April 1

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April Fool's Day – see Today's Gay Wisdom below

April Is National Poetry Month.

1647 – John Wilmot , 2nd Earl of Rochester (d.1680), English libertine, friend of King Charles II, and writer of much satirical and bawdy poetry was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts.

If you've never read the poetry of Rochester, run, don't walk, to the nearest library and, after leafing through the pages, order a copy of your very own. He is easy to read, witty, very funny, and delightfully obscene. He's also proof positive that the world didn't begin with Queen Victoria, his age being almost as unzipped as he.

Rochester was an incomparably dissolute rake whose sexual philosophy was clearly "any port in a storm." Consequently his poetry extols the joys of every possible type of human coupling. One poem, possibly unique in the language, is about two men entering a woman fore and aft, but obviously making love to each other.

Other poems are about the pleasures of boys:

Rochester was once banished from the court of Charles II for smashing the king's clocks and dials when they refused to answer his drunken question, "Dost thou fuck?" He was like that; he was also burned out at age 33. The film The Libertine, based on Stephen Jeffreys' play, was shown at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival and was released in the UK on November 25, 2005. While taking some artistic liberties, it chronicles Rochester's life, with Johnny Depp as Rochester, Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, John Malkovich as King Charles II, and Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet.

1801 – Nikolai Gogol was born in the Ukraine to small-time nobility (d.1852).

Between the ages of twelve and nineteen, Gogol stayed at an all-male boarding school in the town of Nezhin. There, he began to write prose and poetry for the school's literary journal, had great success in school theatricals, especially in the parts of comical old women, and formed a sentimental attachment to his older fellow student, Gerasim Vysotsky.

Vysotsky graduated two years before Gogol and departed for St. Petersburg. During the two years Gogol had to wait for his own graduation, he yearned to join his friend and wrote him a series of amorous letters. But their reunion in 1828, when Gogol, too, moved to St. Petersburg came to naught—the first instance of Gogol's later infatuations with heterosexual men unable to respond.

In St Petersburg he taught and wrote a number of short stories set in St Petersburg and Ukrainian folk-tales, and began to enjoy sporadic success as a writer. In 1836 he produced the satirical farce The Inspector General in 1836, which caused much controversy and he fled to Rome.

In Italy, Gogol's inhibitions were loosened to the point where he allowed himself to love openly a young nobleman, Iosif Vielhorsky. It was a reciprocated love, but the young Iosif died of consumption less than a year after he and Gogol met.

Two years later, Gogol became hopelessly infatuated with the poet Nikolai Yazykov, whose verse was mostly about women's beauty and his attraction to it. After trying for months to win Yazykov and addressing passionate letters to him, Gogol understood the futility of this undertaking.

He spent 5 years in Germany and Italy and produced the first volume of his best known work, Dead Souls. Seeking a spiritual regeneration to match that of his main character and continue the novel, he subjected himself to a strict regime of prayer and fasting, but only succeeded in nervous collapse and burnt his work.

He spent the next seven years attempting to continue the novel, but became even more influenced by Orthodox Christianity, fell under the influence of a priest named Father Matthew Konstantinovski, who viewed his literary work - and his confessed homosexuality - as an abomination and prescribed abstinence from food and sleep to cleanse his 'inner filth'. Gogol again burnt his work and, despite the efforts of his friends, died of starvation. He was 43.

His work was a major influence on Dostoevsky and later, 20th Century Russian authors. Complex and original, his work, which uses elements of the fantastic and grotesque, social realism and humour, is permeated by his repressed homosexuality, especially in the fear of marriage that is a constant theme throughout.

1858 – Arnold Aletrino (d.1916) was a Dutch criminal anthropologist and writer, who published works on homosexuality in Dutch and French. He was a member of the Tachtigers, a group of young and revolutionary Dutch authors, who despised the pious poetry and prose of the mid-nineteenth century Dutch Victorian writers.

