July 25

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1844 – Thomas Eakins (d.1916), was a painter, sculptor, photographer and fine arts teacher. He is associated with realism, and is often regarded as the father of American painting.

Thomas Eakins was raised and educated in Philadelphia, he studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and then spent several years studying in Paris and Spain. He returned to the Pennsylvania Academy to teach in 1876, and in 1882 became its director.

His teaching methods were controversial at the time, notably his interest in instructing his students in all aspects of the human figure, including the nude. Though there were tensions between him and the Academy's board of directors throughout his teaching career, he was ultimately fired in 1886 for removing the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present. The majority of Eakins's students liked his teaching methods and encouraged him to continue teaching them at Philadelphia's Art Students League.

Deeply influenced by his dismissal, his later painting concentrated on portraiture - usually of friends and family, and done with a realistic but psychological approach, rather than pure representation.

In the 1880s, Eakins became aware of the photographic motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge and enthusiastically embraced photography, making nude motion studies of his own and even developing a method of early motion capture. Photography also became an influence on his painting, although his photographs were then regarded as source material and a personal interest and not as art in themselves.

Eakins was unsuccessful as an artist in his lifetime, but has come to be regarded as one of the most influential and important figures in American painting. Since the 1990s, Eakins has emerged as a major figure in sexuality studies in art history, for both the homoeroticism of his work and for the complexity of his attitudes toward women, and his teaching methods, for his insistence on teaching men and women together and in the same way, which was ground breaking and controversial at the time.

The Swimming Hole
(Click for larger)

Eakins was married and his sexuality remains a matter of dispute, but his body of nude work, his close friendship with Walt Whitman and his belief that a naked woman was the most beautiful form in nature - 'except a naked man', give some clues. Next to Michelangelo, there are few other artists whose imagery is as iconic for homoeroticism as Eakins'

1879 – J. Warren Kerrigan (d.1947) was an American silent film actor and film director.

Born in New Albany, Indiana, Kerrigan worked as a warehouse clerk in his teens until a chance arrived to appear in a vaudeville production. He continued to act in traveling stock productions, though he took a brief time away from the stage to attend the University of Illinois.

By the time he was 30 years old, he had begun to make appearances in films for Essanay Studios. A contract with the American Film Corporation opened the door to leading roles, often as a modern man of the age. He starred in over 300 films up to 1924.

In May 1917, Kerrigan was nearing the end of a four-month-long personal appearance publicity tour that had taken him across the United States and into Canada. At one of the final stops, a reporter for The Denver Times asked Kerrigan if he would be joining the war. Kerrigan replied:

Picked up and reprinted in newspapers across the country, this statement stunned his fans and his popularity plummeted, never to fully recover. Family members later reported in Behind the Screen (2001) by William J. Mann that his slump in popularity was more due to his living with his mother and partner James Vincent in the same house, and not having a business manager to overcome the negative publicity.

An Ironic poster from the era
(Click for larger)

However, when director James Cruze cast him as the rugged lead in The Covered Wagon (1923), Kerrigan found himself back on top, although fleetingly. In the spring of 1924, after John Barrymore bowed out, Kerrigan was assigned the starring role in Captain Blood. While the film was a moderate success, critics were unmoved and Kerrigan found himself working less and less and in smaller roles.

Kerrigan was homosexual. He never married, and lived with his lover James Vincent from about 1914 to Kerrigan's death in 1947. On June 9, 1947, Kerrigan died from pneumonia at the age of 67.

1936 – Minister and pioneering off-off-Broadway composer Al Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia (d. 2005). Carmines was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s. Although his musical talent appeared early, he decided to enter the ministry, attending Swarthmore College, majoring in English and philosophy, and then Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, earning a bachelor of divinity in 1961 and a master of sacred theology in 1963.

He was hired by Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, New York, to found a theater in the sanctuary of the Greenwich Village church in conjunction with playwright Robert Nichols. Carmines began composing in 1962 and acted as well. His Bible study group grew into the Rauschenbusch Memorial Church of Christ, with Carmines as pastor. He taught at Union Theological Seminary and received the Vernon Rice Award for his performance and the Drama Desk Award for Lyrics and Music and was awarded the Obie award for Life Time Achievements.

His musicals reflected his eclectic interests, including: Abraham Lincoln, Christmas, Gertrude Stein, Gay relationships, and St. Joan. Carmines's Judson Poets' Theater, with other burgeoning theatres Café Cino, La MaMa E.T.C. and Theatre Genesis were experimental and vibrant challenges to the commercialization and conformity of Off Broadway and Broadway houses.

His 1973 musical The Faggot was a great success and transferred from the Judson Memorial Church to the Truck and Warehouse Theatre and ran for 203 performances. Carmines appeared in the show as Oscar Wilde and there were portrayals of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Catherine the Great, and songs by a hustler, two leather men and a fag-hag gay bar owner. It got to the point right away, opening with "Women With Women, Men With Men."

In 1977 he had a cerebral aneurysm that required months of therapy. He underwent surgery a second time in 1985, which only then cured his crippling headaches. He died in St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, survived by his partner Paul Rounsaville. Carmines found as much spiritual meaning in the theater as the church: "If you want to know how to live, go to church. If you want to know how your life is in its deepest roots, go to the theater."

1958 – Douglas Conrad, LGBT interviewer, movie maker, and historian, was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

Since the 1980s, he has served on several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and film arts organizations in the United States and Europe. Most notably, he helped coordinate several LGBT pride events and LGBT film festivals including many in Budapest.

