Band of Thebes

...And When Gay History Happens to Straight Players

I, too, can swallow a lot of egomania if it produces results like bringing marriage equality to 38.3 million residents. In their new book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality spotlight hoggers Ted Olson and David Boies bray about their success with the Prop 8 case at the Supreme Court (while not dwelling on the $6 million fee they earned for their noble quest), but the real triumph was Roberta Kaplan's arguing US vs. Windsor, thus overturning DOMA. That was the gamechanger -- a much bigger deal and a story far better told by lesbian New Yorker staffer Ariel Levy in the magazine's fact piece, The Perfect Wife: How Edith Windsor fell in love, got married, and won a landmark case for gay marriage.

If You're Keeping Score, It's 16 to 0

Tuesday's ruling, by yet another Bush-appointed judge, Candy Dale [pictured], in yet another conservative state, hardcore Idaho, is the sixteenth consecutive win in court for marriage equality since the Supremes' landmark Windsor decision last June. The number of court defeats since then is zero. Twelve of the sixteen wins have been in federal court and four in state courts. Most recently it's been red states all the way: Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and purply Virginia. Almost all states have been granted a stay pending appeals, to the relief of bigots like Idaho's governor, Butch Otter. Last week in Arkansas, gay marriages began in a few counties; surprisingly, a higher court noted a technicality, which halted the weddings; the judge has since closed that loophole paving the way for clerks to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; but now the Democrat AG who supports gay marriage is upholding state law and requesting another stay.

Gay marriage is legal in seventeen states and DC. This is how far we've come in exactly ten years. Massachusetts began issuing same-sex marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

Born April 13: Frank Murphy, Lanford Wilson, Deborah Batts

 

Frank Murphy was mayor of Detroit (1930-33), governor of Michigan (1937-39), U.S. Attorney General (1939-40), the final Governor-General of the Philippines (1933-35), and a Justice of the Supreme Court (1940-49) appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. Never married, he was romantically involved with Edward G. Kemp, his housemate for most of his adult life. Read more about him in Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch’s excellent book Courting Justice.

Born and raised in Missouri, playwright Lanford Wilson was a founding member of New York's Circle Rep, which first presented many of his dramas. His best-known works include Balm in Gilead, Hot L Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, and Burn This. Among his many honors are the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Obie Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2004 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died of pneumonia at 73 in 2011.

Deborah A. Batts grew up in Philadelphia then attended Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. In 1994 Bill Clinton appointed her to the federal bench, making her the first openly gay federal judge in U.S. history. She is shown above with her portrait, which is the first portrait of a black woman and first of an out person on the walls of Harvard Law School. Now 67, she took senior status two years ago.

It's Not Just Arizona: Nine States Push Antigay 'Refusal of Service' Bills

Wednesday, the Arizona Senate voted to allow statewide discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. Intended by conservative Christians to legalize antigay bigotry and undo lgbt protections, the bill inadvertently also creates a free zone for followers of Sharia Law and Satanism to refuse services to anyone based on their beliefs. It passed along party lines, 17 to 13. The Arizona Republic penned an editorial urging governor Jan Brewer to veto the bill -- on economic grounds, because the hate might discourage Google from choosing Scottsdale for their massive new fiber-optic project. 

Eight other states have proposed similar ploys. The Kansas and Idaho bills extend the right of refusal beyond the private sector to police, firefighters, teachers, county clerks, librarians, and DMV, in short, every state or county employee. It passed the Kansas House last week but won't proceed in the Senate.

Also: Nevada, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and even Oregon.

