March 16

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The first day of the Bacchanalia in ancient Rome. Introduced into Rome from lower Italy by way of Etruria (c. 200 BC), the bacchanalia were originally held in secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men, and celebrations took place five times a month. According to Livy, the extension happened in an era when the leader of the Bacchus cult was Paculla Annia — though it is now believed that some men had participated before that. In Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — And America Is Building — A New World by Thomas Madden, the author cites the words of the scandalized contemporary Roman investigative consul in his report to the Roman Senate:

In 1984 gay philosopher, activist and historian, Arthur Evans directed a production of The Bacchae at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from the ancient Greek, of Euripides' play, Bakkhai, dealing with the Greek god Dionysos. In 1988, this translation, together with Evans' commentary on the historical significance of the play for gay people and women, was published by St. Martin's Press in New York under the name of The God of Ecstasy.

1680 – Legislators of New Hampshire pass the colony’s first capital laws, copied almost word for word from the Plymouth laws of 1671: If any man lie with mankind as he lies with a woman; both of them have committed abomination; They both shall surely be put to death: unless one party were forced, or were under fourteen years of age. And all other Sodomitical filthiness shall be severely punished according to the nature of it.

1805 – Massachusetts reduces the penalty for sodomy from death to 20 years, but retains the language making the law applicable only to two males.

1822 – Rosa Bonheur, nee Marie-Rosalie Bonheur (d.1899), was a French painter, animalière and realist artist, one of few female sculptors. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Plowing in the Nivemais (in French Le labourage nivernais, le sombrage ), which was first exhibited at the Salon of 1848, and is now in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris depicts a team of oxen plowing a field while attended by peasants set against a vast pastoral landscape; and, The Horse Fair (in French Le marché aux chevaux ), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853 (finished in 1855) and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.

Bonheur is widely considered to have been the most famous woman painter of the 19th century. Writers used to explain Bonheur's penchant for dressing in men's clothing by saying that the famous painter of animals needed disguises to paint unmolested in the markets she frequented for her subjects. It's a nice thought, but untrue. Rosa Bonheur, who lived together with Nathalie Micas for most of her life, dressed as a man because she wanted to. She drank, she smoked, she became one of the most popular painters in the world and a member of the French Legion of Honor. She was, in short, very much her own person. As she once said to a male friend who was concerned about her movement through the world of men (gasp!) unchaperoned, "Oh my dear Sir, if you knew how little I care for your sex, you wouldn't get any ideas in your head. The fact is, in the way of males, I only like the bulls I paint."

1885 – I.A.R. Wylie, Australian novelist was born (d.1959); In 1940 I.A.R. (for Ida Alexa Ross Wylie, also Ida Alena Ross Wylie) Wylie published a book, now little read, called My Life With George. What was unusual about it was not merely its honest treatment of a life shared with someone other than a husband, a lover with whom she had lived for twenty years, but that "George" was in fact another woman - Dr. S. Josephine Baker, a pioneering public health specialist who was famous for having captured "Typhoid Mary." Anyone interested in learning more about Wylie's George, ironically, will have to look Dr. Baker up in old editions of American Men of Science. Or here on our archives!

Wylie's writing career took off in the teens, and her novel, The Red Mirage, was brought to the screen in 1915 as The Unknown. Four more of her stories were turned into movies over the next five years, but she fully hit her stride in the decade that followed. In 1920, Wylie published her first major novel, Toward Morning, which dealt with life in Germany. One of her later books, To the Vanquished, was an account of the changes that took place in Germany during the Nazi occupation. She also traveled to the Soviet Union and later wrote Furious Young Man, which is the story of a British youth who is frustrated with the shortcomings of his homeland's society and embraces communism.