Arnold Aletrino was born in Amsterdam to Salomon Aletrino and Selima Pineda. As a medical student, he befriended Frederik van Eeden, who was to be a well-known psychiatrist and one of the most famous Tachtigers. In 1892, he married Rachel Mendes da Costa, who committed suicide five years later. Later, he married Jupie van Stockum. Aletrino never had children.

Aletrino published between 1889 and 1906 a few novels and collections of stories, all extremely bleak and cheerless in atmosphere. During this time, he worked as a medical doctor for the city of Amsterdam, especially for its firemen.

Aletrino had been schooled by Cesare Lombroso, who attempted to explain criminality in light of a degenerating central nervous system. Aletrino broke with Lombroso over homosexuals in a Dutch article in 1897, in which he claimed that homosexuality could occur in otherwise perfectly normal and healthy individuals. In later works he campaigned against the legal intolerance and prohibition of homosexuality in Europe.

In 1901 he defended homosexuals at the Fifth Congress of Criminal Anthropology in Amsterdam. He was accused of "defending immorality." He continued to fight throughout his life to engender a more tolerant and understanding attitude of homosexuality. In 1912 he participated in founding the Dutch branch of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which was first founded in Germany in 1897 by gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld.

In his final years, an incurably ill man, he lived with his wife in Switzerland. Aletrino died 16 January 1916 in Chernex, Switzerland, near Geneva, aged 57.

1866 – Ferruccio Busoni (d.1924); an Italian composer, pianist, teacher of piano and composition, writer on musical questions, and conductor. This important musician was torn by several major conflicts. Like Rachmaninoff, he was one of the great pianists of his day, yet yearned for more time for composing, his first love. He was an Italian who wanted to contribute to the musical life of his own country, and yet was far more attracted to the musical heritage of Germany, where he settled and spent most of his life.

He was married, but apparently liked men, too. At least that's what pianist Egon Petri (1881-1962) claimed - and he was in a position to know. He once walked in on his famous teacher and discovered him in bed with Italian Futurist painter, Umberto Boccioni.

1895 – Blues singer, lyricist, and actress Alberta Hunter (d.1984), a distinctive stylist and one of the top recording artists in the 1920s and 1930s, experienced a dramatic comeback in her old age. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was reared, Hunter left home at age fifteen for Chicago, where, lying about her age, she launched her singing career in the city's blooming saloon and club scene.

Possessed of abundant talent and stage presence, Hunter rose quickly to become one of the city's leading attractions in the 1910s and 1920s. Noted for singing the blues over troubled love affairs, she also wrote some of her own material, including "Down Hearted Blues."

Hunter began making recordings in 1921. She made more than 100 recordings for numerous labels. Among her best known recordings are those of "'Taint Nobody's Business If I Do" and "Aggravatin' Papa."

Having been molested as a child, Hunter was largely disdainful of men, particularly those who would control and manipulate her. In part because she was fiercely independent, rumors began to circulate regarding Hunter's sexuality.

In 1919, perhaps in part to quell these stories, Hunter married Willard Townsend. However, the couple never slept together. After the wedding they moved in with Hunter's mother, Miss Laura, and Hunter slept with her instead. Hunter left him two months later and obtained a divorce in 1923.

In the days of Prohibition, almost anything went, and in the notorious "buffet flats," where many of the saloon singers also entertained, homosexuality was, if not fully accepted, at least tolerated and acknowledged. Although Hunter never discussed her lesbianism, she also did not keep her relationships hidden.

During her long-term relationship with Lottie Tyler, they shared apartments in New York and traveled to Europe together. Friends later recalled their relationship as volatile. Eventually, Lottie fell in love with another woman.

Hunter also maintained serious flirtations with men but none developed into a lasting relationship. During her later years, rather than pursue the company of either men or women, Hunter focused her attention on caring for Miss Laura.

Like other African-American entertainers, Hunter also traveled to Europe, where racism was less oppressive. She performed in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. In 1928 she was featured opposite Paul Robeson in the London production of Showboat.

By the 1950s, however, the bookings had dried up and Hunter sought a new career. She conned her way into a New York hospital's training program for licensed practical nurses by subtracting a dozen years from her age.

