August 13

1853 – Raphael Gallenti, a sailor from Malta arrives a San Quentin prison. He is thought to be the first person to be arrested for sodomy in California. He served a five-year sentence at San Quentin.

1879 – John Ireland (d.1962) was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work "The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man".

John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Cheshire, into a family of Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 69 at John's birth. His mother, Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, was a biographer and 30 years younger than Alexander. She died in October 1893, when John was 14, and Alexander died the following year, when John was 15 John Ireland was described as "a self-critical, introspective man, haunted by memories of a sad childhood".

Ireland entered the Royal College of Music in 1893, studying piano with Frederic Cliffe, and organ, his second study, under Walter Parratt. In 1896 Ireland was appointed sub-organist at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, London SW1, and later, from 1904 until 1926, was organist and choirmaster at St Luke's Church, Chelsea.

Ireland began to make his name in the early 1900s as a composer of songs and chamber music. His Violin Sonata No. 1 of 1909 won first prize in an international competition. Even more successful was his Violin Sonata No. 2: completed in January 1917, he submitted this to a competition organised to assist musicians in wartime.

From 1923 he taught at the Royal College of Music. His pupils there included Benjamin Britten (who later described Ireland as possessing "a strong personality but a weak character"

John Ireland was a lifelong bachelor, except for a brief interlude when, in quick succession, he married, separated, and divorced. On 17 December 1926, aged 47, he married a 17-year pupil, Dorothy Phillips. This marriage was dissolved on 18 September 1928, and it is believed not to have been consummated. He took a similar interest in another young student, Helen Perkin but any thoughts he had for a deeper relationship with her came to nothing when she married and moved to Australia.

In 1947 Ireland acquired a personal assistant and companion, Mrs Norah Kirkby, who remained with him till his death. Despite these associations with women, it is clear from his private papers that he was a closeted homosexual and many commentators support this view.

Ireland retired in 1953, settling in the hamlet of Rock in Sussex, where he lived in a converted windmill for the rest of his life. It was there he met the young pianist Alan Rowlands who would be Ireland's choice to record his complete piano music.

He died of heart failure aged 82 at Rock Mill in Washington, Sussex.

 Gene Raymond and Jeanette MacDonald

1908 – Gene Raymond (d.1998) was a leading man of stage, film, and TV, singer, composer, writer, director, producer, decorated military pilot, and, for twenty-eight years, the first and only husband of singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald.

A popular film actor in the 1930s and 40s, like many pre-war stars, his film career fell away after his military service but he enjoyed further success on television up until the 1970s, and was active behind the scenes in the industry with the Screen Actors Guild, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and other organisations.

Ten years after McDonald's death in 1965, he married for a second time and that marriage lasted until her death in 1995.

So, why is he here? A 2001 biography of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, says that Raymond had affairs with men during his marriage to MacDonald. The book includes documentation of Raymond being arrested on three occasions for sex with other men: a photo of Raymond's January 1938 arrest and booking number; a US Army nurse is named and quoted concerning the second arrest; while retired Scotland Yard detective Joe Sampson confirms the third arrest, which occurred in England during World War II.

The book also claims that Louis B. Mayer engineered the marriage of MacDonald to Raymond - even though Mayer knew Raymond was bisexual - to prevent MacDonald from marrying Eddy. Mayer was concerned that a MacDonald-Eddy marriage would end in divorce, due to their temperaments, then he would lose his lucrative box office team. Also, Eddy wanted children and preferred MacDonald to at least semi-retire, which didn't please the studio mogul.

While Mayer blessed the MacDonald-Raymond union, he had Raymond blacklisted following his 1938 arrest. ... but the marriage lasted.

1937 – The New York Times ran a story saying that New York City police were compiling a list of known sex criminals, and that the list already consisted of over 300 names, most of whom were gay men.