Born January 1: Forster, Hoover, Haines, Béjart, Hormel, Orton, De la Iglesia, Stefano

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) After you've finished the novels (Howards End, A Passage to India, A Room With a View, Maurice), and his openly gay story collection The Life To Come, your mandatory reading is Wendy K. Moffat's NYT notable A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster [Kindle]. Biographer Tripp Evans wrote: "Not only is this a truly groundbreaking study of Forster's life and work -- and an eye-opening read for any student of twentieth-century gay social history -- but it's also beautifully written.  Moffat is one of those rare writers able to combine elegant prose with a style that engages the reader in an intimate conversation (she is, in other words, the very best sort of company).  By illuminating the previously underexamined terrain of Forster's private life, Moffat has restored an important figure, along with his era, to a deeply satisfying wholeness.  It is a remarkable achievement." Get ready for Damon Galgut's new novel, Arctic Summer, which reimagines Forster's first trip to India.

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) American FBI director and closet case of unsurpassed twistedness.

William Haines (1900-1973) Hollywood hero, one of the top five grossing movie stars annually from 1928 - 32 for charming films like The Smart Set, The Duke Steps Out, and Just a Gigolo. In 1933 he was busted for picking up a sailor and taking him to a YMCA, prompting his studio to demand a sham marriage to a woman. Haines refused to betray his partner of seven years Jimmie Shields that way, and quit films for a very successful career as an interior designer. Read William Mann's extraordinary biography, Wisecracker.

Maurice Béjart (1927-2007) French-Swiss choreographer who directed maverick ballets and all-male homoerotic dances long before Matthew Bourne. Watch this at least until 2:20.

James Hormel (1933 -) The grandson of SPAM, American philanthropist, ambassador, gay rights activist, and current political hot potato is 80 today. His partner Michael P. Nguyen graduated from Swarthmore in 2008.

Joe Orton (1933-1967) randy British playwright of explicitly gay hits like Entertaining Mr. Sloane and What the Butler Saw, murdered by his unstable lover. Subject of Stephen Frears' fine biopic Prick Up Your Ears starring Gary Oldman and Vanessa Redgrave.

Eloy de la Iglesia (1944-2006) Spanish writer - director of the gay festival favorites like Bulgarian Lovers [right].

Joey Stefano (1968-1994) Porn superstar. After you've satisfied yourself with his film acting, read Wonder Bread & Ecstasy: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano.

Boy Scouts Deliver Pizza to Utah Marriage Clerks, Gay Couples in Line

Regardless of whether you do your Santa tracking via NORAD or Google, the best thing you see today might be these murky photos of Utah Boy Scouts -- one in a rainbow kerchief -- delivering pizza to clerks in the Salt Lake City marriage bureau who skipped lunch in order to continue issuing licenses to same-sex couples waiting in very, very long lines. 

72% compliant: Of Utah's 29 counties, 21 (shown in green) are already issuing same-sex marriages licenses, 2 counties (yellow) will do so soon, and only 6 counties (red) are defying Judge Selby's order and refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

It is likely the Tenth Circuit will grant Utah's request for a stay until the appeal has been heard and decided. Both of the Supreme Court victories last summer affirmed a state's right to determine its own marriage laws. (In the DOMA case, the issue was the unequal treatment of legally married gay New Yorkers. In the Prop 8 case, it was simply that the outsider meddlers had no standing to appeal Judge Walker's ruling.) SCOTUS had the opportunity to rule that (gay) marriage is a fundamental right and declined to do so.

Tomorrow: Protest India's Antigay Law

Get off the sidelines and take an hour on Sunday to protest India's reinstatement of 377, making homosexuality illegal. You are not unconnected to this: Americans, the justices referenced Scalia and Thomas in their decision. Brits, your people introduced the law. Everyone, community.

Protests will happen in Ann Arbor, Boston/Cambridge (noon, Harvard Sq.), Berlin, Cambridge UK, London, New York (3:00pm Union Sq.), Philadelphia (3:00pm, Love Statue Penn Campus), Richmond VA, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington DC (tba). There must be something on the US west coast? Get updates here.

Already, last night SF protested at the Indian Consulate [right] and DC at the Indian Embassy [left]. 

