April 20

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1188 – Died: St Hildegonde of Neuss (Also spelt Hildegund), German saint, biologically female, who dressed as a boy as a child, and lived as a man as an adult, before entering a male monastery. She was born at Neuss, near Cologne. After the death of her mother, at age 12, she went with her father, a knight, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. For her safety, during the trip, she was dressed as a boy and called "Joseph" for her protection.

While returning from the Holy Land Hildegund's father died, but she was able to make her own way home and maintained her disguise first as a boy and then as a man. Later, she made a pilgrimage to Rome, during which she had several adventures.

On one of them, she was condemned to be hanged as a robber and escaped only when a friend of the real robber cut her down from the gallows.

After that, she returned to Germany and was accepted into the Cistercian monastery at Shönau, near Heidelberg, concealing her gender, and to her death she was believed to be a man. Her true sex went undiscovered until her death in 1188.

A few years later, abbot Engelhartof Langheim wrote her biography. She is considered a saint, even though her cult is not approved by the Roman Catholic Church.

Aretino by Titian

1492 – The Renaissance writer and dramatist Pietro Aretino was born on this date (d.1556). Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography, notably in La Cazzaria ("The Book of the Prick"). This colorful writer and dramatist, described as the first professional writer of his century, was probably the son of a cobbler, although he preferred to claim he was illegitimate and of noble origin. His patrons included Popes (Leo X, Clement VII), Cardinals, kings (Francois I and Emperor Charles V) and other connoisseurs of the porn of the age. He had a flair for self-dramatization, a fertile dirty mind, and an uncanny knack for profiting from the politics of his age. He first achieved notoriety for a series of pornographic sonnets, each describing a different position of sexual intercourse, and each illustrated by Giulio Romano and in which he declares himself to have been a sodomite from birth.

Aretino prospered, living from hand to mouth as a hanger-on in the literate circle of his patron, sharpening his satirical talents on the gossip of politics and the Papal Curia, and turning the coarse Roman pasquinade into a rapier weapon of satire, until his sixteen ribald Sonetti Lussuriosi (Lust Sonnets) written to accompany Giulio Romano's exquisitely beautiful but utterly pornographic series drawings engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi under the title I Modi finally caused such outrage that he had to temporarily flee Rome.

In 2007, Michael Nyman set eight of the poems to music. They proved no less controversial in the twenty first century: at a 2008 performance at Cadogan Hall, the programs were withdrawn on allegations of obscenity.

In a letter to Giovanni de Medici written in 1524 Aretino encloses a satirical poem saying that due to a sudden aberration he has fallen in love with a female cook and "temporarily switched from boys to girls..." Later he was known and admired for his ragionamenti dialogues, often audaciously filthy, on contemporary Roman life. Public figures so feared his clever and vicious pen that Aretino became rich from promising not to write on certain subjects. He is said to have died from a stroke while laughing at a dirty joke.

Aretino was a close friend of Titian, who painted his portrait at least three times. The early portrait above is a psychological study of alarming modernity.

1857 – Herman Bang (d.1912) was a Danish writer and one of the men of the Modern Break-Through - the late 19th century literary movement in Scandinavia that replaced Romanticism. Bang was born of a noble family on the small Danish island of Als.

When he was twenty he published two volumes of critical essays on the realistic movement. In 1880 he published his novel Haabløse Slægter (Families without hope), which at once aroused attention. The main character was a young man who had a relationship with an older woman in Danish fin de siècle society. The book was considered pornographic and immoral at the time and was banned. After some time spent travelling and a successful lecture tour in Norway and Sweden, he settled in Copenhagen, and produced a series of novels and collections of short stories, which placed him in the front rank of Scandinavian novelists. Among his more famous stories are Faedra (1883) and Tine (1889).

Bang was a homosexual, a fact which partly isolated him in Danish cultural life and made him the victim of smear campaigns. He lived most of his life with his sister but found happiness for a few years with the Hungarian actor Max Eisfeld with whom he lived in Prague 1885-86.

Failed as an actor, Bang earned fame as a theatre producer in Paris and in Copenhagen. He was a very productive journalist, writing for Danish, Nordic and German newspapers, developing modern reporting. His article on the fire of Christiansborg Palace is a landmark in Danish journalism. Some of his books, including Tine and Katinka (English titles), were translated into many languages and filmed.