1942 – Julian Fantino is a retired police official. He was the Member of the Parliament of Canada for the riding of Vaughan following a November 29, 2010 by-election until his defeat in 2015.. Prior to entering politics, Fantino was the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police from 2006 to 2010, Toronto's Chief of Police from 2000 to 2005, and Ontario's Commissioner of Emergency Management from 2005 until 2006, and also served as chief of police of London, Ontario from 1991 to 1998, and of York Region from 1998 until 2000. Prior to his London appointment, he had been a Toronto police officer since 1969.

Before joining the Metro Toronto Police, Fantino was a security guard at Yorkdale Shopping Centre in suburban Toronto. He volunteered as an Auxiliary Police Officer for the Metro Toronto Police from 1964 to 1969 and then joined the force as a Police Constable. He was a member of the Drug Squad and was promoted to Detective Constable. He subsequently served with Criminal Intelligence and then the Homicide Squad before being promoted to Divisional Commander and then Acting Staff Superintendent of Detectives.

After 23 years of service with the Metro Toronto Police, Fantino left to accept an appointment as Police Chief of London, Ontario in 1991.

In London, Ontario, he presided over the highly publicized and controversial "Project Guardian", in which over two dozen gay men were arrested for involvement in a purported child pornography ring. While several men were eventually convicted of crimes not related to the stated purpose of the investigation, such as drug possession and prostitution, no child pornography ring was ever found. Journalist Gerald Hannon later published a piece in The Globe and Mail accusing Fantino of mounting an anti-gay witch hunt. In response, Fantino filed a complaint with the Ontario Press Council, which ultimately ruled that the Globe should have more clearly labelled Hannon's article as an opinion piece. Fantino says that he is "not anti-gay or homophobic" and was simply arresting lawbreakers engaging in "a sick, perverted crime".

While he was Chief of Police in Toronto, an incident in September 2000 involving five male police officers entering a women's bath house sparked public outrage and drew attention to Toronto Police Service's poor standing in the gay community. In 2004, Fantino made an attempt to repair relations, primarily by appearing on the cover of fab in a photo which featured him posing in his police uniform with five other models dressed as the Village People standing behind him.

1944 – By the time he was twenty-five, Illinois native Jonathan Strong had graduated from Harvard, won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, had twice won O. Henry awards for his short fiction (including 3rd prize), and published his first book, Tike and Five Stories, winner of the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In the intervening forty-one years, Strong has published ten more books. Two novels are the must-read pointilist masterpiece Drawn From Life (2008) and the lighter, funnier, yet melancholy academic comedy Consolation. He followed those with his Goethe-titled novel More Light and, after that, a novel bewitchingly called Hawkweed and Indian Paintbrush. The books' protagonists are out gay men, which may or may not contribute to why Strong is not as widely read as he ought to be; or it may simply be the profoundly unfair wheel of literary fate.

Strong has an abiding interest in 19th century opera and has written four adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan performed in New England. A longtime lecturer at Tufts, he is happily partnered and lives without the internet or email in Rockport, Massachusetts.

1952 – On this date the photographer Herb Ritts was born (d. 2002), The American fashion photographer concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits in the style of classical Greek sculpture. Consequently some of his more famous pieces are of male and female nudes in what can be called glamour photography.

(Click for larger)

Ritts was born in Los Angeles, California to a prosperous family who owned a furniture business. He received an economics degree from Bard College in upstate New York in 1974 and soon after returned to Los Angeles to work as a sales representative for his family's business. He came out as Gay to his parents while in college; they were accepting and supportive.

"Fred with Tires"
(Click for larger)

He became interested in photography when he and friend Richard Gere, then an aspiring actor decided to shoot some photographs in front of an old jacked up Buick. The picture gained Ritts some coverage and he began to be more serious about photography. He photographed Brooke Shields for the cover of the Oct. 12, 1981 edition of Elle and he photographed Olivia Newton-John for her Physical album in 1981. Five years later he would replicate that cover pose with Madonna for her 1986 release True Blue.