Hunter was forced to retire from nursing in 1977; the hospital believed she had reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy (she was actually eighty-two). That same year she embarked upon a remarkable return to performing.

She proved a sensation. She performed regularly at The Cookery in Greenwich Village and was a hit with audiences worldwide. Hunter became the toast of the talk-show circuit as well. She was full of energy, life, and humor.

She died on October 17, 1984, aged 89.

1896 – Germany: The first issue of Der Eigene (Self-Ownership), an openly homosexual publication, appears from 1896 to 1932. Adolf Brand writes in this first issue: "This journal is dedicated to Eigen people, such people as are proud of their Eigenheit and wish to maintain it at any price." Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist, and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.

1902 – Whittaker Chambers (d.1961) was a writer and editor and one-time member of the American Communist Party.

Summoned to appear before the much-feared House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948, Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a personable and successful executive who had previously worked at the U. S. State Department, of being a communist spy. Hiss vehemently denied the charge, though he was later convicted of perjury and served over three years in prison.

Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers into an aristocratic New York family. His father, also named Jay Vivian, was a bisexual who kept a second residence apart from his wife and children so that he could pursue gay relationships.

In 1919, after graduation from high school, Chambers left home. Seeking experience and adventure, he spent several months working on railroad crews and in shipyards. He returned to enter Columbia University, but in 1923 left to spend time in Europe.

Chambers' travels introduced him to the lives of working class people and immigrants and to the ideas of communism. He began to read the writings of Soviet Russian leader Lenin and soon became a communist. He worked as a writer and editor for the party newspaper Daily Worker and, later, for the Stalinist organ The New Masses.

In 1932, Chambers was chosen by party leadership to be a part of an underground communist organization devoted to passing U. S. government secrets to the Soviet Union. For the next six years, he worked for the group.

In 1931 he had married fellow party member Esther Shemitz. They had two children, and Chambers began to fear for his family. He and Esther defected from the party and went into hiding for almost a year. In 1939, Chambers got a job as a book reviewer at Time magazine and began to work his way up to editor.

Chambers was a senior editor at Time in 1948 when anti-communist fervor began to sweep the United States. He was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessed his own past connections to the party, and shocked the nation by naming a popular former State Department employee, Alger Hiss, as a fellow spy.

Rumors of Chambers' homosexuality and of an attraction or relationship between Chambers and Hiss persisted throughout the case and into the present. The aura of homosexuality in this case helped perpetuate the connection in the public mind between homosexuality and treason that was a hallmark of McCarthyism.

Hiss not only denied being a member of the communist underground, but also denied being close friends with Chambers. During the hearings and Hiss's later perjury trial, his lawyers seemed to be planning to use Chambers' gay activities to discredit him. To forestall this, Chambers "confessed" to homosexual tendencies, but insisted that he had overcome them. The Hiss defense never brought up Chambers' gayness, perhaps fearing that the accusation might backfire on Hiss himself.

After Hiss was convicted, not of treason, but of lying to the grand jury, Chambers found that his own life would never be the same. The details of his past made Time reluctant to have him back. He served as a government witness in several other anti-communist hearings and spent several years writing his memoir of the affair, which became a best seller on its publication in 1952.

On July 9, 1961, six years after Alger Hiss was released from prison, Chambers died of a heart attack at his Maryland farm.

The significance of the Chambers-Hiss case for gay history lies in the fact that it helped usher in McCarthyism, a dark period in American history in which gay men became the chief scapegoats of the Cold War. It was a time characterized by police harassment, witch hunts, suspicions of disloyalty, and dismissals from jobs, especially in the public sector.

1936 – Keith Milton Rhinehart (d.1999) was founder of the largest psychic and occult center in the USA, the Aquarian Foundation, Church of the New Age. When Keith was 10 years old, a psychic predicted he would be a renowned medium someday. He was the only medium in the world to have passed the scientific test conditions imposed by the fraud-proof infrared equipment of the Japanese Scientific Psychic Research Society.

Keith was a spiritualist, medium, and political activist who performed séances and apports. An apport is an object that appears after having ostensibly been de-materialized from somewhere else and then materialized in the séance room. Such items as semi-precious stones appear to come out of Keith's eyes, mouth, and skin.

