working for the California Court of Appeals as a research attorney. After dissolving his relationship with Weinberger in 1989, he met Andrew Ferrero, and in 1995 they moved to San Francisco, where he now writes and practices law.

Nava is editor of Finale: Short Stories of Mystery and Suspense (1989) and co-author (with Robert Dawidoff) of Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America (1992), but he is best known for his seven-novel mystery series featuring gay Chicano lawyer Henry Rios: The Little Death (1986), Goldenboy (1988), How Town (1990), The Hidden Law (1992), The Death of Friends (1996), The Burning Plain (1997), and Rag and Bone (2001). Five of these seven novels have won the Lambda Literary Award as the best gay male mystery of the year.

Rios is in the mold of the American hardboiled detective who stands outside society and, as a consequence, sees more clearly than most its dark side. He is doubly an outsider in all of the worlds that he lives and works in. First, he is a Chicano in an Anglo society and an Anglo profession. Although he is a criminal lawyer whose brilliance is widely recognized, he often feels uncomfortable with and condescended to by his clients and his professional associates. Second, he is a gay man in the highly macho and Roman Catholic Chicano society, despised by his father for not being manly enough, and distrusted by other Chicanos because of his education, his profession, and what they perceive as his collaboration with the Anglo society at large.

In 1995, Nava collaborated with history professor Robert Dawidoff on the nonfiction book Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America. Basing their arguments on sound legal and historical analyses, the authors persuasively make the point that the denial of equal rights to glbtq people threatens the future of basic constitutional principles of individual freedom and liberty for the nation as a whole. They contend that the struggle for equality for glbtq citizens matters to everyone because it is a test case for equal treatment of all citizens.

His contribution to the gay mystery is immense; and despite his tiring of the form, it enabled his growth as a writer. Still a young man, Nava may well establish himself as a mainstream novelist, as well as a chronicler of the gay male and Chicano experience within the boundaries of mystery fiction.

1967 – Emil Wilbekin, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, is an American journalist, media executive, stylist, content creator, culture critic, and human rights activist. He is the former editor-in-chief of Vibe and Giant, editor-at-large at Essence and managing editor of its associated website Essence.com, and chief content officer of Afropunk. He is the founder of Native Son Now, an organization dedicated to empowering and lifting up Black gay men through positive representation and business opportunities.

Throughout his career, Wilbekin has worked as a cultural critic and commentator, speaking about fashion, music, LGBTQ+ people, Black lives, HIV, activism, racism, and celebrities over a wide range of publications. In 2014, he decided to focus on promoting LGBTQ+ representation across media platforms by starting his consultancy and branding agency, World of Wilbekin.

In 2015, while he was on vacation in India, Wilbekin began to have thoughts about transforming World of Wilbekin from a branding agency into a movement. During the trip, he realized that Black gay men lacked unity around fellowship, networking, and celebrating one another. Upon returning to New York, he was inspired to redress this issue while re-reading James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son. After writing an essay about feeling unsafe and demonized as a Black gay man in response to the Orlando nightclub shooting, he began to transform World of Wilbekin into a full-fledged advocacy organization dedicated to supporting Black queer men of all backgrounds. He named the organization Native Son Now in honor of Baldwin's book.

Wilbekin is openly gay and living with HIV. He has stated that coming out to his family was difficult, but that they were able to move past the shock with help from his older brother, Erik.

1970 – Sandi DuBowski is an American director and producer, best known for his work on the intersection of LGBT people and their religion, DuBowski directed the 2001 documentary Trembling Before G-d and is the producer of Parvez Sharma's documentary A Jihad for Love (formerly known as In the Name of Allah) (2007).

DuBowski was born in Brooklyn in 1970.[1] He was raised in Conservative Judaism. DuBowski attended Hunter College High School in New York City, during which he was selected to participate in Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. In 1992, DuBowski graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, he received two Ford Program for Undergraduate Research grants for his work on homosexuality in Hollywood and independent film. He lives and works in New York City.

Before beginning full-length films, DuBowski worked for Planned Parenthood as a research associate for nearly three years, creating videos on the Christian Right and anti-abortion movement. In 1996 he produced Missionaries Form Militias, documenting anti-abortion leader Rev. Matt Trewhella calling for the formation of armed militias. It was screened for Attorney General Janet Reno and federal law enforcement officials, following the murder of abortion provider Dr. Bayard Britton. An excerpt was run on CBS News, was reported by publications including The New York Times and Newsweek, and has been used by the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment to train human rights activists.

