April 6

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1483 – Raphael, Italian Renaissance painter and architect born (d. 1520); Almost every Renaissance painter has been thought to be homosexual by one writer or another over the years, and Raphael, “the divine painter” is no exception.

The clues, however, may be purely coincidental in Raphael’s case. As a young man he was exceedingly beautiful. As an adult he lived together with his two favorite students, Giulio Romano, reputed to be bisexual, and Gianfrancesco Penni. When he died at 37, he left the larger part of his estate to the two young men.

1618 – The Memorandum Of Valverde is a little- known but significant legal text, preserved in the National Historical Archive of Spain. It's been dated to April of 1618 and was sent by twelve residents of the village of Valverde de Alcalá to the governing Council of Castile .

It lists charges against the master of the palace, a Gonzalo Martel de los Rios, of noble origin and probably linked to the major houses of the Spanish aristocracy. He held the lordship of the town. The document lays out a rather detailed set of charges against the Lord, "offenses" committed both by the Lord and by his servants. He and his servants are charged with committing homosexual and "unnatural" acts and with "blasphemy" against God. The neighbors of the Lord called it heretical and insane what the Lord was up to with his servants in the palace.

No one knows what happened with these charges or what happened to the Lord of Valverde. The Lord's reported comment in response to the charges:

1903 – Charles R. Jackson born (d.1968); relatively little seems to be known about Charles R. Jackson considering he is the author of a well-known novel which is still in print, upon which a multi Oscar-winning film was based - The Lost Weekend.

Born in Summit, New Jersey, as a young man he worked as an editor for local newspapers and in various bookstores in New Jersey, Chicago and New York prior to falling ill with tuberculosis. Jackson spent the years 1927-1931 in sanatoriums and eventually recovered in Switzerland. His successful battle cost him a lung and served as a catalyst for his alcoholism. He returned to New York at the height of the Great Depression and his difficulty in finding work spurred on his binge drinking. His battle to stop drinking started in late 1936 and was largely won by 1938, the year in which he married. During this time he was a free-lance writer and wrote radio scripts.

Jackson is best known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend. Made into a critically acclaimed film by Billy Wilder starring Ray Milland in 1945, The Lost Weekend is a semi-autobiographical novel detailing a struggling writer's five-day alcohol binge. He also straggled with a growing fear that he was homosexual. As a youth, he and his brother had both been sexually molested by a local male music teacher.

But it is Jackson's second novel that is interesting to us. In 1946, he published The Fall of Valor, a novel exploring a married man's growing awareness of his homosexuality and his love for a young Marine captain. Jackson was married and appears to have had two daughters, but this novel has the earmarks of first-hand experience. Long out of print, this is a significant 'lost' gay novel of the 20th century, although it appears to have been a critical and financial success at the time.

Jackson was a binge drinker who recovered sufficiently to speak to others in large groups, sharing his experience, strength and hope. He was the first speaker in AA to openly address drug dependence (barbiturates and paraldehyde) as part of his story.

Jackson appears to have spent much of his life battling the twin demons of alcohol dependency and a homosexual nature he struggled to accept, and his intense, compelling description of homoeroticism and sexual obsession in The Fall of Valor has the authenticity of a first person narrative.

After relapsing into alcoholism Jackson became estranged from his family and rented an apartment in New York City that was shared with his male lover in 1965. He died in New York in 1968 after committing suicide, never having managed to defeat his alcoholism.

1929 – A police raid on the Lafayette Baths in New York leads to charges being filed against patrons for acts they never committed. One patron has two ribs broken and is blinded in one eye by police brutality.

1932 – Jim Osgood (aka Jim Bradford), born in New Castle, Penn, was a long-time Chicago gay activist (d.2004). Jim was a Buddhist and had strong beliefs in social causes for human rights, which made him an activist and valued member of various organizations.

Jim received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago in 1954 and his Master of Library Science degree from the School of Library and Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh in 1962. Jim worked as a translator and interpreter for the United Nations prior to his moving to Chicago. Following a career as a librarian, he retired from Kennedy-King College in Chicago May 14, 1994.

He and his partner, Edward Louzao, were together for 47 years until the death of Louzao.

Osgood/Bradford was an activist for gay rights, serving on the Board of Directors and as President of Mattachine Midwest in the late '60s and early '70s. His work helped many individuals come to terms with their homosexuality, long before the efforts became fashionable and acceptable.

Other organizations he was involved with include groups opposing the death penalty, groups supporting draft resistance during the Vietnam War era, peace and the anti-war movements, Tibetan human rights and the Moratorium, to name a few. Jim and his partner Ed were members of the 57th Street Friends Meeting (Quakers).