Such occult events fueled a long-standing police issue. Lois, Keith's secretary, said: "Some of the controversy and hearsay about Keith was that he took money from older people, but they did this on their own. They couldn't even decide on the color of their toilet paper without going to séances every week."

The vice squad was looking for a reason to bust him for fraud but was unable to, so they zeroed in on his homosexuality. At this time he had a short-lived television program where Keith championed the Gay cause and publically called for tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality. The police used the testimony of a 17-year-old hustler and booked Keith on bogus sodomy charges.

Keith spent three years in Walla Walla prison, spending the first 37 days in solitary confinement.

Prison took a heavy toll on Keith, but that didn't stop him from championing prisoners' rights and the abolishment of the sodomy law.

A friend, Ben Shepherd said, "His apports were really good. They would come in through a trumpet, orchids with dew on them, a vase, a spear, and one lady got a diamond. I don't know if Keith fabricated, what I saw could not have been. There was no way that a trumpet could fly around the room. There were no wires. How could it go from wall to wall, row to row, all the way to the back over people's heads?"

Another, Bill Plant, commented: "He lived two lives, Gay and straight. He kept his Gay life low-key, though most great mediums are Gay because they are both feminine and masculine. He accepted being Gay. He said in his last incarnation he was a woman and came back too soon & and that's the reason he's Gay."

Keith loved his two pug dogs and Tammy, a female lion he had raised from a kitten. Tammy was not dangerous and would sit on the podium during a service at the Aquarian Foundation, but the neighbors near Keith's large home were extremely against exotic pets and the wild parties of Keith's. They were not amused to see Keith in his rhinestone jacket and Tammy in the back seat of Keith's Cadillac convertible parading around the city, causing great excitement.

1941 – The New Hampshire Supreme Court interprets the state's "unnatural and lascivious acts" law to include fellatio.

1942 – Samuel Delany, African-American, writer and academic, award winning science- fiction author. Delany has written works that have garnered substantial critical acclaim, including the novels The Einstein Intersection, Nova, Hogg, Dhalgren, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. He has held professorships in Literature and Creative Writing at several U.S. universities.

Samuel Delany, nicknamed "Chip", was born and raised in Harlem. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met on their first day together in high school in September 1956, and were married five years later in August 1961, due to her pregnancy (which later miscarried). Their marriage (which alternatively encompassed periods of cohabitation and separation, experiments in polyamory, and extramarital affairs with men and women conducted by both parties) endured for fourteen years. Delany and Hacker permanently separated in 1975 and divorced in 1980.

Delany has identified as a gay man since adolescence, though some authors have classified him as bisexual.

Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as two prize-winning short stories. In 1966, with Hacker remaining in New York, Delany took an extended trip to Europe, spending several months in Turkey and Greece. These locales found their way into several pieces of his work at that time.

After returning from Europe, Delany began working with sexual themes and wrote two pornographic works, one of which (Hogg) was considered to be completely unpublishable due to the nature of its content. It would, in fact, be twenty years from the time Delany finished writing the novel before it saw print.

He then turned his attention to mainstream literature, pornography, and non-fiction, the latter mostly in the form of literary criticism, interviews, and memoirs. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City. Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.

Since 1991, Delany has been in a committed nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor; their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoir Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artist Mia Wolff. Rickett and Delany currently reside in the walk-up apartment on New York's Upper West Side that he has maintained since 1975. After sixteen years, he recently retired from teaching at Temple University.

1959 – James Timothy Hunt is an American-Canadian author and journalist. He has also written children's books under the pen name Tim Beiser.

Hunt was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and attended university in Montana, receiving a B.S. in Economics and Business Administration from Rocky Mountain College in 1981. He became a Canadian citizen in 2004, and resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Grignan, France, with his husband, Morton Beiser and twin sons, Daniel and Rowan.