  

Australia High Court Rejects Gay Marriage Law, Invalidates Unions

The several dozen same-sex couples who have wed in the Australian Capital Territory since Saturday, today saw their unions dissolved by a unanimous high court ruling that rejects marriage equality. The silver lining comes via George Williams, a constitutional law expert who:

"said it was significant that the high court made clear the federal parliament had the power to legislation for same-sex marriage nationally. He had not expected this to be spelled out in the ruling.

"That’s a very significant finding and it’s significant because when the federal bills have come into the parliament the ‘no’ people have argued strongly it would be unconstitutional … This clears the way for a federal law."

India's Supreme Court Re-Criminalizes Gay Sex

    

Atrocious. India's Supreme Court has overturned a 2009 High Court ruling that had decriminalized gay sex, and now once again homosexual acts are illegal, punishable by up to ten years in prison. It was one of the judges' last day on the bench before retirement. The BBC adds:

"Correspondents say although the law has rarely - if ever - been used to prosecute anyone for consensual sex, it has often been used by the police to harass homosexuals. Also, in deeply conservative India, homosexuality is a taboo and many people still regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate. The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says some politicians have spoken out against the court decision - but many believe it is going to be difficult for them to take on the anti-gay lobby."

You can thank Colonialism: Priggish, officious white Brits introduced anti-sodomy laws to India 153 years ago. (Six decades later, E.M. Forster perfectly captured their peevish superiority -- and hints of how the oppressed can internalize and perpetuate the worst traits of their oppressors -- in A Passage to India.)

For the more recent, more authentic gay Indian experience (including the Indian immigrant experience) read Rahul Mehta's Quarantine [Kindle] or Neel Mukherjee's A Life Apart [Kindle] or Rakesh Saytal's Blue Boy or Manil Suri's brand new The City of Devi [Kindle] -- each of which has been selected as someone's best book of the year on Thebes polls.

This year, Minal Hajratwala published thirty writers in Out! Stories from the New Queer India or get her earlier memoir Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents.

Born August 12: J.D. McClatchy, Radclyffe Hall

Contravening the idea that writing openly gay work automatically excludes authors from establishment glory, in 2009 Sandy McClatchy published his sixth volume of poetry, Mercury Dressing, whose title poem, from The New Yorker, mentions "his hooded sex" and "I feel him deep inside," and he was elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Sixty-eight today, McClatchy has for decades written honestly about his sexuality, from his first gay experience at ten with a friend's big brother in a hockey rink restroom to the agony of aids, and has received some of poetry's highest recognitions. His 2003 collection Hazmat was a Pulitzer finalist. He has been editor of the The Yale Review since 1991, has taught at Princeton, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and Yale, and has published two books of critical essays, White Paper and Twenty Questions. He is co-executor for the literary estate of James Merrill, whose work his own is sometimes compared to, and has edited nearly twenty collections or anthologies, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry and Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems. Additionally, McClatchy has written libretti for more than a dozen operas, among them William Schumann's A Question of Taste, Francis Thorne's Maria and the Magician, Ned Rorem's Our Town, Lowell Liebermann's Miss Lonelyhearts, and Elliot Goldenthal and Julie Taymor's Grendel. For thirteen years he was partners with Alfred Corn, who turns seventy on Thursday; McClatchy is currently in a longterm relationship with graphic designer, novelist, Batman expert, humorist, and vocalist Chip Kidd, nineteen years his junior. They live in Stonington, Connecticut and NYC. Next April is the release of his Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems.

Ignored from infancy by her mother and stepfather, Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was educated at Kings College London and in Germany, where, when she was twenty-seven, she began a relationship with a singer named Mabel Batten, who was fifty-one and a grandmother and had once been painted by John Singer Sargent. They moved in together as soon as Batten's husband died; several years later Hall fell in love with Batten's cousin, Una Troubridge, and after Batten died the following year, they began living together. Their partnership lasted more than twenty-five years and weathered Hall's many short and longer term affairs as well as her success and scandal as a writer. Her second novel, The Forge (1924), a comedy of social manners, was published before her first, The Unlit Lamp (1924), about a young woman's thwarted wish to become a physician and set up house with another single woman. Her fourth novel, Adam's Breed (1926), concerns an Italian restaurateur in London who embraces spirituality, renounces the world, and lives hermit-like in the woods. It won two major literary prizes and became a bestseller.