Of especial interest is Michael. Michael (also known as Mikaël, Chained: The Story of the Third Sex, and Heart's Desire) was a movie released in 1924 directed by fellow Dane Carl Theodor Dreyer (director of other notable silents such as The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)). Along with Different From the Others (1919) and Sex in Chains (1928), Michael is widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema.

The film is based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel Mikaël. It is the second screen adaptation of the book, the first being The Wings, made eight years prior by gay director Mauritz Stiller. Michael, however, follows Bang's storyline much more closely than the earlier film version had done.

Herman Bang's last years were embittered by persecutions and a declining health. He travelled widely in Europe and died during a recitation tour in the USA.

1895 – Henry de Montherlant was a French writer of essays and novels (d.1972), as well as one of the leading French playwrights of the twentieth century.

Descended from an old noble family, he was educated at private schools at Jeanson-de-Sailly, then at the Sainte-Croix academy at Neuilly-sur-Seine, where his family lived.

Conscripted in 1916, he was wounded and decorated. Marked by his experience of war, he wrote Songe (Dream), an autobiographic novel, as well as his Chant funèbre pour les morts de Verdun (Funeral Chant for the Dead at Verdun), both exaltations of heroism during the Great War.

His early successes were works such as the tetralogy Les jeunes filles (The Young Girls) (1936-1939) and Les célibataires (The Bachelors) (1934). At this time he did a lot of travelling, mainly to Spain, Italy, and Algeria.

From 1929 he began to write for the theatre, plays such as La reine morte (1934), Pasiphaé (1936), Le Maître de Santiago (1947), Port-Royal (1954), Le Cardinal d'Espagne (1960). He is particularly remembered as a playwright. In his plays, as well as in his novels, he frequently portrayed heroic characters displaying the moral standards he professed.

In Le solstice de Juin (1941) he expressed his admiration for the German army and claimed that France had been justly defeated and conquered in 1940.

Montherlant concealed his pederastic tendencies from the public during his lifetime. In 1912, he had been expelled from the Sainte-Croix de Neuilly academy for a relationship with a fellow student. Although not openly gay, Montherlant treated homosexual themes in his work, including his play La Ville dont le prince est un enfant (1952) and novel Les Garçons (The Boys), published in 1969 but written four or five decades earlier. Les garçons and his correspondence with Roger Peyrefitte, (author of Les amitiés particulières (1943), also about sexual relationships between boys at a Roman Catholic boarding school), are the main testaments to this side of his character.

In 1960 Montherlant was elected a member of the Académie française. His presentation speech dwelt mercilessly on the geography of New Zealand.

According to Peyrefitte, some time in 1970 he was beaten up by some youths, which caused a serious injury to his eye, as a consequence of which he became progressively blind.

He committed suicide in 1972, swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head.

1909 – Minnesota increases the penalty for the crime against nature to a maximum of 20 years but permits conviction upon proof of penetration only.

Isherwood and Neddermeyer

1914 – Heinz Neddermeyer was a German citizen considered to be the first great love of writer Christopher Isherwood.

Heinz and Christopher met in Berlin on March 13, 1932 when Heinz was 17. Christopher would often describe their relationship as an adoption, since Heinz was so much younger and not entirely mature. The couple lived together in Berlin until May 1933 when, because of the rise of Hitler, they were forced to flee the country. They traveled Europe and North Africa until May 12, 1937 when Heinz was expelled from Luxembourg and forced to return to Germany. The next day he was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to three and half years of forced labor and military service. He survived the forced labor which was brief. Being conditionally freed if he would take a wife, he married a woman named Gerda in 1938 and had a son named Christian, his only child, in 1940. It was not uncommon for gay men to take this drastic turn in their lives after being arrested and sentenced to prison for homosexuality by the Nazi party.

Although Heinz and Christopher continued to correspond, Heinz would not see Christopher again until November of 1952 while Christopher was visiting England and Germany for productions of his "Berlin Stories".

In November 1956 Christopher received a note from Heinz stating that he had been in a political argument at the factory where he worked in East Berlin. Fearing arrest, he fled to Hamburg. Christopher sent him some money. Nothing else is mentioned of Heinz in Christopher's diaries other than fond memories of their past in various cities around Europe and a kind note from Heinz when Christopher's mother passed away in August of 1960.