During his 16 years as a resident of New York City, he became known as a playwright and author of science fiction short stories. His plays Angel Fire and The Lunatic were presented Off-Off Broadway. His short fiction can be found in the anthologies Lovers and Other Monsters and Don't Open This Book, both published by Doubleday. He has been writer in residence three times at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and was the founder of The Writers' Workout creative writing studio in New York. He received a B.A.A. in Journalism from Toronto's Ryerson University in 1999.

Hunt has written for many publications in Canada, including National Post Business, Toronto Life, Elm Street, Reader's Digest, and Saturday Night. A feature article in Saturday Night in June 2000 about Owens Wiwa, brother of controversially-executed Nigerian environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was expanded in 2005 into a book about the ordeal, The Politics of Bones.

In 2007, Hunt began writing children's fiction for Tundra Books under the pseudonym Tim Beiser. He is the author of Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog published by Tundra Books. In his "fresh" rhyming verses, Beiser employs "all the tricks of the trade, such as enjambment, sound echoes, and internal rhyme."

Since 2013, Hunt as worked as a script supervisor, screenwriter, and actor in the film and television industry.

1962 – Phillip Schofield is an English television presenter who works for ITV. He is currently the co-presenter of ITV's This Morning (2002–present) and Dancing on Ice (2006–2014, 2018–present). Schofield gained national attention working for the BBC, first as a continuity presenter for Children's BBC on weekdays from 1985 to 1987. His other television work includes Going Live! (1987–1993), All Star Mr & Mrs (2008–2016), The Cube (2009–2015, 2020–present), Text Santa (2011–2015), and 5 Gold Rings (2017–present).

Schofield was born in Oldham, Lancashire. He grew up in Newquay, Cornwall, where he attended Trenance Infant School and Newquay Tretherras School. When he was 15, his first foray into media was a Sunday show on Hospital Radio Plymouth. After many years of writing letters to the BBC, at 17, Schofield took up the position of bookings clerk and tea boy for BBC Radio at Broadcasting House in London, where he was, at the time, the youngest employee.

Aged 19, Schofield moved with his family to New Zealand, where he made his television debut as the initial presenter of the youth music programme Shazam! on 23 February 1982. He also spent two years working for the Auckland-based station Radio Hauraki.

In 1985, he returned to Britain, where he became the first in-vision continuity presenter for Children's BBC on weekdays for two years from September 1985 in what was known as the 'Broom Cupboard'. He left to present Going Live! on Saturday mornings between September 1987 and April 1993. From 1988 to 1991, he was the host of the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, a pop-magazine awards show.

In the early 1990s, Schofield moved to adult-orientated television with various programmes for ITV, such as Schofield's Quest, Schofield's TV Gold and Ten Ball. From 1994 to 1997, he presented Talking Telephone Numbers for five series and in 1996 he hosted a show about remarkable coincidences called One in a Million. He co-authored the book that came out of the series.

In the following decade, Schofield presented the National Lottery Winning Lines programme for BBC One between June 2001 and October 2004. And between 2002 and 2006, he co-hosted the BBC quiz show Test the Nation with Anne Robinson.

In July 2006, he signed an exclusive two-year contract with ITV, reported to have been worth £5 million. The exclusive deal also meant he could no longer present Test the Nation and was replaced by Danny Wallace.

Since 2002, Schofield has been a presenter on the ITV daytime show This Morning replacing John Leslie with Fern Britton until 2009 and with Holly Willoughby who replaced Britton in September that year. In May 2008, Schofield's father, Brian, died from a long-standing heart condition, which led to Schofield taking a break from presenting This Morning. John Barrowman stood in for him until his return.

Schofield has dual British and New Zealand citizenship. He married his long-term partner Stephanie Lowe in March 1993; the couple have two daughters. They reside in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

On 7 February 2020, Schofield came out as gay via a statement posted on his Instagram story, followed up in an interview on This Morning, stating that "with the strength and support of my wife and my daughters, I have been coming to terms with the fact that I am gay". He has said he thought he was bisexual when he married his wife in 1993, but realised later that he was gay.

1970 – The Advocate estimates that there are approximately 6,817,000 gays and lesbians living in the United States.

