July 3

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1891 – (Ellsworth) Elzie Booher was born in Albany, Green County (d.1939). When he registered for the draft in WWI he was in Chicago and worked as a singer.

On December 10, 1924 he was listed as the treasurer for the newly formed "Society for Human Rights", an organization founded by Henry Gerber for the purpose of supporting homosexuality rights. All of the member were homosexual with the exception of one bi-sexual - according to letters later written by Henry Gerber to the ONE Institute in Los Angeles.

Ellsworth died in 1939 in Rockford, Illinois, aged 48. He had previously married and divorced, and was working as a male nurse at the county hospital at the time of his death at the age of 48.

1901 – Born: Thelma Wood (d.1970) might have remained an obscure artist practicing the obscure craft of silverpoint drawing if Djuna Barnes had not fictionalized their intense, eight-year affair into the classic lesbian novel Nightwood.

The second of four children, Thelma Wood was born in Kansas on July 3, 1901 and grew up in St. Louis. Wood loved animals, was a good cook, and drank rum and cola. She was almost six feet tall, boyish-looking, and sexually magnetic.

Around 1921, she moved from St. Louis to Paris in order to study sculpture. She had a brief affair with the bisexual poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) and visited Berlin, a party city for those with foreign money. In the fall of 1921, Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) became her lover for a brief time. Abbott—who later gained fame as a photographer—remained a friend for life. She introduced Wood to Djuna Barnes and later photographed them.

Barnes and Wood began a passionate relationship that lasted from 1921 to 1929. Fueled by sex, alcohol, and sometimes marijuana—and marred at times by infidelities, jealousy, and violence—the relationship was the "great love" of each of their lives. Although Barnes wanted their relationship to be monogamous (and for many years thought it was), Wood sought out casual sexual partners of both genders.

Barnes encouraged Wood to take up silverpoint, in which fine line images are created on paper from the residue of silver from a stylus. Wood crafted erotically charged drawings of animals, exotic plants, and fetishistic objects such as shoes. Although very little of her work survives, Wood's drawings were exhibited at least once, at Milch Galleries in New York City in 1931, where they were favorably reviewed. Wood's sketchbook from a trip to Berlin is in the Barnes papers at the University of Maryland-College Park.

In 1928--before the end of her relationship with Barnes—Wood began an affair with Henriette McCrea Metcalf (1888-1981). A small, loquacious bisexual who loved to rescue people and animals, Metcalf was born into a wealthy Chicago family, but spent much of her childhood in Paris. When Wood moved to Greenwich Village in New York City in 1928, Metcalf followed. Wood continued to write and visit Barnes, to whom she still professed her love. In 1932, Metcalf supported Wood's art studies in Florence. In 1934, they moved to Sandy Hook, Connecticut. In Westport, Connecticut, Wood tried (with Metcalf's financial assistance) to run a gourmet catering business that failed. Complicating their relationship, Wood continued to seek out drinking and sexual companions.

When Nightwood, Barnes' brilliant, vindictive novel, was published in 1936, Wood -called "Robin Vote" in the book - was outraged and stopped speaking to the novelist. Wood felt misrepresented and claimed that the publication of the book ruined her life. Around 1942 or 1943, Metcalf offered Wood money to move out of their shared house and end their sixteen-year relationship. Once the separation was complete, Metcalf never spoke to Wood again, even when Wood, dying, requested to see her.

Around 1943, perhaps precipitating the break with Metcalf, Wood became involved with Margaret Behrens (1908-1986)—a realtor and antique dealer—and moved into Behrens' home in Monroe, Connecticut. She did odd jobs for Behrens in a relationship that lasted until Wood's death twenty-seven years later. In the late 1960s, Wood developed breast cancer, which spread to her spine and lungs. She died on December 10, 1970, in Danbury Hospital. Her ashes were interred in the Behrens's plot in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

1946 – Michael Willhoite is an artist and writer who is best known for his children's books depicting families with gay parents. His book Daddy's Roommate (1990) was the second most challenged book in American libraries in the decade of 1990-1999, according to the American Library Association.

Willhoite was born in Hobart, Oklahoma. He was raised in part by an aunt, in a household where books were widely read and discussed. From an early age he also developed an interest in movies, and in art. He remarked later, "Very early in life, I showed signs of becoming an artist; indeed, it was always expected that I should become one." In high school, he took a particular interest in caricatures.

In the 1980s he drew a bi-weekly series of caricatures for the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper in the nation's capital, depicting notable gay men and lesbians in history. Many of them were collected and published by Alyson Publications in two books: Members of the Tribe (1993) and Willhoite's Hollywood (1994). That company also published Now for My Next Trick (1986), a book of his cartoons from the Washington Blade.

Willhoite began work on his best-known book in 1990, when his publisher, Sasha Alyson, started a new line of children's books, Alyson Wonderland, to depict families with gay and lesbian parents. Alyson invited Willhoite to submit a book. After some thought about how to present such content, Willhoite produced Daddy's Roommate. It was the first children's book to feature two gay men as parents.

The book soon became a subject of heated controversy. It was one of many titles included in a reading list for New York City's "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum, where it was widely attacked. Because of good reviews in Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, many libraries purchased the book for their collections, and it often faced challenges from library users who objected to it. The American Library Association reported that it was the most challenged book in the country in 1993 and 1994.