Heinz died in 1984.

1923 – Michigan eliminates the need to prove emission in sodomy cases.

1935 – Warren Casey (d.1988) was an American theatre composer, lyricist, writer, and actor. He is best known for being the writer and composer, with Jim Jacobs of the stage and film musical Grease.

In the mid-1960s, Casey met Jim Jacobs while acting with the Chicago Stage Guild, and the two began collaborating on a play with music about high school life during the golden age of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Entitled Grease, it premiered in 1971 at the Kingston Mines Theater, one of the pioneering companies of Chicago's off-Loop theater movement, in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago. Producers Ken Waissman and Maxine Fox saw the show and suggested to the playwrights that it might work better as a musical, and told them if the creative partners were willing to rework it and they liked the end result, they would produce it off-Broadway.

Casey quit his day job as a department store lingerie buyer and the team headed to New York City to collaborate on what would become Grease, which opened at the Eden Theatre in downtown Manhattan, moved to Broadway, and earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. The show went on to become a West End hit, a hugely successful film (for which he and Jacobs wrote additional songs), and a staple of regional theatre, summer stock, community theatre, and high school drama groups.

Casey was gay and he died of AIDS-related complications in Chicago at the age of 53. At the time of his death he was writing a musical with the Brazilian performer Valucha deCastro.

George Takei with husband Brad Altman

1937 – The American actor and Gay activist George Takei was born today. The Japanese American actor is best known for his role in the TV series Star Trek, in which he played the helmsman Hikaru Sulu on the USS Enterprise.

Takei was born in Los Angeles, California in 1937. In 1942, as part of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, the Takei family was originally housed in the horse stables of Santa Anita Park before being sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment in Arkansas. The family was later transferred to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. Despite this experience, the family developed a renewed dedication and remained involved in the American democratic process. He and his family returned to Los Angeles at the end of World War II.

Takei is also known for his baritone voice and deep-throated catch phrase, "Oh my!" In October 2005, Takei revealed in an issue of Frontiers magazine that he is Gay, and has been in a committed relationship with his partner, Brad Altman, for the last eighteen years. He said, "It's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

Nevertheless, Takei's sexuality had long been an open secret among Trek fans since the 1970s, and Takei did not conceal his active membership in Gay organizations including Frontrunners, where Takei met Altman.

On December 8, 2015, following Donald Trump's call to ban all Muslims from traveling to the United States, Takei appeared on MSNBC to denounce him: "It's ironic that he made that comment on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day — the very event that put us in those internment camps."

1939 – Wayson Choy (d.2019) was a Canadian novelist. Publishing two novels and two memoirs in his lifetime, he is considered both one of the most important pioneers of Asian Canadian literature in Canada, and an important figure in LGBT literature as one of Canada's first openly gay writers of colour to achieve widespread mainstream success.

Choy was born in Vancouver in 1939. A Chinese Canadian, he spent his childhood in the city's Chinatown. Choy graduated from Gladstone Secondary School and went on to attend the University of British Columbia, where he studied creative writing. He learned later in life that he had been adopted, which formed part of the basis for his memoir Paper Shadows.

Choy published a number of short stories while studying creative writing at university, with one of his stories appearing in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology, but after graduating he devoted himself primarily to teaching, resuming writing only later in life.

Choy moved to Toronto in 1962, and taught at Humber College from 1967 to 2004. He continued to teach at the Humber School for Writers, and served as president of the Cahoots Theatre Company.

Choy was the author of the novel The Jade Peony (1995) which won the Trillium Book Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award. In 2010, it was selected as one of five books for the CBC's annual Canada Reads competition, where it was defended by physician Samantha Nutt.

His memoir Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood was published in 1999. Written about his childhood within the Chinese Canadian community in Vancouver, the book explores both his discovery that he was adopted and his process of coming to terms with being gay. It won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 1999 Governor General's Awards.

In 2001, Choy suffered an asthma attack, which led to him being placed in a medically induced coma for 11 days during which he also suffered cardiac arrest. He remained in hospital for four months to recuperate and recover with physiotherapy. In 2005, he had a second heart attack, and underwent quadruple bypass surgery.

