January 20

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c.275 AD. – St. Sebastian was born in the 3rd century AD. We know the date, but not the year. He is the patron saint of archers because he was bound to a stake and shot with arrows. He is also the patron saint of soldiers. As a beautiful young man he was the favorite of the emperor Diocletian who turned against him for embracing Christianity.

Some tales speculate that the Emperor Diocletian made romantic advances upon Sebastian and was enraged when Sebastian rejected him on Christian grounds. Other stories actually refer to Sebastian as the emperor's lover. Whether or not such accounts are legitimate, the image of St. Sebastian has been linked to homoeroticism.

According to the Church's official Acta Sanctorum, Sebastian, serving under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, came to the rescue of Christian soldiers, Marcellinus and Mark, and thereby confessed his own Christianity. Diocletian insisted that Sebastian be shot to death by his fellow archers; these orders were followed, and Sebastian was left for dead.

These details—based on accounts written centuries after Sebastian's death and therefore largely apocryphal—may have helped form Sebastian's subsequent reputation as a homosexual martyr since his story constitutes a kind of "coming out" tale followed by his survival of an execution that may be read symbolically as a penetration.

In the Renaissance, Sebastian emerged as an extraordinarily popular subject for painters, perhaps rivaled only by Jesus and Mary; he was especially prized by artists who saw in the young saint a figure of Hellenic loveliness. Numerous painters—Tintoretto, Mantegna, Titian, Guido Reni, Giorgione, Perugino, Botticelli, Bazzi ("Il Sodoma")—recast Sebastian as a martyr beatifically receptive to his arrow-ridden fate.

It was primarily the Renaissance depiction of Sebastian that served a later, explicitly homosexual cult of St. Sebastian that took hold with remarkable force beginning in the nineteenth century, with Sebastian as an modern emblem of both a homoerotically charged object of desire and a source of solace for the rejected homosexual.

1872 – Pioneering California architect Julia Morgan (d.1957) designed more than 700 buildings, including many commissioned by women's groups, but she is most remembered as the architect of San Simeon, the Hearst Castle north of Los Angeles.

Morgan was born in San Francisco to an upper middle class family. She was reared in Oakland, California. She earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1894 and was the first woman accepted into the architecture program at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. (Although Morgan arrived in Paris in 1896, it took her two years to convince L'Ecole that women should be allowed to study architecture.)

After serving stints in the offices of Paris and San Francisco architects, Mogan opened her own architectural firm in San Francisco in 1904. The first woman architect to be registered in California, Morgan designed many residences in Berkeley, Claremont, and Piedmont and such institutional buildings in Berkeley as the Baptist Divinity School, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium, St. John's Presbyterian Church, and Women's City Club. She also designed a large number of buildings commissioned by women's groups in California, Hawaii, and Utah, including social clubs, sorority houses, and YWCAs.

Commissions from women's organizations provided financial and professional support for Morgan while she designed the spaces that helped promote the women's movement. As Sara Holmes Boutelle writes, "Morgan understood women's organizations, their goals, and limitations, not just because of her gender, but also because she shared their determination to improve the lives of individuals and groups who could not take social action on their own."

Morgan led a private and quiet life. Little is known for certain about her emotional and affectional attachments, but she is believed to have been a lesbian. She was part of a network of accomplished professional women, many of whom were her clients. Morgan died on February 2, 1957.

1900 – British actor Colin Clive (d.1937) is born in Saint-Malo, France to an English colonel, Colin Philip Greig, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Lugard Clive. He attended Stonyhurst College and subsequently Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where an injured knee disqualified him from military service and contributed to his becoming a stage actor. Clive studied acting, and replaced Laurence Olivier in the stage play, Journey’s End, in 1927.

James Whale was the director of Journey's End. The two struck up an intimate relationship, and Clive played the lead in Journey’s End when it moved to the Savoy Theater in London in 1928. Clive was embraced by Whale’s theatrical friends including actress Elsa Lanchester. He followed Whale to New York City and Whale facilitated the casting of Clive in the movie version of the play.

Journey’s End was Clive’s first of 18 feature films. Clive appeared on Broadway in Overture. When the play closed, he went to London and starred with Elsa Lanchester in The Stronger Sex.

Clive is perhaps best known for playing the role of Dr. Henry Frankenstein in the James Whale-directed Frankenstein (1931) and in the Bride of Frankenstein (1935) with his friend Elsa Lanchester.

Though Clive was gay, he married actress Jeanne de Casalis in 1929, but the marriage was one of convenience, and they separated a short time later.

Clive was a member of the Brit ex-patriot actors in Hollywood including Lanchester, Karloff and Charles Laughton, and remained close with Whale.