1941 – Ed Schrock is a retired naval officer (1964-1988) and Republican politician who served as a member of the Senate of Virginia from 1995 - 2001 and the U.S. House of Representatives from January 2001 to January 2005, representing the Second Congressional District of Virginia.

His 24-year career as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy included two tours of duty in Vietnam. After retiring from active military service, Schrock worked as an investment broker and then served in the Virginia State Senate, from 1995 to 2001.

Schrock announced on August 30, 2004, that he would abort his 2004 attempt for a third term in Congress after allegedly being caught on tape soliciting sex from a male prostitute. In the weeks before his announcement, Michael Rogers' blogACTIVE.com had said that Schrock is gay — or at least a bisexual — despite having aggressively opposed various gay-rights issues in Congress, such as same-sex marriage and gays serving in the military.

Schrock was briefly covered in the 2009 documentary Outrage, which profiles allegedly closeted gay public officials who have endorsed anti-gay legislation.

1955 – The acclaimed non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor Rob Epstein, was born on this date in New Jersey. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. He has also won four national Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, two DuPont Columbia Journalism awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous other awards for his documentary films.

Epstein began his filmmaking career working on the 1978 film Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, a documentary about the lives of gay and lesbian Americans. Epstein answered an ad that read: "We are looking for a non-sexist man to work on a documentary film on gay life. No experience necessary, just insane dedication and a cooperative spirit."

In 1984, Epstein won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature at age 29 for The Times of Harvey Milk which he conceived and directed. After its theatrical release in 1985, The Times of Harvey Milk won numerous major awards including the Academy Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Peabody Award, and three Emmys for Epstein (as director/producer, co-editor, and interviewer), and went on to receive worldwide acclaim and distribution, showing at major film festivals, theaters, and on television on almost every continent. This film was selected by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Sundance Institute as a preservation project and a 35mm digitially re- mastered version of the film was released in June 2000.

In 1987, Epstein teamed up with filmmaker Jeffrey Friedman to form Telling Pictures in San Francisco, California. Their first film together was Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt on the Mall in Washington DC. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Common Threads tells the dramatic story of the first decade of AIDS in America through stories of five individuals featured in the Quilt. Epstein won his second Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Common Threads, which also won the Peabody Award and an Emmy for Bobby McFerrin's original all-vocal score.

Their next film, The Celluloid Closet, based on the book by film historian Vito Russo, depicts a 100-year history of homosexual characters in Hollywood movies. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, The Celluloid Closet had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, was featured at the Toronto, New York, and Sundance Film Festivals (at which it won the Freedom of Expression Award from the jury), and numerous international festivals, including Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. In addition to winning the Peabody Award and Columbia DuPont Journalism Award, Epstein and Friedman won Emmys for directing.

In 2000, Epstein and Friedman directed and produced Paragraph 175, a film that explores a hidden chapter in history: the experiences of homosexuals during the Nazi regime in Europe. Narrated by Rupert Everett, and filmed in Germany, France and Spain, Paragraph 175 had its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2000, where it was awarded the documentary Grand Jury Prize for Directing, followed by a European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, where it won the FIPRESCI (International Film Critics Association Award).

He and Friedman have followed these films up with "Howl", a biopic of Allen Ginsberg starring James Franco, Jon Hamm, and David Strathairn. Four short clips below.

1957 – Ed Gallagher (d.2005) was an American football player who played for the University of Pittsburgh at offensive tackle from 1977 to 1979.

In 1985, Gallagher attempted to commit suicide due to depression as he struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality. The incident occurred twelve days after his first sexual encounter with another man. Gallagher survived the suicide attempt, but was left paraplegic.

In 1985 he lay down atop the Kensico Dam, asked God for forgiveness, and rolled into the open space 100 feet above the ground. Gallagher had recently given into his gay sexual desires for the first time and the guilt was too much to take. But on that day he became the first person to ever survive a suicide attempt at the Kensico Dam. He saw it as a second chance at life, and he made every moment count.

Gallagher later stated that before his attempt, he "had become unable to reconcile his image of himself as an athlete with gay urges." However, he believed that the incident also helped him: "I was more emotionally paralyzed then, than I am physically now." He went on to become an author and speak out publicly about disabilities and homosexuality, including in an interview with CBC Radio's The Inside Track for "The Last Closet", a special episode about homophobia in sports which aired in 1993.

He was also the founder of the organization Alive to Thrive.

Gallagher was a fierce advocate for gay acceptance. He knew well the effects that overt and latent homophobia had on gay people, and he focused his efforts on helping kids accept themselves for who they are. Long before 'It Gets Better,' Gallagher was saying just that.

