February 15

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1748 – The English philosopher, jurist, economist, and political scientist Jeremy Bentham (d.1832) argued for a tolerant attitude toward homosexuality in a series of papers first published in full in 1985.

He was the most notable law reformer the English-speaking world has ever produced; in this role, his influence extended not only to Britain and the United States but also to France, Spain, and Latin America. Several of the emerging republics of South and Central America consulted him in drawing up their constitutions and law codes. In the Hispanic world, he was hailed as "el legislador del mundo."

Among his all-but -illegible unpublished papers were hundreds of pages, written at intervals over half a century, which make a contribution to what we would today call "gay studies." Bentham did not dare to publish any of them during his lifetime. Though a fragment of twenty-two pages appeared in print in 1931, no comprehensive account of the scope and significance of this impressive body of materials was published until 1985.

Bentham's primary interest in homosexuality arose in connection with law reform. In his day, men convicted under the English "buggery" statute were regularly hanged, a punishment public opinion enthusiastically applauded in England long after executions had ceased in the rest of Europe.

Bentham's task as reformer was made difficult not just by the force of English prejudice, but also by the absolute taboo on public discussion of homosexuality. In law books and in parliamentary debate, homosexual behavior was referred to stereotypically by the Latin formula, "peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum"—"that horrible crime not to be named among Christians." Bentham candidly admits in his notes the extreme fear he felt at the idea of making public his liberal opinions on the subject.

Bentham regarded prejudice against homosexuals simply as an irrational hatred and antipathy. It is one of the distinctions of his later writings (from 1814 on) that he identifies what we now call homophobia and directs his efforts to analyzing it.

He had of course no word that is exactly equivalent to the modern term homosexual. He often employs "paederast," sometimes in its original sense of a lover of boys, but often also to mean an adult male who is sexually involved with another man, as in modern French usage; in this latter sense, it approximates closely to "homosexual."

1820 – Susan B. Anthony, the American feminist and suffragist, born (d.1906). In the late 1830s her father's business went bankrupt, and the family lost their home. Needing to support herself and help the family, Susan Anthony, whose progressive Quaker father had seen to it that she received a good education, found jobs first as a teacher at a Quaker boarding school in New Rochelle in 1839 and then, beginning in 1846, as headmistress.

Anthony's career as a social reformer began with an 1849 address to the Daughters of Temperance in which she called upon women to take the moral lead and to work for change not just in their own homes but in society at large. She promptly followed her own advice by leaving her teaching job for a life of social activism. Her family, whose economic state had by that time improved, supported her both morally and sometimes financially as she pursued her rather radical calling.

Anthony quickly became involved in the wide range of issues on the feminist agenda of the day. In addition to temperance, property and custody rights, divorce laws, and educational and employment opportunities were also matters of great concern. As the women's movement gained steam so did the cause of ending slavery and securing full civil rights for African-Americans. Anthony became an ardent abolitionist as well as a feminist.

It was the anti-slavery movement that brought Anthony together with Elizabeth Stanton, with whom she would spearhead the crusade for the franchise of women. The two first met at a lecture in 1851. Anthony said that there was an "intense attraction" between them from the start. Whether they were lovers must remain a matter of speculation, but it is clear that theirs was a particularly close and enduring friendship.

While Anthony never ran for public office, she did vote. Along with some four dozen other women she registered in Rochester, New York on November 4, 1872, and the next day she cast her ballot.

Anthony was subsequently arrested but refused to post bail, claiming that the government did not have the right to jail her since she had committed no crime. Her lawyer, Henry Selden, put up the bail money without her knowledge because he did not want to see "a lady [he] respected" imprisoned. His misplaced gallantry deprived her of the chance to have her case heard in the Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus.

At her trial in a lower court—prior to which she had voted again in a local election—the judge ordered a directed verdict of guilty. The sentence was a $100 fine, but not imprisonment; true to her word in court ("I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty"), she never paid the fine for the rest of her life, and an embarrassed U.S. Government took no collection action against her. The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before.