The actor struggled with his sexual identity and suffered alcoholism and depression from an early age. His drinking became more and more problematic professionally. He often came to work drunk and passed out on the set. He was even fired from a starring role in a film when he suffered a breakdown.

Clive’s final film was in 1937, The Woman I Love. Colin Clive died on June 25, 1937, of tuberculosis complicated by chronic alcoholism. He was 37 years old. Actress Mae Clarke, one of his leading ladies, said, "Colin was the handsomest man I ever saw and also the saddest."

1944 – The Black Lesbian poet Pat Parker was born (d.1989). Author of many books, including "Movement In Black," "Child of Myself" and "Jonestown and Other Madness." She is remembered for such incisive writing in poems as "For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend" and "For The Straight Folks Who Don't Mind Gays But Wish They Weren't So BLATANT" (One of the funniest written on this subject — see today's "Gay Wisdom").

Parker began to identify as a lesbian in the late 1960s, and, in a 1975 interview with Anita Cornwell, stated that "after my first relationship with a woman, I knew where I was going."

Parker was involved in the Black Panther Movement. In 1979 she toured with the Varied Voices of Black Women, a group of poets and musicians which included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins & Gwen Avery. She founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council in 1980, and she also contributed to the formation of the Women's Press Collective, as well as being involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizing. Parker worked from 1978-1987 as a medical coordinator at the Oakland Feminist Women's Health Center.

Parker's elder sister was murdered by her husband, and the autobiographical poem, Womanslaughter (1978) is based on this event.

In the poem, Parker notes that

The perpetrator was convicted of "womanslaughter", not murder; because

Her poems were a herald of strength and resistance in the early movement of Gay Liberation. After a long history of writing and teaching, Parker died of cancer in 1989.

1945 – Gianni Amelio is an Italian film director.

Amelio was born in San Pietro di Magisano, province of Catanzaro, Calabria. His father moved to Argentina soon after his birth. He spent his youth and adolescence with his mother and his grandmother. The absence of a paternal figures will be a constant in Amelio's future works.

During his university studies of philosophy in Messina, Amelio got interested in cinema, writing as film critic for a local magazine. In 1965 he moved to Rome, where he worked as operator and assistant director for figures such as Liliana Cavani and Vittorio De Seta. He also worked for television, directing documentaries and advertisements.

Amelio's first important work is the TV film La città del sole, directed in 1973 for RAI TV and inspired to Tommaso Campanella's work. This was followed by Bertolucci secondo il cinema (1976) a documentary about shooting the movie 1900, and the thriller Effetti speciali. Two years later he directed the mystery La morte al lavoro, which won prizes at Locarno and Hyères festivals. The Little Archimedes (Il piccolo Archimede) of 1979 was also critically acclaimed.

In 1982 he debuted for cinema proper with Blow to the Heart (Colpire al cuore), about Italian terrorism, presented at the Venice Film Festival. In 1987 Amelio released I ragazzi di via Panisperna, about the lives of 1930 Italian physicists Enrico Fermi and Edoardo Amaldi, which won the award for best screenplay at the Bari Film Festival. 1989's Open Doors (Porte aperte), featuring Gian Maria Volonté, confirmed Amelio's status as one of Italy's best film directors and won a nomination as Best Foreign Film at 1991 Academy Awards. The film received also four Felix, two Silver Ribbon, four David di Donatello and three Golden Globes awards.

Also successful was The Stolen Children (Il ladro di bambini) in 1992, which won the Special Prize of Jury at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival plus two Silver Ribbon and 5 David di Donatello. In 1994 Lamerica, about Albanian immigration in Italy, repeated the fate and the success, with 2 Silver Ribbons and 3 Davids. Four years later, The Way We Laughed (Così ridevano) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Amelio gained another Silver Ribbon as best director for The Keys to the House (Le chiavi di casa), inspired to a novel by Giuseppe Pontiggia, of 2004.

Amelio was a member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. In 2006 he released his eighth feature film, The Missing Star (La stella che non c'è), featuring Sergio Castellitto. From 2009 to 2012 he was director of Torino Film Festival, Turin.

Amelio came out as gay late in life, shortly before the release of his 2014 documentary Happy to be Different.

1953 – Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin is arrested in Los Angeles for sex with another man.

Main also maintains a podcast called "Inquire Within" in which he interviews various individuals on topics such as healing, spiritualism, and social activism.

Main's adolescent years were "filled with pain, rage and confusion" which led to drug abuse and depression. After a suicide attempt, Main claimed to have had a spiritual awakening. This spiritual awakening led Main to Alcoholics Anonymous and to Narcotics Anonymous and to Hatha Yoga and Meditation. Main also became a student of A Course in Miracles.