Gallagher died of a heart condition in 2005 at his home in New Rochelle, New York.

1959 – Jim Rondeau is a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba since 1999, and a cabinet minister in the provincial government of Greg Selinger. Rondeau is a member of the New Democratic Party. n April 2015, Rondeau announced he would not seek re-election.

Rondeau was born in Winnipeg. He holds a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Winnipeg and has completed post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Manitoba. He was a teacher at Norway House High School from 1981 to 1984 and later taught at Cranberry Portage, before becoming coordinator of the Frontier School Division at the University of Winnipeg. Rondeau helped establish several learning centres and libraries throughout the province, and founded a school-to-work transition program for young people from northern Manitoba. He also coached the Winnipeg Eagles Volleyball Club, and was coach and manager of the Manitoba Volleyball team in several North American Aboriginal Games.

Rondeau is the first openly gay member of the Manitoba legislature, and was the keynote speaker of Winnipeg's 2000 Gay Pride Parade. He encouraged the Doer government to introduce full legal equality for gay and lesbian couples during its first term, and strongly supported 2002 legislation that ensured full equality for all common-law relationships. He later became a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, which was legalized in Canada in 2005. Rondeau has said that his sexual orientation has never been controversial in his constituency, once telling a journalist, "People don't care one way or the other. I'm surprised, pleasantly surprised, that people don't make it an issue."

1964 – Tim Walz is an American politician serving as the 41st governor of Minnesota since 2019. He is a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL).

Walz was the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 1st congressional district from 2007 to 2019. The district comprises the state's southern end, running along the entire border with Iowa; it includes Rochester, Austin, Winona and Mankato. He was first elected in 2006, defeating six-term Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht. He was reelected five times and served on the Agriculture Committee, Armed Services Committee and Veterans' Affairs Committee. Walz also served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

In March 2017 Walz announced that he would not run for reelection to Congress and instead run for Governor of Minnesota. On November 6, 2018, Walz was elected governor, defeating Republican nominee, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson.

Walz supports LGBT rights, including federal anti-discrimination laws on the basis of sexual orientation. In a 2009 speech he called for an end to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Walz voted in favor of the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act and the Sexual Orientation Employment Nondiscrimination Act. In 2007, he received a 90% grade from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT organization. In 2011, Walz announced his support for the Respect for Marriage Act.

1969 – Louie Spence is an English dance expert, choreographer and television personality who is currently the artistic director at the London Pineapple Dance Studios. He was a professional dancer in his youth, performing in West End musicals such as Cats and Closer to Heaven, and has more recently become known from his appearances in the Sky1 docusoap Pineapple Dance Studios. He appeared as a judge on the seventh series of UK television show Dancing on Ice.

Spence was born in Ponders End, Enfield in north London and grew up in Braintree, Essex. He attended Notley High School before moving on to the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. He has subsequently danced with many recording artists.

Spence is openly gay and has been in a civil partnership with a Spanish man since 2007.

1983 – Rick Cosnett is a Zimbabwean-Australian actor. He is known for playing the roles of Wes Maxfield in The Vampire Diaries, Elias Harper in Quantico and Eddie Thawne in The Flash.

Cosnett was born and raised on a farm in Chegutu, Zimbabwe. His family took part in community musical theater there, which made him interested in acting from an early age. When he was seventeen, his family decided to move to Queensland, Australia, in large part due to the land reforms in Zimbabwe.

Cosnett attended the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. He originally received a scholarship to study music but graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Acting.

Cosnett is a cousin of Hugh Grant. On 13 February 2020, Cosnett publicly came out as gay on his Instagram account.

1984 – A Louisiana appellate court overturns a man's conviction for exposing and fondling an undercover police officer. The court said that the state's law on indecent exposure requires that the defendant expose him or herself, not another person.

2010 – Playwright Terrence McNally weds Tom Kirdahy, 46, in Washington D.C. ceremony. During a small ceremony under a tree blooming with white flowers, Kirdahy read from a scene in McNally's play "Corpus Christi," in which a gay, Christ-like figure named Joshua marries two apostles:

Kirdahy, a lawyer and Broadway producer, choked up as he recalled seeing the play before meeting the playwright. Actress Tyne Daly, who was currently starring in McNally's "Master Class" at the Kennedy Center festival, served as a witness at the sunlit wedding and read Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Actors John Glover and Malcolm Gets, both starring in "Traviata," also looked on. The Rev. George Walker of the People's Congregational United Church of Christ presented them as husbands and signed their marriage certificate. It will be recognized back home in New York City. McNally's most recent play, Mothers and Sons opened on Broadway in March, 2014.