He took many fashion and nude photos of supermodel Cindy Crawford and eventually set her up with his good friend, actor Richard Gere, at a BBQ held at his mother Shirley's house. The couple married four years later in 1991, but divorced in 1995.

He also worked for the magazines, Interview, Esquire, Mademoiselle, Glamour, GQ, Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Time, Vogue, Allure, Vanity Fair, Details, as well as Elle.

The first video he directed was Madonna in "Cherish" in 1989. In 1991, he won two MTV Video Awards for his work on music videos by Janet Jackson and Chris Isaak. Ritts also directed the music video for Michael Jackson's "In the Closet", which featured supermodel Naomi Campbell. Ritts also worked on other projects, including directing and acting, on Mariah Carey's video collection #1's (1999), Jennifer Lopez's sepia video "Ain't It Funny", Janet Jackson's Design of a Decade 1986/1996 (1996), Intimate Portrait: Cindy Crawford (1998), Murder in the First (1995), and Britney Spears' "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know (2001).

On December 26, 2002, Ritts died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 50. According to Ritts' publicist, "Herb was HIV-positive, but this particular pneumonia was not PCP (pneumocystis pneumonia), a common opportunistic infection of AIDS. But at the end of the day, his immune system was compromised." He is survived by his partner, Erik Hyman, an entertainment attorney.

He is primarily known for his comedic writing. Crane lives with his partner, Jeffrey Klarik. Together, they have created a new Friends-like sitcom, The Class.

Disappointingly, unlike several of his gay TV writer/producer contemporaries, Crane failed to introduce any significant gay characters in ten years' of Friends.

In 2011, it was announced that Crane and Jeffrey Klarik have created a new sitcom made for the BBC. Airing first in the US on Showtime on Sunday January 9, 2011 at 9:30 pm and then on BBC Two on Monday January 10, 2011 at 10 pm, it is called Episodes and features Friends star Matt LeBlanc and Green Wing's Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig. Its first season has some delightfully funny episodes, particularly the two which deal with Matt's "monster." (Monster penis, that is!)

 Domenico Dolce (top) and Stefano Gabbana

1958 – On this date the Italian fashion designer Domenico Dolce was born in Polizzi Generosa (Palermo). He still works together with ex-partner Stefano Gabbana (Dolce & Gabbana).

Dolce's native island of Sicily, a place Gabbana had fallen in love with on holiday, became the bond between the two when they met in the early 1980s, when they worked for the same design studio in Milan. In 1982 the two men left the design company where they were working when they met to pursue separate consulting careers, but they continued to share an office as well as a private life. After eighteen months, they decided to join forces and the Dolce & Gabbana label was born. Milan's governing fashion organization, the Camera Nazionale, recognized them as up-and-coming talent and invited them to show their first womenswear collection, called "real woman," during Milan fashion week.

In 1982, the first D&G studio was opened. By 2005 their turnover was €597 million. In 1993, Dolce & Gabbana designed 1500 costumes for Madonna's world tour of 'The Girlie Show'. The D&G Company also produces perfumes.

For some 19 years, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were partners in life as well as in business. Their personal relationship, which commenced soon after their meeting in the early 1980s, was well documented and they spoke freely about their home life as well as their business partnership in interviews. In fact, the home they shared together, Villa Volpe, a nineteenth-century palazzo in the heart of Milan, was the subject of much discussion in the press.

In February 2005 Dolce and Gabbana broke up as lovers. According to Gabbana, they "had been drifting apart for about five years" prior to the split. The two remain friends and are still working together. Both say that they are committed to the ongoing success of their fashion house and that they plan to remain partners in the business even though they are no longer together as a couple.

Champion (R) with husband Rubem Robierb

1961 – Sam Champion was the weather anchor of ABC's Good Morning America and weather editor of ABC News.

Champion is not a meteorologist, but gained weather forecasting knowledge through his broadcast work. He has occasionally appeared on Live! with Kelly and Michael, the daily talk show produced by WABC-TV, and CNN's Larry King Live. He often began his 30-second weathercasts by saying "Let's get to the boards." His catchphrase during weather reports for local ABC stations was, "That's the weather around the nation. Here's what you can expect this morning."