1970 – The Arizona Supreme Court rules that masturbation of another person violates the "lewd or lascivious conduct" law.

1971 – Staff Sergeant Eric Alva, born today, was the first U.S. military service member injured in the Iraq Occupation. He is a native of San Antonio, Texas. He joined the United States Marine Corps in 1990 at the age of 19. He was in charge of 11 Marines in a supply unit when, on March 21, 2003, he stepped on a land mine, losing his right leg.

Alva, a native of San Antonio, Texas, grew up in a military family. He graduated from high school in 1989, weighing just 90 pounds. He joined the United States Marine Corps in 1990 at the age of 19 when he already knew he was gay and the U.S. military excluded all gays and lesbians from service, open or not. He served for 13 years, including postings in Okinawa and Somalia. For much of his career, he was out to his fellow Marines.

On July 23, 2008, Alva testified about DADT before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. He said: "Unit cohesion is essential. What my experience proves, they are wrong about how to achieve it. My being gay and even many of my colleagues knowing about it didn't damage unit cohesion. They put their lives in my hands, and when I was injured, they risked their lives to save mine." He described intimate living conditions while stationed in Somalia. He also reported conversations with military personnel from other countries in which they uniformly expressed surprise that "our Nation is so further behind others when we seem to be the forefront of trying to be the example."

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, General Peter Pace said, "I believe homosexual acts between individuals are immoral." Alva commented: "His remarks were insensitive and disrespectful to the thousands of men and women who are serving in the military at this current time under the policy." In December 2010, Marine Corps commandant Gen. James F. Amos said the presence of homosexuals in the marines would pose a "distraction" and that "I don't want to have any Marines that I'm visiting at Bethesda [National Naval Medical Center] with no legs be the result of any type of distraction." Alva commented: "He pretty much spit on me, my Purple Heart, and my 13 years of service. I would definitely ask Amos for a meeting to explain his comments, and I’d bring my Purple Heart with me."

He worked with Democratic representative Martin Meehan of Massachusetts and, with a bipartisan group of representatives to Capitol Hill, reintroduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, legislation that would repeal the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding homosexual conduct. Of this, he said: "We're losing probably thousands of men and women that are skilled at certain types of jobs, from air traffic controllers to linguists, because of this broken policy." Alva also served as the Grand Marshall of the 2008 Chicago Gay and Lesbian Pride parade held on Sunday, June 29, 2008.

1971 – The French newspaper Tout calls for complete sexual liberation in France. Police seize the publication calling it an "outrage to public morals."

1972 – Delaware decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1973 – Today is the birthday of American television anchor, radio personality and political commentator Rachel Maddow. Her syndicated talk radio program, The Rachel Maddow Show, airs on Air America Radio. Maddow also hosts a nightly television show, The Rachel Maddow Show, on MSNBC. She was also a guest host of Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Race for the White House. Maddow is the first openly Gay anchor to be hired to host a prime- time news program in the United States.

Maddow earned a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994. At graduation she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 2001, she completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree (DPhil) in politics from Oxford University. Her doctoral thesis is titled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons. She was the first openly gay American to win a Rhodes scholarship.

Maddow lives in Manhattan and western Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. The couple met in 1999 when Mikula hired Maddow to do yard work at her home. Maddow was working on her doctoral dissertation at the time. Their first date was at a National Rifle Association "Ladies' Day on the Range" event.

1975 – The District of Columbia Court of Appeals rules that the city's solicitation law outlaws solicitation only for sodomy, because the Court feels that sodomy is the only sex act that is "indecent" or "obscene" within the meaning of the law.

1975 – Mandate an openly gay nudie magazine makes its debut

1976 – South Dakota decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

1978 – A new Canadian Immigration Act goes into effect which removes the prohibition against gays and lesbians from entering the country.

1979 – The Village People’s song In The Navy begins a thirteen-week run on the nation’s Top 40.  The U.S. Navy briefly considers using the song as a recruitment theme until the full implications of the lyrics are explained.

1981 – Ebony magazine poses the question, "Is Homosexuality a Threat to the Black Family?" (The article concludes that it is not.)