His second novel, All That Matters, was published in 2004, and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. All That Matters won Choy's second Trillium Book Award in 2004.

In 2005, he was named a member of the Order of Canada.

In 2009 Choy published Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying, his second and final memoir about dealing with the life-threatening health challenges.

In 2015 he received the George Woodcock Award, the lifetime achievement award for writers from British Columbia presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada and the Vancouver Public Library.

He died in 2019.

1943 – Jamie Gillis (d.2010) was an American pornographic actor, director and member of the AVN Hall of Fame.

Gillis was born James Ira Gurman in New York City into a Jewish family and graduated from Columbia University. His parents named him Jamie after the Tyrone Power character in the film The Black Swan (1942), and he took the name Gillis from the girlfriend he was living with when he made his first films.

He appeared in more than 470 movies as an actor. He also directed several adult movies. Openly bisexual, he appeared in many gay porn films, including a sex scene with Zebedy Colt in the 1975 BDSM-themed film The Story Of Joanna. Gillis also appeared in the mainstream Hollywood film Nighthawks (1981) as the boss of Lindsay Wagner's character.

He was a pioneer in the pornographic style known as Gonzo. In addition to starring in the first Buttman film, he also created the influential On The Prowl series. Featuring a porn star who rides in a limo looking for regular guys to have sex with, the video series was very popular and inspired a scene in the movie Boogie Nights. He also co-produced the popular Dirty Debutante series with fellow director and performer Ed Powers, as well as the Walking Toilet Bowl series of films that focused on golden showers and coprophilia.

Gillis died on February 19, 2010 in New York City from melanoma, which was diagnosed four or five months earlier. In an audio interview given to The Rialto Report shortly before his death, Gillis stated that in the 1970s he'd wanted his ashes to be scattered in Times Square, but years later he changed his mind as "clean Times Square would contaminate them".

 Andrew Tobias with his late partner Charles Nolan

1947 – The American journalist and author Andrew Tobias was born today. His main body of work is on investment, but he has also written on politics, insurance, and other topics. Tobias wrote the Gay classic, the semi- autobiographical novel The Best Little Boy in the World under the pen name "John Reid" back in 1973. He used a pen name because he wasn't comfortable then with publicly disclosing his homosexuality to a broad audience. Needless to say the book was an enormous treasure to many gay men coming out at the time, finding in its pages a very resonant character. The book was later reissued in 1998 under his real name to coincide with the sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up.

Since 1999, he has been the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. He was Grand Marshall of the 2005 New York City Gay Pride Parade. Tobias was the partner of late fashion designer Charles Nolan who passed away on January 30, 2011.

1949 – Toller Cranston (d.2014) was a Canadian figure skater and painter. He was the 1971-1976 Canadian national champion, the 1974 World bronze medalist, and the 1976 Olympic bronze medalist. Although he never won a world level competition due to poor compulsory figures, he won the small medal for free skating at the 1972, 1974, and 1975 World Figure Skating Championships.

Cranston was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1949 and grew up in Kirkland Lake. When he was 11, his family moved to suburban Montreal. Growing up, Cranston had an uneasy relationship with his family, especially his mother who was also a painter and who had a domineering and self-centered personality. He later compared his childhood to "being in jail".

After an initial failed experience with ballet lessons, Cranston started skating at the age of 7, when his parents bought him hockey skates. He experimented on his own with trying to dance on the ice, and was only later told that what he was doing was called "figure skating". His mother was reluctant to allow him to pursue the sport seriously, but at the age of 11 he met Eva Vasak, who was impressed by his talent and offered to coach him for free. Vasak coached him for the next 8 years.

After high school, Cranston attended the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. By his third year, he became restless with his studies. One of his teachers suggested that there was nothing more he could learn at the school, so Cranston set out at that point to establish himself as a professional artist.

In the next few years, Cranston met with little success figure shating at the senior level. As he was dividing his attention with art school at this time, his physical conditioning was poor and he struggled to make it through his programs, which at that time were 5 minutes for senior men

He won his first national title in 1971 with a performance that included triple salchow and loop jumps, and received a standing ovation from the audience. At the 1972 Canadian championships, his marks included 4 6.0s for artistic impression and 6 5.9s for technical merit. Cranston skated poor compulsory figures at the 1972 Winter Olympics, but finished 5th in the free skating. Then, at the 1972 World Figure Skating Championships, he won the free skating with another superb performance, again landing triple loop and salchow jumps and receiving a thunderous standing ovation as well as a perfect 6.0 mark for artistic impression.