Willhoite followed this with Daddy's Wedding (1996). Willhoite won a Lambda Literary Award in 1991 for Daddy's Roommate (Small Press Award). His novel The Venetian Boy appeared in 2011. His novel The Goddess of Destruction appeared in 2014.

1948 – Rich Gordon is an American politician from Menlo Park, California who currently serves in the California State Assembly. A Democrat, he formerly served for 13 years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.

Gordon is openly gay; his partner of 26 years is Dr. Dennis McShane. The couple were married on August 16, 2008 during the brief window of legal same-sex marriages in California that ended with the passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008. He is one of eight members of the California Legislative LGBT Caucus, which he chairs.

1957 – (Thomas) Tommy Sexton (d.1993) was a Canadian comedian. Born in St. John's, Newfoundland, he was the youngest member of the CODCO comedy troupe. Educated in St. John's, he was an honours student before quitting after Grade 10 to pursue an acting career in Toronto. After briefly working on a children's touring theatre show, he landed his first television role in the drama series Police Surgeon. Sexton and colleague Diane Olsen subsequently wrote Cod on a Stick, a comedic play which launched CODCO.

In 1975, Sexton took a brief sabbatical from CODCO to study at the Toronto Dance Theatre. He subsequently returned, working on other shows with CODCO and subsequently touring with colleague Greg Malone in two co-written works, The Wonderful Grand Band and Two Foolish to Talk About. In 1985 and 1986, Sexton and Malone wrote and performed in a series of television specials for the CBC, called The S and M Comic Book, which in turn led to CODCO landing its own series in 1987.

After CODCO's run concluded in 1992, Sexton and Malone wrote and starred in a CBC television special, The National Doubt, satirizing the constitutional debates of the early 1990s. Sexton subsequently wrote a semi-autobiographical film, Adult Children of Alcoholics: The Musical, which was in production in November 1993 when Sexton, who was openly gay, fell ill due to complications from AIDS. He died on December 13 of that year.

Malone subsequently campaigned for HIV and AIDS education in Sexton's memory. His sister, filmmaker Mary Sexton, produced a documentary film about him, Tommy...A Family Portrait, in 2001. Along with Malone and their CODCO co-star Andy Jones, Sexton was a posthumous recipient of the Earle Grey Award, the lifetime achievement award of Canadian television's Gemini Awards, in 2002.

The Tommy Sexton Centre, a new assisted housing complex for people living with HIV and AIDS, was opened in St. John's in 2006.

1962 – Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV) is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards for the same movies: Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), Magnolia (1999). He started his career with the movie Endless Love. Cruise's first appearance in a major film was in 1981's Taps. His first leading role was in the film Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise played the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and successful 1986 film Top Gun, and also secret agent Ethan Hunt in the series of Mission: Impossible action films.

He has starred in many successful films, including: Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), and War of the Worlds (2005).

Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.

But for all his macho image and Scientology background, there has been controversy about Cruse's sexuality. During Cruise's marriage to Nicole Kidman, the couple endured public speculation about their sex life and rumors that Cruise was gay. In 1998, he successfully sued the Daily Express, a British tabloid which alleged that his marriage to Kidman was a sham designed to cover up his homosexuality.

In May 2001 he filed a lawsuit against gay porn actor Chad Slater. Slater had allegedly told the celebrity magazine Actustar that he had had an affair with Cruise. Both Slater and Cruise denied this, and in August 2001, Slater was ordered to pay $10 million to Cruise in damages after Slater declared he could not afford to defend himself against the suit and would therefore default.

Cruise also sued Michael Davis, publisher of Bold Magazine, who alleged but never confirmed that he had video that would prove Cruise was gay. The suit was dropped in exchange for a public statement by Davis that the video was not of Cruise, and that Cruise was heterosexual.

His divorce from Katie Holmes has refired the old rumors.

c.1965 – Keith Hale succeeded where many had failed when he convinced the Rupert Brooke Trust to allow him to edit a collection of the poet's letters that had been sealed for eighty years due to their homosexual themes. That edition, Friends and Apostles, was published by Yale University Press.

Hale's first two books also were groundbreaking: His novel Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada, first published in the Netherlands and immediately banned in the United Kingdom during Margaret Thatcher's Operation Tiger, remains unique in its treatment of teen homosexuality, socialism, and existentialism.

Hale also published the first and only account of gay life in the Balkans before the walls of Communism crumbled in his travelogue In the Land of Alexander. A fourth book, Torn Allegiances, deals with gays in the military. Hale also has published essays on Dickens, Rumi, Sa'di, Hafiz, David Garnett, and gay Philippine literature.

Hale is currently Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin, Platteville, with specialization in English education, gay studies, young adult literature, the teaching of composition, modern British and American literature, Filipino literature.

1975 – In a change of policy, the U.S. Civil Service Commission decides to consider applications by lesbians and gay men on a case-by-case basis. Previously, homosexuality was grounds for automatic disqualification.

1981 – A Federal NDP convention in Vancouver calls for amendment of bawdyhouse section of the Criminal Code. The code is often used to raid gay bathhouses.

2005 – Same-sex marriage is legalized in Spain. In 2004, the nation’s newly elected Socialist Party Government, led by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, began a campaign for its legalization, including the right of adoption by same-sex couples. The law took effect on this day, making Spain the third country in the world to allow same-sex couples to marry across the entire country, after the Netherlands and Belgium, and 17 days ahead of the right being extended across all of Canada. The U.S. was 17th.