He has chronicled LGBT lives in Central and Eastern Europe since 1988. In 2007, he made Belgrade Pride, a short film about Belgrade's first LGBT pride celebration in 2001.

He attributes his interest in LGBT people in Eastern and Central Europe to several events. In 1987 he served on the Northern California and San Francisco/Bay Area Steering Committees for the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Its slogan, “we are everywhere,” sparked his interest in the lives of LGBT people from other countries.

His work for the 1988 San Francisco Freedom Day Parade and Celebration put him in contact with LGBT people from over 40 different countries, including Ilse Kornreich, founder of Argentina’s first lesbian organization. Kornreich told Conrad of a gay man who was kicked out of East Germany into West Germany for erecting a pink triangle in honor of holocaust victims. Though unsuccessful in finding the man, Conrad met other LGBT people whose stories he captured in a video archive he titled Shades of Red & Pink.

1961 – Darren Star is an American producer, director and writer for film and television. He is best known for creating the television series Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Sex and the City. He is openly gay.

He sits on the Board of Directors of Project Angel Food, a nonprofit agency whose mission is to nourish the body and spirit of men, women and children affected by HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Volunteers and staff cook and deliver free and nutritious meals prepared with love throughout Los Angeles County, acting out of a sense of urgency because hunger and illness do not wait. In 2010, the agency cooked and delivered more than 735,000 meals to people in need; Since its creation, the agency has provided nearly 8 million meals to thousands of people struggling with life-threatening illnesses.

1967 – The Sexual Offences Act 1967 receives Royal Assent, decriminalizing sex between two men in private in England and Wales. The age of consent for sex acts between men is put at 21 (compared to 16 for acts between men and women).

1968 – John Grant is an American singer-songwriter. Formerly associated with the Denver-based alternative rock band The Czars in the 1990s and early 2000s, he launched a career as a solo artist in 2010.

Grant was born in Buchanan, Michigan and raised in Parker, Colorado. He studied languages in Germany and after The Czars split up in 2006, based himself in New York, London, Berlin and Iceland.

Following The Czars, Grant took some time off from making music and returned to recording and performing in 2010 with his debut solo album Queen of Denmark. Released in April 2010, it had been recorded in collaboration with the American folk-rock band Midlake and released on Bella Union. Described as a deeply personal album about his past struggles with alcohol and drug addiction and coming to terms with being gay, it was chosen as Best Album of 2010 by the British music magazine Mojo.

Grant is currently living in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he worked throughout 2012 on his second solo album Pale Green Ghosts with Birgir Þórarinsson, a.k.a. Biggi Veira of Iceland's electronic pioneers Gus Gus.

At a live performance with Hercules and Love Affair at the 2012 Meltdown festival, Grant publicly acknowledged for the first time that he is HIV-positive.

In the album Pale Green Ghosts, John Grant sings about being HIV-positive in the track "Ernest Borgnine", and several other tracks refer to his youth and to a former boyfriend. As of 2015, Grant is in a relationship with an Icelandic graphic designer.

1969 – David Brazil is a Brazilian event promoter and actor.

He frequently participates in programs of SBT and RedeTV!, especially those related to the theme of LGBT. He is also famous for having publicly announcing his homosexuality and by emulating a stuttering, which makes his presentations rather peculiar and raises doubts in viewers of whether his stuttering is real.

He often appears in magazines about fashion and gossip. He participates as a reporter for the Domingo Legal and various programs of the RedeTV!, works in promotion of events.

He"s also promoter the Rio Grande school of samba.

1970 – The Vatican confirms its condemnation of homosexuality stating that it is a "moral aberration that cannot be approved by human conscience."

1974 – Gareth Thomas, a retired Welsh rugby player player who most recently played rugby union at fullback, wing or center for the Cardiff Blues and most recently played as a fullback for Wales. he also played rugby league played rugby league for the Crusaders RL in the Super League. In May 2007, he surpassed Gareth Llewellyn as the most-capped Wales player with his 93rd appearance. A prolific try scorer at international level, Thomas is listed ninth in the world on the all-time Test try scoring list. During the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Thomas created sporting history when he became the first Welshman to win 100 international caps in rugby union. During this game he scored a try and prevented another but Wales lost to Fiji and were eliminated from the tournament.

From 2002 to 2006, Thomas was married to childhood sweetheart Jemma. The couple married in St Brides Major, near Bridgend, and filed for divorce in 2007. In December 2009 Thomas announced publicly that he is Gay, telling the Daily Mail,"Just because you are gay, it doesn't mean you fancy every man who walks the planet. I don't want to be known as a gay rugby player. I am a rugby player, first and foremost I am a man."

Thomas' public confirmation of his sexuality makes him the first openly Gay professional rugby player still playing the game. In an interview with the BBC, Thomas talked about how he hoped that his coming out would mean that in the future, young gay rugby players would be able to come out and be accepted as a "talented gay rugby player". We say, Good on ya, mate!"

1979 – The opening of the movie Cruising in New York is greeted by protests due to the nature of the depiction of "gay life" within the film.

1985 – It is revealed that actor Rock Hudson has AIDS.

1985 – Paris – The French Parliament amends the penal code to prohibit discrimination based on 'moral habits,' one of which is homosexuality. France is the first country to legislate gay and lesbian rights.

2005 – Germany – An ancient phallus is discovered in the Hohle Fels cave, dating back about 28,000 years.

2011 – OUTGames open in Vancouver, Canada as part of the Pride Week celebrations. An International Human Rights Conference is also scheduled for the same week.