After the 1976 competitive season, Cranston began a long career in professional figure skating. Following up on his earlier-stated goal of developing "theatre on ice", Cranston performed in his own tour, "The Ice Show", also featuring Gordon McKellen, Colleen O'Connor and Jim Millns, and several other former elite competitors. He later toured in Europe with Holiday on Ice, and in 1983 appeared in a short-lived production at Radio City Music Hall in New York City with Peggy Fleming and Robin Cousins.

In 1976, he teamed with personal manager Elva Oglanby to write his first book, Toller, a mixture of autobiography, sketches, poems, paintings, humour and tongue-in-cheek observations. It reached number 2 in the Canadian non-fiction charts.

Cranston co-wrote the autobiographical Zero Tollerance (1997) with Martha Lowder Kimball, and a second volume, When Hell Freezes Over: Should I Bring My Skates? (2000), also with Kimball. He described a sexual tryst between himself and Ondrej Nepela, a Slovak figure skater who competed for Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at 1973 World Championships. Cranston was distracted and affected by their sexual affair and placed 5th while Nepela won the event and even earned a 6.0 during his free skate. In the second book he also mentions affairs with women, but he presents himself as having lived without forming strong romantic or emotional attachments.

In the summer of 1990, Cranston agreed to coach American skater Christopher Bowman, who moved into Cranston's home in Toronto. The influence of the notoriously unstable Bowman on Cranston's life was disastrous; Cranston later wrote, "...drug dealers buzzed the front doorbell morning, noon, and night. Prostitutes invaded my house from the street. Christopher sometimes announced that he was going out for a carton of milk and didn't return for three days." Cranston finally threw Bowman out in the fall of 1991. Meanwhile, he had become so depressed that he was unable to paint, and started taking drugs himself. At this time, he began to make changes in his lifestyle: he sold his Toronto home, which was cluttered with art he had collected over the years, and bought a home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Cranston continued to perform in Canada with Stars on Ice and IMG's smaller-city tour, Skate the Nation, for the next few years. However, in the fall of 1994, he broke his leg while practicing for a holiday show in Vail, Colorado. Although he made a few skating appearances afterwards, in 1997 he decided to retire from professional skating before (as he described it) he became a parody of himself.

Cranston was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1976, the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997, the Order of Canada in 1977 and Canada's Walk of Fame in 2003. He was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2004.

He was found dead of a heart attack in his Mexican home in 2014. Skate Canada paid tribute to him with a moment of silence at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in Kingston, Ontario, which was being held around the time of his death.

1949 – The Georgia Attorney General issues an opinion that the reduction in maximum sentence for sodomy earlier that year was not retroactive.

1951 – The American R&B singer Luther Vandross was born on this date (d. 2005).

Initially content to remain in the background as a backing singer and producer - he toured with David Bowie in 1974 and sang backing vocals on the Young Americans (1975) album - Vandross was encouraged to take centre stage by Roberta Flack, who thought he had a unique talent. His breakthrough to major chart success came as lead singer with Change, and he went on to have a string of million selling hit solo albums, and successful collaborations with other artists, throughout the 80s and 90s.

During Vandross' entire career he was 'dogged' by questions regarding his sexuality. He never married, his name was never romantically linked in the media with women. Although Vandross never explicitly denied being gay, he never publicly acknowledged it either. He generally fielded questions by saying that his 'busy lifestyle' made marriage difficult and indicated that, in any case, 'it was not what he wanted.' Many gay publications have stated that Vandross' gayness was an 'open secret' in the music business, but even now it is rarely spoken of.

He died of a heart attack in Edison, NJ at 54. Some of his songs are: Endless Love, Always and Forever, Dance with My Father and Your Secret Love.

His unusual middle name "Ronzoni" was given him by his mother in thanks for the comfort that Ronzoni brand pasta products gave her during her pregnancy.

1959 – Douglas Sadownick is a gay American writer, activist, professor and psychotherapist. He co-created The Buddy Systems (1985) with Tim Miller, with whom Sadownick was involved in a 14-year relationship.