 

So The Well of Loneliness (1928) was naturally anticipated by literary London. For the first three weeks, reviews were mixed but critics accepted its sympathetic portrayal of lesbians. Then the editor of the Sunday Express whipped up a frenzy, saying he would rather give healthy children a vial of prussic acid than the novel and demanding it be withdrawn. The nervous publisher sent a copy to the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, known as Jix, offering to suppress it if he disliked it. Despite his hip nickname and his kept promise to give women the vote in 1928, Jix was sixty-three and deeply conservative and had strenuously objected in Parliament to planned revisions to The Book of Common Prayer, successfully preventing the changes twice. No surprise then that he hated The Well of Loneliness and intended to sue the publisher unless they canceled the book immediately. They did, but they had already licensed the rights to an English publisher in France. When the book was imported, Jix ordered it seized, over the objections of the Chairman of the Customs Board who admired the novel. It became a matter for the Metropolitan Police, and the subsequent trial for obscenity depended solely on the judge's opinion without any expert testimony. For those of you who haven't read the 500 page novel lately, here are the sex scenes unabridged:

She kissed her full on the lips.

also

and that night they were not divided.

The case drew wide protest from other newspapers, dozens of famous people, the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners' Federation. Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, H.G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw defended Hall in letters to the editor. The judge ordered all copies of the book destroyed. He said that no reasonable person could claim that a call for tolerance or acceptance of homosexuality was not obscene. Kipling agreed to testify on behalf of the novel at the appeals trial. He appeared at court and was refused. The twelve magistrates took five minutes to uphold the original obscenity verdict. Eighteen years later, after Hall had died, after World War II, Troubridge tried again to get The Well of Loneliness in print in England and the Home Secretary said the publisher would be prosecuted. In America, the book faced two obscenity trials (garnering letters of support from Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mencken, Sinclair, Dos Passos, St. Vincent Millay, and more) and both times the book triumphed. Its first year it sold more than 100,000 copies. It was finally published in the U.K. in 1949.

When Lambda Rising closed, my pard bought a signed copy of the 1928 U.S. first edition.

Flashback to the Democrats Who Voted for DOMA

With huge joy, in the midst of great celebrating: Screw you, Bill Clinton. Victory shouldn't whitewash the unnecessary and unconstitutional 17-year burden that brought us here, yet once again the former president can't quite recall the facts of DOMA. (Here and here.) Today he and Hillary had the temerity to release this statement that fails to acknowledge he's the one who signed it into law:

"By overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, the court recognized that discrimination towards any group holds us all back in our efforts to form a more perfect union. We are also encouraged that marriage equality may soon return to California. We applaud the hard work of the advocates who have fought so relentlessly for this day, and congratulate Edie Windsor on her historic victory."

Similarly, he omitted DOMA in his 1,052-page memoir. The index entry for "gay rights" lists two pages.

Apologists yammer on about the veto-proof majority, but Clinton's early support for DOMA gave the senators cover and helped to create that landslide. His Dept of Justice, headed by Janet Reno, delivered a memo to Congress stating the DOJ determined DOMA was constitutional. After that, these many Democrats were among the 85 senators who voted for DOMA in 1996:

Max Baucus (D-MT), Joe Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Bill Bradley (D-NJ), Breaux (D-LA), Bryan (D-NV) Bumpers (D-AR) Robert Byrd (D-WV), Conrad (D-ND), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND) Exon (D-NE) Faircloth, Ford (D-KY), John Glenn (D-OH), Graham (D-FL), Harkin (D-IA), Heflin (D-AL), Hollings (D-SC), Johnston (D-LA), Kohl (D-WI), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Sam Nunn (D-GA), Harry Reid (D-NV), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), and Paul Wellstone (D-MN).

Read the full roll call.