DuBowski has worked as speaker and has moderated numerous religious dialogues on homosexuality, including a Mormon-Jewish dialogue and Christian-Muslim-Jewish panel. He and Steven Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, have traveled to 60 cities and organized over 400 question-and-answer sessions, dialogues, events, inter-faith discussions.

1972 – Mike Doyle is an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He may be best known for his role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Ryan O'Halloran.

On the set of Oz Doyle met George Morfogen, whom he would cast in Shiner, a short film written, produced and directed by Doyle that debuted at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. Doyle also wrote and produced the 2003 limited-release film Cutter. Doyle also appeared as Jamie Pearse, a small-time crook, in the 1996 television Mini-Series Titanic.

Doyle played Lt. Cmdr. Tom Palatonio in the 2005 action film Phantom Below, which is notable for having been released in multiple versions under multiple names which included or excluded gay content depending on the edit (the gay-themed edit was released under the title Tides of War).

The death of his character in the season 10 finale of Law & Order Special Victims Unit ended a successful six-year run as forensic tech Ryan O'Halloran on the show. He guest starred on episodes of Criminal Minds and In Plain Sight.

He appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in 2010's Rabbit Hole. In 2011, the feature film Union Square, co-written and directed by Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Award Winner Nancy Savoca, was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. He also starred in The Orphan Killer as Marcus Miller Sr. in 2011. He then joined the cast of A Gifted Man as Victor Lantz, an anesthesiologist. He had a recurring role in the 2012 ABC television series 666 Park Avenue.

In 2014, he portrayed songwriter and record producer Bob Crewe in the film of the hit musical Jersey Boys, based on the story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons. In 2016 Doyle will star as Greg Forrest in the upcoming psychological thriller, Amy Makes Three.

Doyle formerly dated actor Matt McGrath. Doyle has been linked with actor Andrew Rannells since 2011. The pair share an apartment in New York and a house in Los Angeles.

Doyle is openly gay. He directed 2019 independent film Almost Love with openly gay actors in the leading roles.

1978 – Brian Sims is a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Elected in 2012, Sims is also an American lawyer, politician, and activist on LGBT civil rights

Sims was born in Washington D.C., as the son of two Army Lieutenant Colonels. Sims lived in seventeen states before settling in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s. He later completed his undergraduate studies at Bloomsburg University, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania in 2001.

In 2000, Sims was the co-captain of the Bloomsburg University football team, and was recognized as a scholar athlete. Following the longest season in the Division II schools history, Sims came out as gay. In doing so, the regional All-American and team captain became the only openly gay college football captain in NCAA history and the most notable college player to ever come out.

In 2011, Sims announced his intentions to run for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, 182nd District. Sims received the endorsement of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. He did not face a Republican challenger in the November election and was elected.

Sims was the first openly gay person elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Because Pennsylvania State Representatives' legislative duties begin on the first day of December following their election, Sims shares the designation of being its first openly gay member with Rep. Mike Fleck, who came out in a newspaper article published later that day.

In June 2013, after the Defense of Marriage Act had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, Sims tried to make a speech in the Pennsylvania House supporting the decision. Daryl Metcalfe, who was one of several representatives who blocked Sims from speaking, said "I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God's law.".

1980 – Karl Schmid, born in Geelong, Victoria, Australia is an Australian Television Host. He has worked for TVNZ, TV1 (Foxtel), BBC, ITV, and in the US, TV Guide Network and TLC; he currently works as a reporter for ABC O&O KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

At a young age Schmid left Australia to live in more exotic locations with his parents. First the Fiji Islands, and then New Zealand. It was in Christchurch where a young Karl first got a real taste for television when he was cast in the role of Beaven in the TVNZ children's drama Mel's Amazing Movies. Schmid became a regular host of the New Zealand weekend children's live television show, What Now.

After graduating Schmid took some time out to travel and it was not until 2004 after having worked with Australian comedian Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage) that Schmid returned to television screens, this time in Australia as the host of TV1's Entertainment Daily – a roundup Hollywood and show business style magazine programme.