If the federal government had deliberately set out to sabotage the first American coin to commemorate a woman, and perhaps it did, it could not have done better than to choose Susan B. Anthony as the honor. Not merely the funny shape of the Anthony dollar killed it; the choice of Susan B. helped. It's not that the pioneering American feminist isn't a great figure worthy of respect and honor; she is. It's the confusion in the public mind as to who she was, most people thinking that she carried a hatchet and demolished saloons. Carrie Nation she wasn't, but it's the clothes of her period that confuse and put off. Every woman of a certain age looked like Whistler's mother then, or like doilies on an easy chair in mourning. What Susan B. needed was a modern image, the way the White Rock Girl and Betty Crocker have been periodically updated. Perhaps it would have helped to publicize her love letters to Anna Dickinson – the ones that began, "My Dear Chicky Dicky Darly."

Anna Dickinson, another popular speaker, was among the women that she met in the course of her work, Lillian Faderman reports that the articulate and attractive Dickinson often received "billets-doux" from women. The correspondence between her and Anthony was of a distinctly romantic turn. In an 1862 letter Dickinson wrote to Anthony, "I want to see you very much indeed, to hold your hand in mine, to hear your voice, in a word, I want you." For her part Anthony—the woman whose detractors called "grim" and "unsexed"—responded with letters in which she addressed Dickinson as "My Dear Chicky Dicky Darly" and invited her to share her bed, "big enough and good enough to take you in."

1858 – A proposed new criminal code for the District of Columbia, which includes a sodomy law with a penalty of 2-10 years, is defeated 73%-27% by District voters.

1907 – On this date the Cuban-American film and television actor Cesar Romero was born (d.1994). He is probably best known for his campy portrayal of The Joker in the television series Batman. In 1966 the show was transferred to movie theaters, and Romero became the first actor to portray the Joker on film, before the role was passed to Jack Nicholson and most recently to the late Heath Ledger.

Romero's acting career began with his playing "Latin lovers" in films from the 1930s until the 1950s, usually in supporting roles. Initially, he attracted attention in Hollywood when he starred as The Cisco Kid in six westerns made between 1939 and 1941. Romero's skill at both dancing and comedy can be seen in the classic 20th Century Fox films he starred in opposite Carmen Miranda and Betty Grable, such as Week-End in Havana and Springtime in the Rockies, in the 1940s.

As well as being an accomplished ballroom dancer, Romero was also a fine dramatic actor, as he demonstrated in The Thin Man (1934), in which he played a villainous supporting role opposite the film's main star William Powell.

20th Century Fox's mogul, Darryl Zanuck, personally selected Romero to co-star with Tyrone Power in the 1947 historical epic, Captain from Castile in which Romero played Hernan Cortez. It was produced on a scale that would not be eclipsed as a visual epic until years later. Romero became a major star with the film's success.

In 1966, Romero again achieved icon status when he played The Joker in ABC's television series, Batman. He refused to shave his mustache and so it was covered with white makeup when playing the super-villain throughout the series' run, and in the spin-off 1966 film.

He also appeared in a fine comic turn as a subversive opponent to Frank Sinatra and his crew in Ocean's Eleven.

Romero was never married, but he made regular appearances on the Hollywood social circuit, usually in the company of an attractive actress, and he was almost always described in interviews and articles as a "confirmed bachelor." (the common epithet term for 'gay' in that period).

Romero discussed his sexuality in a series of interviews with author Boze Hadleigh, with the understanding that they would not be published during his lifetime. Romero wore a man's tennis bracelet inscribed with his favorite nickname: "Butch." The term was reportedly bestowed on Romero by his one-time dancing partner Joan Crawford, who teased Romero by telling him: "You're so butch!"

In 1989, Romero told Howard Johns in an interview for radio station 2BL in Sydney, Australia, that Tyrone Power was "the only man I ever loved." Romero's response came after Johns's article about Power's homosexuality and the actor's alleged affair with Romero, which was printed in Campaign magazine.

While Romero's sexuality was an "open secret" in Hollywood, the movie-going public was unaware of his sexuality and there was never any embarrassing scandal surrounding his male liaisons. Romero was a mainstay of the Hollywood social circuit until his peaceful death in 1994.

1923 – Adolfo Faustino Sardiña (d.2021), professionally known as Adolfo, was a Cuban-born American fashion designer who started out as a milliner in the 1950s. While chief designer for the wholesale milliners Emme, he won the Coty Award and the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award. In 1963 he set up his own salon in New York, firstly as a milliner, and then focusing on clothing. He retired from fashion design in 1993.