Major kudos to the mere fourteen senators who voted against DOMA: Akaka (D-HI), Boxer (D-CA), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Inouye (D-HI), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerrey (D-NE), Kerry (D-MA), Moseley-Braun (D-IL), Moynihan (D-NY), Pell (D-RI), Robb (D-VA), Simon (D-IL), and Wyden (D-OR).

In the House, 118 Democrats joined 224 Republicans in voting for the bill, while 65 dems and one gay Republican voted against it. List here.

In the spirit of healing, wouldn't it be healthy for Janet Reno to apologize now?

Elsewhere, the Onion profiles a more nefarious crew: Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito Suddenly Realize They Will Be Villains In Oscar-Winning Movie One Day.

With 61% in Favor, Boy Scouts Approve Bill To Allow Gay Scouts

Ending a debilitating, decades-long fight, the Boy Scouts of America today voted by a large margin to allow openly gay scouts in their troops. (They continue to ban gay adults as scout leaders.) Great as this news is for equality lovers, it's also important that the bigots opposed to the change received a decisive defeat from their own organization, 61%-38% of 1,400 voting members. 

Although it's ideal that the reversal has come from within the BSA, I still think the Supreme Court was wrong in its decision thirteen years ago to uphold the ban against gay scouts. Four justices agreed with Evan Wolfson, representing James Dale who was expelled in 1990, as do Andrew Koppelman and Tobias Wolff, authors of the 2009 book from Yale, A Right to Discriminate?: How the Case of Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale Warped the Law of Free Association. But in 2000 then-conservative Andrew Sullivan agreed with the majority on the exclusionary ruling, telling Salon: "The court’s decision is, in fact, a good one for gay people. It enshrines the basic principle of freedom of association, which protects minorities above all. I’m sad that the Boy Scouts have decided to embrace bigotry, but in a free country they have every right to." 

From the Closet to the Altar: Klarman Sees Gay Marriage Victory

Former Ginsburg clerk, Harvard Law professor, and author of the Bancroft Prize winning From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael Klarman last week published From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage [Kindle]. While admitting our defeats in statehouses and referendums, Klarman is convinced of our ultimate legal triumph. Citing his unexpected pro-gay ruling from 1980 on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to his decision on Lawrence, Klarman believes crucial swing voter Justice Kennedy will rule in favor of gay marriage.

At 288 pages, the book is the perfect length to provide an understanding of the monumental changes in queer legal status during the past sixty years without boring the lay reader with excessive minutiae. The first two chapters zip through the era from World War II through the Court's terrible Bowers decision. Chapter three covers Hawaii and DOMA, and the remaining eight chapters bring us to the brink of this term's landmark cases for marriage equality. 

Another Federal Judge Rules Against DOMA

AP via WSJ:

A federal judge in Manhattan joined a growing chorus of judges across the country Wednesday by striking down a key component of a federal law denying benefits to partners in a gay marriage.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones said the federal Defense of Marriage Act's efforts to define marriage "intrude upon the states' business of regulating domestic relations."

"That incursion skirts important principles of federalism and therefore cannot be legitimate, in this court's view," the judge said.

Judge Jones said the law fails because it tries to re-examine states' decisions concerning same-sex marriage. She said such a sweeping review interferes with a system of government that places matters at the core of the domestic relations law exclusively within the province of the states.

 

Unanimously Against DOMA

For the first time, a federal appellate court — immediately below the Supreme Court — ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional for prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriages that are valid in the states where they are performed. All three judges (appointed by Reagan, Bush, and Clinton) agreed, writing:

"Many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress’ denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."

This case will surely go to the Supreme Court and almost certainly get there before Perry, meaning the Court's landmark gay marriage case will not be the one argued by the unbeatable team of Olson and Boies. Writing on the New Yorker's blog, Richard Socarides explains:

"...this is the result favored by the old guard of gay-rights litigators who prefer a more incremental strategy of Supreme Court review. (Although they will not like the language in today’s decision that suggests that states can decide on a case-by-case basis who can get married; but this is the risk of incrementalism.) In this case, a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would not require any kind of finding that there exists a hitherto-unrecognized constitutional right to same-sex marriage—only that the federal government must recognize marriages validly preformed in states that choose to do so."  