Champion is active in many charitable organizations in the New York City area. He was the Grand Marshal of the Multiple Sclerosis Society Fall Bike Tour, the chairman of the 25th annual March of Dimes NYC WalkAmerica, and master of ceremonies of "Stopping AIDS Together", a part of Sunday by the Bay. He hosted the New York City Project's 2002 "Courage Awards", along with movie critic Frank DeCaro.

Sam Champion officially came out in October 2012 by announcing he planned to marry partner Rubem Robierb. They married December 21, 2012.

Champion recalled all the well-wishes he received from across the country and in the Big Apple.

Sam Champion is no longer with ABC news. He is now the morning anchor on the Weather Channel.

1962 – Richard Tisei is an American politician and realtor from Massachusetts. A Republican, he served in the Massachusetts state legislature for 26 years, most recently as the minority leader in the Massachusetts Senate. He was the 2010 Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and the 2012 nominee for U.S. Congress from Massachusetts' 6th district, but lost both races.

A graduate of American University, Tisei was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1984. He was the youngest Republican ever elected to the Massachusetts General Court. Tisei served in the House until 1990, when he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. He was elected Assistant Minority Leader in 1997 and Senate Minority Leader in January 2007. On July 28, 2009, Tisei was named the campaign chair for Charlie Baker's 2010 gubernatorial run. On November 23, 2009, Baker named Tisei as his running mate, and thus as a candidate for Lieutenant Governor.

Just prior to the announcement of Tisei as Baker's running mate, Tisei publicly disclosed that he is gay for the first time in an interview with the Boston Globe. Baker and Tisei, unopposed in the Republican primary, were defeated in the general election. He was not able to run for re-election the Massachussetts Senate in 2010 due to his bid for Lieutenant Governor, and his last Senate term ended in January 2011.

In July 2013 Tisei and his longtime partner Bernie Starr were married. They reside in Wakefield. They also own a home at the Katama neighborhood of Edgartown, Massachusetts at Martha's Vineyard. Since 1992, Tisei has been a real estate broker with Northrup Associate Realtors. In 2000, Tisei became co-owner of Northrup with Starr.

1981 – The Australian government agrees to grant refugee status to people from other nations who are persecuted because of their sexual orientation.

1984 – Homophobes Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafley, and Jerry Falwell spoke to a Republican party committee, urging a platform opposed to gay rights.

1984 – A hospital in San Luis, California refused to admit a 29-year old man with AIDS and sent him to San Francisco, 200 miles away. He died shortly afterward.

1986 – Wesley Taylor is an American stage actor and writer, probably best known for his work on Broadway, Television, and his original web content.

Born in New Jersey, but raised in Orlando, Florida, Taylor graduated from the theatre magnet at Dr. Phillips High School and holds a BFA in acting from North Carolina School of the Arts. At the latter, Taylor performed as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2 and Action in West Side Story.

Taylor's parents once resided in China, where they taught at a university: "[I]t's kind of hard for them to come and see the shows I'm in. I always get a little jealous of other people's families … But my parents – I love them and I totally respect them. They kind of didn't want to settle into being bored in middle age, and they wanted to start over and move to a different country."

1992 – Nicaragua president Violeta Chamorro signed into law legislation that criminalized consensual same-sex sodomy. The maximum sentence was set at eight years, but could be as high as twenty years for someone who was in a position of authority over minors such as a teacher.

1992 – Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) calls on the Pentagon to end the ban on gay and lesbian service personnel unless an independent study could provide a rational basis for it.

1993 – Russia: The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reports that lesbians and gay men  are still jailed though Russia had legalized homosexual acts between consenting adults earlier in the year.

1998 – San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter, a gay and lesbian newspaper, published its first issue in seventeen years with no AIDS-related obituaries.