Adolfo Sardiña was born in Cárdenas, Cuba. His mother was Irish; his father Spanish. He attended the St Ignacio de Loyola Jesuit School in Havana and served in the Cuban Army. In 1948 Adolfo immigrated to New York.

As his mother had died in childbirth, Adolfo was brought up by an aunt who enjoyed wearing French haute couture, and encouraged her nephew to pursue fashion design. With his aunt's help, Adolfo joined Cristóbal Balenciaga as an apprentice milliner. He worked at Balenciaga from 1950–52.

In 1953 Adolfo joined the New York-based wholesale millinery company Emme as their chief designer. In the summer of 1957, to further his skills, he served an unpaid apprenticeship with Coco Chanel's New York hat salon. Adolfo would later admit that he "never enjoyed making hats."

With financial help from Bill Blass, Adolfo opened his first salon in New York in 1963, where he met many of the customers who would become his patrons when he gave up millinery to focus on clothing. He had met the Duchess of Windsor by 1965, through whom he met regular customers Betsy Bloomingdale, Babe Paley and Nancy Reagan. After Mainbocher retired, one of his highest-profile clients, C. Z. Guest, came to Adolfo to make her clothes instead. Adolfo's clothes were designed to complement his hats, which the designer saw as an optional accessory rather than a wardrobe essential. During the 1980s, his creations were worn in the hit TV series "Miami Vice", the fashion-defining show for the decade.

In 1993, at the age of 60, (based on a disputed birth year of 1933) Adolfo decided to retire from fashion design and rely on the income from his licensing agreements with various manufacturers.

His partner, Edward C. Perry, died in 1993. Adolfo died on November 27, 2021, at the age of 98.

1952 – Bill T. Jones is an American artistic director, choreographer and dancer based in New York City. Jones was born in Bunnell, Florida and his family moved North as part of the Great Migration in the first half of the twentieth century. They settled in Wayland, New York, where Jones attended Wayland High School. He began his dance training at Binghamton University, where he studied classical ballet and modern dance.

Jones choreographed and performed worldwide as a soloist and duet company with his late partner, Arnie Zane before forming the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982.

Creating more than 100 works for his own company, Jones has also choreographed for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, AXIS Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet and Diversions Dance Company, and many others.

In 1995, Pantheon Books published Jones' memoirs, Last Night on Earth. In 1989, Station Hill Press published an in-depth look at the work of Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane, Body Against Body: The Dance and Other Collaborations of Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane. Hyperion Books published Dance, a children's book written by Bill T Jones and photographer Susan Kuklin, in 1998.

Jones is the co-creator, director and choreographer of the musical Fela!, which ran Off-Broadway in 2008 and opened on Broadway in previews in October 2009. Jones won the Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Choreographer for his work as well as the Tony Award for Best Choreography. He has been nominated for an Olivier for Best Choreography now Fela! has opened in London's West End.

1953 – Edwin Cameron is a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as "one of South Africa's new heroes".

The South African judge was born in Pretoria and educated at Pretoria Boys High School, Stellenbosch University, the University of Oxford and the University of South Africa.

Cameron served as a Supreme Court of Appeal judge from 2000 to 2008. He was the first senior South African official to state publicly that he was living with HIV/AIDS. Cameron was inspired to act by the stoning and stabbing to death of Gugu Dlamini after she had admitted on a Zulu language radio that she was HIV positive.

Cameron has been openly gay since the early 1980s. He addressed the crowd in the first pride parade in South Africa held in Johannesburg on 13 October 1990. Thereafter he oversaw the gay and lesbian movement's submissions to the drafters of the South African Constitution and was instrumental in securing the inclusion of an express prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He is one of 29 signatories to the Yogyakarta Principles. He also was a founding member of the Society for Homosexuals on Campus, a student organization at the University of the Witwatersrand, which later became known as Activate Wits

Cameron had himself contracted HIV in the 1980s and became extremely ill with AIDS when working as a High Court judge. His salary allowed him to afford anti-retroviral treatment, which saved his life. Cameron's realisation that he owed his life to his relative wealth caused him to become a prominent HIV/AIDS activist in post-apartheid South Africa, urging its government to provide treatment to all. He has strongly criticised President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS-denialist policies. Cameron remains the only senior South African official to state publicly that he is living with HIV/AIDS.

1995 saw the publication of Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa, "a celebration of the lives of gay men and lesbians in South Africa" which Cameron co-edited with Mark Gevisser.