International Contradictions

Pink News, Towleroad, and others are reporting a Star story that Malaysia is banning all LGBT characters from state television with similar restrictions against private television stations to follow:

"The Information Department has banned shows featuring gay characters, Deputy Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Maglin Dennis D'Cruz confirmed. He said the ban was effective immediately but would only start with state-owned TV and radio stations.

"If it means canceling some of the shows, so be it," he told The Star Friday, adding that the decision was to curb the "influence" of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community."

Predictably the story is whipping up a frenzy of anti-Muslim, anti-Malay comments. Just one thing. Free Malaysia Today says it's not true.

"...speaking to FMT, Information, Communications and Culture Deputy Minister Maglin Dennis D’Cruz said that his ministry had not ordered gays to be taken off the air.

“There is no directive. Only the minister (Rais Yatim) can (issue) a directive. Because if it was a directive, it would have come to us, and all the senior officials (in the ministry) immediately… I think it was (done) by an individual,” he said.

"At the same time, Maglin added that the ministry had no intention of stopping gays, transsexuals or effeminate men from appearing on radio or television.

“These people are everywhere, and they’re also human beings. Nobody has the right to stop them or anything, because we also respect them as human beings.

“Don’t humiliate them. Who says they can’t act in movies? Nobody says that they can’t act… If they want to be an engineer, lawyer, actor, whatever they want to do, we (will) help them,” he said.

"Later in the day, Maglin’s boss, Rais Yatim was quoted by Bernama as saying that no ban existed on the portrayal of LGBT characters on state-owned television channels."

Yesterday, the PBS NewsHour aired a report:

"In Uganda, Gays Face Growing Social, Legal Hostility."

The day before yesterday, Voice of America ran this story:  

"Gay Activists Say Uganda Becoming More Tolerant."

Last month AP filed a similar story Uganda's Gays See Progress in Public Opinion War.

One irrefutable positive step is that Uganda's LGBT community has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts against antigay American evangelist Scott Lively for promoting violence against them. Among other complaints, they say on his 2009 visit Lively helped draft the notorious Kill the Gays legislation. Lively dismisses the case as "frivolous."

(Photo: AP)

Born April 13-14: Deboarh Batts, John Gielgud, Angela

Angela, my sister, is as awesome and amazing as she is publicity shy. Nevertheless, she deserves excellent best wishes from the entire blogosphere, particularly from this corner that owes her so much.

Deborah A. Batts grew up in Philadelphia then attended Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School. In 1994 Bill Clinton appointed her to the federal bench, making her the first openly gay federal judge in U.S. history. Sixty-two today, she is shown above with her portrait, which is the first portrait of a black woman and first of an out person on the walls of Harvard Law School.

Tony winner, Grammy winner, BAFTA winner, John Gielgud is often considered one of the world's finest actors. A consummate performer of Shakespeare on stage and screen, Gielgud was equally at home in historical dramas such as Brideshead Revisited (and Caligula), experimental works such as Beckett's Catastrophe, and contemporary comedies such as Arthur. For nearly forty years he lived with his partner Martin Hensler. In 1953, he was arrested and convicted of cottaging in Chelsea Mews. Afterward the public did not scorn him; rather, at his next appearance on stage he was given a standing ovation. That same year he was knighted. Although he was out and discussed his homosexuality in his autobiography, when he died at ninety-six in 2000, many newspaper articles degayed his life and omitted his partner of almost four decades. When criticized for this, the Washington Post defended their decision saying he was known for being an actor, not for being gay. Their long obituary included the details that he loved to garden and enjoyed trashy commercial paperback novels but not a word about his relationship.