1982 – Washington repeals its law banning media publicity of sodomy crimes.

1986 – This is the birthday of the multiple gold-medal winning speed skater Ireen Wüst.

Born in Goirle, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, the long track all round speed skater won the gold medal in the 2006 Turin Winter Olympic Games 3000-meter event becoming the youngest Dutch Olympic champion in Winter Games history.

She won gold again in the 1500 m. race at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. At the 2014 Winter Olympic Gamesshe won two gold and three silver medals, making her the most decorated athlete at the Sochi Games. Following her victory in the 1500 metres at the 2018 Winter Olympics, she has won a record ten Olympic medals, more than any other speed skater, making her the most successful athlete of the Netherlands at the Olympics. She is also a six-time world all-round champion, a twelve-time world single distance champion, and a five-time European all-round champion. In 2014, she was elected by Reuters as the Sportswoman of the World.

Wüst is openly lesbian. Wust came out as bisexual in 2009. In March 2017, Wüst confirmed she is in a relationship with fellow skater Letitia de Jong.

With her victory in the 1,500-meter speed skating race at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, out bisexual speed skater Ireen Wüst became the first athlete in history to win individual gold medals in five straight Olympics. Wüst was also the first known out LGBTQ+ competitor at the Beijing Olympics to win a medal, in a country which bans homosexuality.

Wüst said Beijing would be her last Olympics, as she plans on retiring and getting married to her girlfriend, Letitia de Jong.

1986 – Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen is a Cuban-American transgender LGBT rights advocate.

Born Amanda Michelle Lehtinen in Miami, Florida Heng-Lehtinen is a graduate of Palmer Trinity School where he was on the honor roll several times. In high school, he was active in a dramatic arts club and a mountaineering team, served in the Honor Council, and founded a chapter of Amnesty International at the school. He began living openly as a transgender man while attending Brown University, which is when he informed his parents.

Heng-Lehtinen was a member of Queer Alliance at Brown University. While attending Brown University, he produced the documentary Free Within These Walls, about Cuban prisoners of conscience. Heng-Lehtinen was a field organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Later, he was the Membership Director at Gender Justice LA, a grassroots organization that works to build the power of the transgender community in Los Angeles through community organizing and leadership development. He also worked in fundraising at Liberty Hill Foundation, organized a transgender leadership development conference with the Transgender Law Center, and served as the membership manager at GLAAD, an LGBT media advocacy organization.

In May 2015, Heng-Lehtinen was honored by the LGBT-rights group, SAVE, at its 2015 Champions of Equality reception. He was honored for appearing with his mother in a highly-rated television interview, increasing visibility of the transgender community.

In May 2016, Heng-Lehtinen and his parents appeared in a public service announcement titled "Family is Everything", which discusses his family's personal journey and acceptance, that all South Florida families should embrace their children, and the reason why all Americans should have the same opportunities regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Heng-Lehtinen is now the public education director at Freedom For All Americans, the national campaign for LGBT nondiscrimination protections.

He is married to Kristofer Heng-Lehtinen, who is of Scandinavian descent and an artist living and working in Miami. Rodrigo Lehtinen changed his name to Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen when they married in March 2015.

1991 – The Georgia Court of Appeals overturns a solicitation conviction because the undercover officer encouraged the solicitation.

1993 – Andy Brennan is an Australian professional soccer player who plays as a winger or striker for South Melbourne.

In May 2019, Brennan came out as gay, becoming the first openly gay Australian male footballer.

Brennan joined the Newcastle Jets on 29 April 2015 from National Premier League side South Melbourne, signing a two-year deal. Due largely to ongoing injury problems, Brennan was forced to wait until 26 March 2016 to make his A-League debut against Perth Glory, replacing Mitch Cooper in a 2–1 loss. Brennan went on to make a total of three appearances in his maiden A-League season, all off the substitutes' bench.

On 19 January 2017, it was announced that Brennan had parted with the Jets by mutual consent. He made a total of five A-league appearances during his time with the Jets. He then returned to Bentleigh Greens SC in the Victorian Premier League. In November 2018, Brennan signed with Green Gully of the NPL Victoria League.