He was the 2009-2010 winner of the Brudner Prize from Yale University. The Brudner prize is awarded annually to an accomplished scholar or activist whose work has made significant contributions to the understanding of LGBT issues or furthered the tolerance of LGBT people.

1965 – On February 15, 1965, the Maple Leaf Flag, our national flag, was raised for the first time on Parliament Hill. Canada was just two years away from centennial celebrations when the maple leaf flag was made official by Royal Proclamation. In 1996, February 15 was declared National Flag of Canada Day and has been observed every year since.

February 15, 2015, marks the 50th anniversary of the National Flag of Canada. This special Flag Day is the perfect opportunity to learn more about how our flag was created and what it means to us.

After the First World War and again after the Second World War, the Government of Canada discussed the importance of our country having its own flag. Attempts to adopt a specific design repeatedly failed as consensus could not be reached.

In 1964, the Government made the creation of a distinctive Canadian flag a priority as the 1967 centennial celebration of Confederation was approaching. When Parliament could not reach agreement on the design, the task of finding a national flag was given to an all-party Parliamentary committee.

It was the single leaf, red and white design that the Committee recommended to Parliament. The motion was passed to adopt this design as the National Flag of Canada with a vote of 163 to 78 on December 15, 1964.

The winning flag was selected for the following reasons:

• The simplicity of the design that made it easily recognizable.
• Its use of Canada’s official national colours.
• The maple leaf had become a symbol of Canadian pride and national identity.
• Canadian troops as well as Canadian athletes had already used the maple leaf as an emblem on their uniforms when representing Canada abroad.

1967 – The District of Columbia Court of Appeals rules that police do not have to detain potential defense witnesses in public restrooms when they arrest people for solicitation therein.

2009 – About 200 GLBT activists and union activists picketed the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego on Feb. 15 as former President Bill Clinton spoke inside to the International Franchise Association. The protesters were upset that Clinton "crossed a picket line" to speak at the association's annual convention.

Gays had been boycotting the hotel since the previous summer because owner Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to the campaign to get Proposition 8 on the November ballot. Passed by 52 percent of voters Nov. 4, Prop 8 re-banned same-sex marriage in California five months after the state Supreme court legalized it. No representative of the IFA was available to speak to media, and hotel officials said Clinton would not be available to reporters either. The officials prohibited a reporter from accessing the floor on which the convention was taking place.

1968 – Richard Blanco is an American poet, public speaker, author and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet.

Blanco, born in Madrid on February 15, 1968, immigrated as an infant with his Cuban exile family to Miami, and was raised and educated there. He earned a B.S. from Florida International University in Civil Engineering in 1991 and his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 1997, where he studied with Campbell McGrath.

Since 1999, he has traveled and lived in Guatemala and Brazil. He taught at Georgetown University, American University, Central Connecticut State University, and Writer's Center.

He explored his Cuban heritage in his early works and his role as a gay man in Cuban-American culture in Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012). He explained: "It's trying to understand how I fit between negotiating the world, between being mainstream gay and being Cuban gay." According to Time magazine, he "views the more conservative, hard-line exile cohort of his parents' generation ... with a skeptical eye."

His work has appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly Review, New England Review, and Americas Review.

He and his partner split their time between Bethel, Maine and Boston, MA. In the poem "Queer Theory, According to My Grandmother," he described how his grandmother warned him as a young boy: "For God's sake, never pee sitting down ... /I've seen you" and "Don't stare at The Six-Million-Dollar Man./I've seen you." and "Never dance alone in your room."

1989 – A Los Angeles jury awards Rock Hudson's ex-lover, Marc Christian $21.75 million in damages for the emotional distress he claims to have suffered upon learning that Hudson had AIDS. The award is later reduced to $5.5 million.

1999 – Australian diplomat Stephen Brady and his partner Peter Stephens were the world’s first openly gay ambassadorial couple. Accompanied by Stephens, Brady presented his credentials as Australian Ambassador to Denmark, to Queen Margrethe II on February  15,1999.

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We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Susan B. Anthony

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. - Susan B. Anthony, "On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform" (1860)

The one distinct feature of our Association has been the right of the individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. - Susan B. Anthony

Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself. - Susan B. Anthony, Speech in San Francisco (July 1871)

The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do. - Susan B. Anthony