In 2008, Schmid relocated to Los Angeles where he has been a regular host to TV Guide Network's Big Movie Premiere specials as well as hosting What's on DVD and Hollywood 411. Most recently he could be seen on TLC, as the main anchor for their live coverage of the Royal Wedding in London.

In 2012, Schmid became the host of Logo's "Operation Vacation" and also joined ABC Television's On The Red Carpet as an entertainment host.

Since then, Karl Schmid, through his multimedia platform +Life, has launched a social media campaign,  F+STIGMA, to combat HIV stigma. The ABC reporter is doing so in order to educate the public about the harm inflicted by bias against those with the virus.

Due to medical advancements, HIV is no longer a death sentence. And health education programs like Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U) stress that those who suppress the virus with treatment cannot spread it to others.

1986 – Thomas Beattie is an English entrepreneur and former professional footballer. His professional football career spanned over 10 years before a serious head injury forced him to retire.

Beattie is the co-founder of several companies based throughout Asia. Specialising in mobile technology, and product development, Beattie has commercial interests in the fitness industry throughout South East Asia.

Ironically, Beattie was voted as one of Singapore's most eligible bachelors of 2019 by CLEO magazine, because in an interview with ESPN, Beattie came out as gay on 23 June 2020.

Beattie was born in Goole, East Yorkshire, England on 16 September 1986. At the age of 9 years old, he was scouted for Hull City A.F.C., Leeds United F.C. & Blackburn Rovers F.C. subsequently signing for Hull City. He was educated at Vermuyden School until the age of 15 where he started his professional career with Hull City A.F.C. at the age of 16.

In subsequent years he played for variuos soccer teams in England, Canada, the USA, and Singapore. He sustained a life-threatening injury in a head collision during a game against Geylang International FC resulting in a brain haemorrhage and facial fractures to the cheek, nose, eye sockets and forehead forcing him to retire.

Beattie has modelled for various brands and products throughout Asia and has featured in Esquire and ExpatLiving.

This was the Instagram post in which he announced to the world that he is gay:

1987 – Travis Wall is an American dancer and dance instructor, specializing in contemporary dance and jazz dance. He is best known for his 2006 appearance as a competitor on the second season of the television show So You Think You Can Dance, which airs on the Fox Network. As of 2012, he is currently a choreographer for the show. In 2011, he was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the show's seventh season.

Wall was born in and grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. His mother, owner and operator of the eponymous Denise Wall's Dance Energy, recalls putting him in a walker and watching him imitate the dancers. He began dancing at the age of three, training at his mother's studio, and competing in a number of conventions. His professional career officially started at the age of nine when he appeared in a Dr. Pepper commercial.

In 2007, his adoptive brother Danny Tidwell was a runner-up of the third season of So You Think You Can Dance. He, too, had trained with their mother Denise Wall, who also trained Jaimie Goodwin, a Season 3 contestant. Wall is openly gay.

In 2012, he starred in the reality show All The Right Moves on Oxygen, where he, Teddy Forance, Nick Lazzarini and Kyle Robinson attempt to launch their own dance company called Shaping Sound.

1990 – General Motors issues an apology after one of its commercials refers to trucks made by foreign companies as "little faggot trucks."

1994 – At the insistence of the U.S., the United Nations suspends the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) from observer status because of allegations that ILGA’s members include groups that promote pedophilia.

1994 – Richard A. Heyman (b.1935) dies. He was mayor of Key West, Florida from 1983 to 1985 and from 1987 to 1989. He was one of the first openly gay public officials in the United States. He was reported as a mayor who happened to be a gay man, rather than a gay mayor.

He did not, however, ignore gay civil rights. In his second term as mayor, before he learned he had the virus that causes AIDS, the Key West City Commission passed a resolution barring the city government from dismissing an employee with AIDS. "If there was a gay issue, he was there," according to June Keith, who was Mr. Heyman’s assistant in office and who confirmed to The New York Times that his death at age 59 was due to pneumonia caused by the AIDS virus.

His papers are held at the Cornell University Library in Ithaca, New York. The Richard A. Heyman Environmental Pollution Control Facility in Key West was named in his honor.

In 2010, a documentary about Richard Heyman’s first term as mayor, directed by John Mikytuck, entitled The Newcomer, was released. Heyman’s long-time partner was artist John Kiraly.

2013 – Israeli couple, Yuval Topper-Erez, a transman, and his husband Matan, became the first to be jointly recognized as biological fathers.