Main studied Social Work at Mohegan community College, Community College of Rhode Island and at Rhode Island College. He also studied massage therapy at the Bancroft School of Massage Therapy in Worcester, MA and trained to become a yoga and meditation instructor at The Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA.

Main began teaching yoga in Providence, RI in 1992. He spent a year teaching in Bozeman, MT in 1993. Main moved to San Francisco, CA in 1994 where he currently teaches. In 1998, Main opened a San Francisco yoga studio, Castro Yoga with David Nelson. In 2000, Castro Yoga closed and Main began teaching for San Francisco’s largest yoga studio,Yoga Tree. In addition to his weekly yoga classes and various workshops, Main is also the Director of Yoga Tree's Teacher Training program. His books have become required text in a number of yoga teacher certification programs throughout the United States.

Shortly after his first book was released in 1999, Main began teaching throughout the United States and internationally.

Main teaches one of the largest weekly yoga classes in the world at San Francisco's iconic Grace Cathedral. This donation-based yoga class features renowned recording artists and musicians playing live music and attracts as many as 700 students per week. The class has been featured in local as well as national press and has been criticized by some conservative Christian groups.

In April 2006, Main founded a Naked Yoga for Men group in San Francisco and began teaching naked yoga (for men) at Mission Yoga.

Main also writes articles and has contributed to Gay.com, White Crain Journal and the Kaiser Permanente HIV Update Newsletter.

1971 – Paul Masvidal is the guitarist, singer and a founding member of the band Cynic and previously led the alternative rock band Æon Spoke. As of September 2015, the status of Cynic is in dispute.

Paul Masvidal was born in Puerto Rico to Cuban-American civic and business leader Raul Masvidal. Masvidal's early days were spent in the Miami area where he studied classical guitar from an early age with Carlos Molina. Guitar teacher Dave Weissbrot was a major influence and spurred Masvidal's love of jazz, Steinberger guitars, and Eastern philosophy; he became an initiate to Kriya Yoga in his late teens and has been a Buddhist practitioner since 2000, although he has more recently gotten in touch with his roots in Judaism. Masvidal met drummer Sean Reinert in 1984 at Gulliver Academy and immediately started jamming with him, forming the pre-Cynic Crypha and Seaweed.

Cynic released four demos from 1988 though 1991, with Masvidal developing a reputation in the Florida metal scene for his musicianship. 1993 saw the release of Focus on the Roadrunner label, the only album Cynic recorded until 2008. Roadrunner released a reissue of Focus in 2004 as a special collector's edition due to high demand. By 2007 Cynic returned to touring, featuring Masvidal and Reinert.

Masvidal finished recording a new Cynic album titled Traced in Air, which was released on November 17, 2008 in Europe and November 25, 2008 in the USA to critical acclaim. Since the release of Traced in Air, Masvidal has toured with Cynic as part of several large tour packages, playing with such popular metal acts as Opeth, Dream Theater, Mastodon, Meshuggah, Between the Buried and Me, and The Faceless. At the Hove Festival, Masvidal and Cynic shared the stage with more mainstream acts such as The Killers, Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Slayer and Queens of the Stone Age. In 2010, Cynic released an EP entitled Re-traced, featuring re-interpretations of several Traced in Air tracks. Cynic released an EP titled Carbon-Based Anatomy worldwide on November 11, 2011, receiving positive reviews. Cynic released a 3rd full-length record titled Kindly Bent to Free Us February 14, 2014 receiving critical acclaim from major press.

As of May 2014, he publicly revealed his homosexuality along with fellow Cynic member Sean Reinert.

1974 – Nina Arsenault is a Canadian transgender columnist, freelance writer, live artist, actress and sex-trade worker.

She was named Rodney at birth and grew up in a trailer park in Beamsville, Ontario. She has two master's degrees. At one point prior to her transition, Arsenault was an instructor at York University, where she taught acting.

She has said her moment of truth about who she was came in August 1996 and her transition was in full force around 1998. By 2007 she had undergone over $150,000 in surgery during her transition, financed through work in the sex trade.

Arsenault wrote a regular column on transgender issues for 36 issues of fab, a biweekly Toronto-based LGBT magazine. Her last column was in early 2007. She has appeared on the television series Train 48 and KinK, as well as the Showtime movie Soldier's Girl.

She had a well-publicized encounter with Tommy Lee where he flirted with Arsenault for some time before discovering that Arsenault was transgender, and subsequently left in a hurry.

Arsenault dated Canadian killer and alleged cannibal Luka Magnotta around 2002 before his notoriety for violent crimes. She says that Magnotta was obsessed with wanting to be famous, and that he made disturbing comments about injuring kittens when they dated. She has said that she believes that the murders he is alleged to have committed were done as a result of, and under the influence of, drugs.