Born in the Bronx, Douglas Sadownick attended Columbia College for his B.A., New York University for his graduate work in English, and the graduate program in clinical psychology at Antioch University for a Master's of Arts in Clinical Psychology. He received his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Clinical Psychology in 2006. His dissertation was entitled, Homosexual Enlightenment: A Gay Science Perspective on 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

He is the founding director of the nation's first LGBT Specialization in Clinical Psychology, at Antioch University, and he is also the Founder of Colors LGBTQ Youth Counseling Center, founded in 2011, with Philip Lance, an LGBT affirmative psychologist and community organizer. He is also a co-founding member of the Institute for Uranian Psychoanalysis , which is the first Institute in the world dedicated to deepening homosexual self-realization. He was also a principal co-founder of Highways Performance Art Space in 1989.

His work Sacred Lips of the Bronx (1994) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His second book, Sex Between Men: An Intimate History of the Sex Lives of Gay Men, Postwar to Present, was published in 1996 and 1997. His articles have appeared in the Advocate, the Los Angeles Times, Genre, High Performance, the New York Native, and the L.A. Weekly. He received a GLAAD award for excellence in reporting in 1991. He works as a private practice psychotherapist in Hollywood, California.

McGehee (L) with working partner Siegel

1962 – Scott McGehee is an American film director and screenwriter. He is a Columbia University graduate and did graduate work in the Rhetoric department at UC Berkeley. He was born in California, and currently resides in New York City. McGehee is openly gay.

He is half of a long-standing writing-directing partnership with filmmaker David Siegel. Neither attended film school. The duo have been making films together and separately for two decades.

Filmmakers Scott McGehee and David Siegel aren’t known for blockbusters, but their films, including the duo’s 1994 debut feature Suture, have a reputation for artful framing and pensive little spaces of silence in the dialogue. McGehee and Siegel attribute this trick to their deep admiration for Japanese films, particularly Tanin no Kao (The Face of Another) by Hiroshi Teshigahara. McGehee was once a high school exchange student in Shiga Prefecture, and he says, "I can still make out some Japanese words and phrases."

1972 – Tennessee eliminates the voting disability of those convicted of sodomy.

1979 – The Virginia Supreme Court affirms the solicitation conviction of a man entrapped by the Richmond police "Selective Enforcement Unit."

1983 – The Back Door Gym, one of the Toronto establishments raided in Operation Soap in 1981, is raided again. This raid is protested on April 23. No further bathhouse raids take place in the 1980s. The warrant used in this raid was declared invalid by the courts on October 3, 1984.

1981 – Matus Valent is a European male fitness model born in Bratislava, Slovak Republic living in California.

As a youth, he played indoor volleyball and became the Junior Slovakian champion with his team ASK Inter. He was also on the Slovakian National volleyball team at age 19.

During his college years, he turned to beach volleyball, and in 2004 he became the California A-Category champion. After earning a University Masters Degree in Physical Education and Sports with Management in his hometown, he moved to California where he now lives.

 Matus Valent has appeared in numerous magazines (over 200 in the past 8 years) including Muscle & Fitness, Fitness RX, Flex, Muscle & Performance, Iron Man and many others with over 46 covers in the USA and internationally. He also has several catalog, romance novels & fitness book covers under his belt. (Not to mention his ample goodies)

His modeling career has lead to many other opportunities for Matus, including appearing in the music video for Kristine W's hit " Walk Away," modeling for the movie poster for "Pathfinder", being featured in national advertising for Otomix fitness clothing and active wear, national TV commercial for Shake Weight, TCORE, and ORECK XL vacuums and co-starring in the third season of Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency TV series. In 2009, Matus also appeared in ad campaigns for Prosource.net and Nutrition Express supplements superstores and made appearances in the films "Night at the Museum II" and "Baggage Claim."

1990 – On this date Queer Nation members showed up en masse at Macy's department store where Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis was promoting a new swimsuit line. Queers arrived with WHEATIES cereal boxes with the swimmer's picture pasted on front, to recall the time the cereal maker rejected Louganis as a spokesperson, ostensibly because he is Gay.

2001 – China removes homosexuality from their list of mental disorders.