In an interview with the Herald Sun, Brennan came out as gay after being closeted for several months. He had previously dated women, but had been unsure of his sexuality for years, stating that it had been a "mental burden". Brennan is the first male Australian footballer to come out as gay, and one of only a few openly gay players playing professionally.

2001 – Four gay and lesbian couples are married in the Amsterdam City Hall shortly after midnight when a new law recognizing gay and lesbian marriage takes effect. Holland becomes the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage.

2007 – First North American Outgames in Calgary, Alberta, Canada bgins and runs until 8th April 2007.

2009 – Same-sex marriages legalised in Sweden, becoming effective 1st May 2009.

2004 - Michael Hendricks & Rene Leboeuf wed — first Gay marriage in Quebec. Happy Anniversary, guys!

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TODAY'S GAY WISDOM:

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, though not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1 and a date of some significance in queer history.

The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, enemies and neighbors, or sending them on fool's errands, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. In some countries, April Fools' jokes (also called April Fools) are only made before noon on April 1st. April Fool's is second only to Halloween for queer history.

For LGBT people, the Fool, the Jester, the Joker/Jokester, the buffoon, the juglar, the trickster, the heckler, the scaramouche, the clown, or the harlequin are specific archetypes in same-sex history. All are traditionally linked with same-sex-oriented people: The Fool was a type of entertainer that came into popularity in the Middle Ages. Jesters typically wore brightly colored clothing in a motley (as the harlequin) pattern and his role was to speak truth to power and puncture the vain egos of leaders.

The Jester was a symbolic twin of the king. Like "in-betweens," all jesters and fools were thought of as special cases whom God had touched with a childlike madness—a gift, or perhaps a curse. Mentally handicapped people sometimes found employment by capering and behaving in an amusing way. In the harsh world of medieval Europe, people who might not be able to survive any other way thus found a social niche.

Jesters have long been featured on playing cards. Their hats, sometimes called the cap 'n bells, cockscomb or coxcomb, were especially distinctive; made of cloth, they were floppy with three points each of which had a jingle bell at the end. The three points of the hat represent the ass's ears and tail worn by jesters in earlier times. Other things distinctive about the jester were his incessant laughter and his mock scepter, known as a bauble or maharoof.

Clown society is a term used in anthropology and sociology for an organization of comedic entertainers (Heyoka or "clowns") who have a formalized role in a culture or society. Many clown societies have sacred roles, to represent a trickster or coyote character in religious ceremonies. Other times the purpose served by members of a clown society is only to parody excessive seriousness, or to deflate pomposity.

In the sense of how clowns serve their culture: A clown shows what is wrong with the way things are. A clown shows how to do ordinary things the wrong way. A clown makes fun of the serious, lightens the moment. A clown "speaks truth to power."

Members of a clown society always dress in some kind of a special costume reserved for clowns, which is usually an absurdly extreme form of normal dress. The sacred clown and his apparently antisocial behavior is condoned in some Indian ceremonies. While in their costume, clowns have special permission from their society to parody or criticize defective aspects of their own culture. They are always required to be funny. In the case of the "jester" at the English Royal Court with his cap of bells and pig's bladder stick he was allowed to make fun of, be indelicate and sometimes downright rude to members of the royal family and their entourage without fear of reprisal.

Clown societies usually train new members to become clowns. The training normally takes place by an apprentice system, although there may be some rote schooling as well. Sometimes the training is improvisational comedy, but usually a clown society trains members in well known forms of costume, pantomime, song, dance, and common visual gags. Occasionally these include a scripted performance, or skit, which is part of a standard repertoire that "never gets old," and is expected by members of the culture that the clown society is part of.

Another well known image of the Trickster/Fool is the flute-playing fool. What is not so commonly known is that the flute-player, in his older forms was, in fact, self-fellating, not playing a flute.

Finally, modern queer culture, of course, has developed the traditions of drag and genderfuck that is a continuation of this archetypical social role.

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