ACLU Intervenes, 18 yo Lesbian Belinda Sanchez Will Wear Tux to Prom

If you're looking for a Tuesday morning hero, why not Belinda Sanchez? The 18 year-old lesbian is a senior at Maywood, Illinois' Proviso East High School, whose student body is 70% black and 24% Latino. Belinda has been out since she was a freshman and says the school, which has a GSA, is very accepting of LGBT students. So she was "just shocked" to hear the principal tell her she had to wear a dress -- not a tuxedo -- to the prom on April 22. Belinda hopes to become a civil rights lawyer, and she knew whom to call: The ACLU. The group's LGBT Project director John Knight said,

"This sends a negative message to other students that they can't express who they are. It's a First Amendment right, a free speech right, and that includes her right to send a message through wearing male clothing that she doesn't think women should be restricted to traditional female clothing."

The ACLU sent a concerned letter to the school board, which overruled the principal's decision. District spokesperson TaQuoya Kennedy praised Belinda for opening "up a new, very interesting and healthy dialogue in terms of our prom review procedures. We support our students in all of their differences and we encourage them to express themselves in various ways as long as it is not disruptive to the school environment."

Belinda told the Chicago Tribune, "I'm happy. I didn't just stand up for myself. I did this for everyone who's in a position like I'm in."

(Photo by Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune)

Charles Francis on HuffPost: Kameny Doc's "Breathtaking Ascent"

The Huffington Post features an article by Charles Francis discussing the background and the future of America's first LGBT petition to the Supreme Court which was rejected fifty years ago this week. He quotes Frank Kameny's argument:

"Not only are the government's present policies on homosexuality irrational in themselves, but they are unreasonable in that they are grossly inconsistent with the fundamental precepts upon which this government is based...we may commence with the Declaration of Independence, and its affirmation , as an "inalienable right" that of the "pursuit of happiness". Surely a most fundamental , unobjectionable, and unexceptionable element in human happiness is the right to bestow affection upon and to receive affection from whom one wishes. Yet, upon pain of severe penalty, the government itself would abridge this right for the homosexual."

The full document, and more, can be found in the Kindle exclusive, Petition Denied, Revolution Begun/ Frank Kameny Petitions the Supreme Court.

Jenner & Block chairman Paul Smith who successfully argued Lawrence v. Texas before the Supreme Court says of Petition Denied:

"What an eye-opening read. It is astounding to see Kameny, in 1960, making the same arguments that have now caused the invalidation of sodomy laws, the protection of LGBT civil servants from discrimination, and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Although the courts have now agreed that it is not up to the government to label homosexuality "immoral", that was a courageous claim indeed in 1960. It's great to see the first shot in the legal battle for LGBT civil rights in America rescued and made available to all. A small volume to be treasured by all who believe in equality and fairness."

For 50th Anniversary, Kameny Supreme Court Petition Now on Kindle

In 1961, the indomitable, unstoppable Frank Kameny filed a petition with the Supreme Court which scholars now believe marked the first time anyone made the legal case for LGBT civil equality with arguments firmly rooted in the Constitution, rather than more emotional or philosophical pleas for acceptance or tolerance. Kameny did so "on behalf of 15 million homosexuals," in a writing style similar to a solar flare:

"...the government's policies...are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for."

The Supreme Court denied his petition 50 years ago this week, according to Kameny.

This historic document does not appear in textbooks and has been lost to scholars for decades. A few years ago William N. Eskridge referenced its importance in a legal article but the full text has not been readily available until now. In a triumph of archive activism, Kameny Papers co-founder Charles Francis has retyped the petition and added background material. As editor, he has created Petition Denied, Revolution Begun: Frank Kameny Petitions the Supreme Court, now available exclusively on Kindle. I would be incredibly inspired by this even if he were not my partner.

Already housed in the Library of Congress's collection of Kameny papers, his Supreme Court petition will become part of the library's ongoing exhibit "Creating the United States," when they update it in late April. This early demand for legal recognition of lesbian and gay equality will stand among documents by Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other powerful voices in the shaping of America.