In 1958, when native Texan Morris Kight arrived in Los Angeles, he was almost forty and ready to fight for gay rights, but he considered the Mattachine Society elitist. In reaction, he co-founded the third outpost of the Gay Liberation Front, after New York and Berkeley. One of their earliest battles was against a West Hollywood diner called Barney's Beanery which had a painted sign and printed matchbooks with the misspelled warning Fagots Stay Out. After three months of protests, sit-ins, and media glare, the owner removed the original sign, but as soon as the attention subsided, he remounted an identical sign and kept it on display until 1984. In June 1970 to celebrate the first anniversary of Stonewall, Kight helped organize Christopher Street West, which was only permitted after he, Troy Perry, and the ACLU sued reluctant city officials and the hostile police department for the right to have a parade.
Kight's proudest moment came in October 1971, when he and two other activists opened the nation's first gay and lesbian community center. With his sometimes abrasive strategies and leftist politics, Kight had many detractors within the movement. One of those was David Goodstein who transformed the Advocate from a newspaper to a magazine and prohibited his reporters from writing about Kight and other people he thought hurt the image of gay rights. Kight's protest of anti-gay Coors created a public disaster for Outfest, which had finally convinced the brewery to sponsor their film festival. He was also a vocal critic of 1978's proposed amendment to ban gay teachers from public schools. In January 2003, Kight donated his 3,000-item collection of art, papers, and memorabilia to the ONE Institute. Three days later he died, at eighty-three, survived by his partner of twenty-five years, Roy Zucheran.
I was his official escort (ha!) at the Stonewall 25 rally in New York. He was awesome and very, very cranky when the announcer called him Morris Knight.
Poor Calvin, 71 today and alone. As a young man he was protégé of the ne plus ultra of Old World sophistication -- the elegant, Paris-born, never-married, gay Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, banker, fashion editor of of Town & Country and Vogue, and Best Dressed Hall of Famer who favored the subtle, grayed palette and understated cut on which Calvin has built his empire -- and after two tasteful lavender marriages Calvin finally comes out with a protégé of his own of sorts, a boyfriend 49 years his junior, named Nick, who's just trash. Baron Nikky would not approve. Now split for good, Nick Gruber, washed up at 23, in and out of rehab, frequently arrested for fights, last summer was thrown out of the A-list Fire Island fundraiser Ascension for a hissyfit in which he threw punches and told the VIP homos to quit touching him because's he's NOT GAY, which he still claims. He later apologized but quote hates labels and is "STRAIGHT." As for other statements of non-reality, Nick also claims he 'never said' anything about book writing, even though the media has copies of the tell-all proposal Obsession: My Life with Calvin Klein co-written by Lisa Arcella that they shopped to every publisher in New York. Are you ready for the sad part? Like Liberace with Scott Thorson, Calvin wanted Nick to look like him and "the proposal speaks of the new clothes, haircut and teeth Klein fitted Gruber with, turning him into a younger version of the designer. Klein also supposedly booked, 'a steroid doctor to help [Nick] keep his lean and pumped look,' gave Nick skin resurfacing and set him up with 'speech therapy to upgrade his speaking style.'" Happily, Calvin's real child, his daughter Marci, turned out better. At 46, she's won four Emmys for producing Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock.
Also, Poor male models! So you can say you learned something today: According to Forbes, 2013's highest paid male model in the world, Sean O'Pry, earned only $1.5 million (compare, please, to the highest paid girl model's $42 million). The #9 male model made a measly $290,000. See all ten and be shocked.