Nine movies based on her work (including a fresh adaptation of The Red Mirage as The Foreign Legion) were filmed during the '20s, and 10 more in the '30s. The most memorable screen adaptation of a Wylie novel, however, was of Keeper of the Flame (1942), with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The film is not a comedy, but one of the most sophisticated thrillers ever to come out of Hollywood — a startling work issued from a major studio in wartime, dealing with the investigation of a deceased, wealthy and supposedly ultra-patriotic man whose unsavory secrets are revealed. The suspense elements in Keeper of the Flame rival the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and it contains political elements that seem almost subversive. It marked the peak of Wylie's influence as an author in Hollywood. Two more movies based on her work would follow in the '50s — Phone Call From a Stranger (1952) and Torch Song (1953). She receded in prominence through the last years of her life.

In the 1930s, Wylie, Sara Josephine Baker and another pioneering woman physician, Dr. Louise Pearce, settled on a property near Skillman, New Jersey called Trevenna Farm. They lived there together until Baker died in 1945, followed by Pearce, and then later Wylie who died on 4 November 1959 at the age of 74. Wylie and Pearce are buried alongside each other at Henry Skillman Burying Ground, Trevenna Farm's family cemetery.

1937 – Today is the birthday of American pianist and composer David Del Tredici. Born in Cloverdale, California, he studied at Berkeley and Princeton.

Much of his early work consisted of elaborate vocal settings of James Joyce: I Hear an Army; Night Conjure-Verse; Syzygy; and a decade long obsession with the work of Lewis Carroll (Pop-Pourri, An Alice Symphony, Vintage Alice and Adventures Underground, and Final Alice, to name just a few of these works). He was awarded a Pulitzer prize in 1980 for In Memory of a Summer Day, the first part of Child Alice. Sir Georg Solti made the first recording of his epic Final Alice with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Del Tredici detached himself from Carroll to write three large, dissonant works for orchestra, March to Tonality (1985), Tattoo (1986), and the threatening Steps (1990). However, the real turn in his career came in 1996, when he attended a workshop in gay sexuality and self-acceptance held by Body Electric, a national organization devoted to such workshops.

During that workshop, he set two overtly gay poems for voice and piano. This led to the composition of a number of songs based on gay texts and experiences. After attending that retreat for gay men, Del Tredici decided to integrate his sexuality into his work. For instance, a setting of Paul Monette's "Here" was dedicated to Del Tredici's lover Paul Arcomano, who died of AIDS in 1993. When he encountered Beat-era icon Allen Ginsberg at a conference, as he later related to The Advocate, Del Tredici told the poet, "I'm looking for something really dirty to set to music." Ginsberg responded by giving Del Tredici his Collected Poems, one of which, "Personal Ads," became part of a six-song cycle, Gay Life. "Personal Ads" was dedicated to gay activist Jody Dalton, director of Composers Recordings Inc.; and a setting of Thom Gunn's "Memory Unsettled" was dedicated to Del Tredici's mother, who died in 2000, and who had accepted her son's life choices. Gay Life also included poems from Paul Monette, Michael D. Calhoun, and W.H. Kidde.

These songs became the core of the cantata Gay Life (1996-2001, premiered by the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas in May 2001). A related collection is Brother (1997-2001), a song cycle created with drag performance artist John Kelly, which premiered at P.S. 122 in New York in May 2001.

"I no longer want to pretend and I'm not sure what the repercussions might be," he told The Advocate. "I can survive and be a serious composer and be gay. It has fallen [to] me to do it. One generation's silence can become the next generation's nectar."

His later works have included many vocal settings of contemporary poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Paul Monette, James Broughton, Colette Inez, and Alfred Corn — often celebrating a gay sensibility (three examples: Gay Life, Love Addiction and Wondrous the Merge). OUT Magazine has twice named Del Tredici one of its people of the year.

His "On Wings of Song" was premiered in New York City in 2004 as part of the Riverside Opera Ensemble's 20th Anniversary Concert. His notable students include John Adams, Richard St. Clair and Tison Street.

Del Tredici met his life partner Ray Warman in 1999; the couple held their commitment ceremony in 2000.

1938 – On this date the American writer and Gay activist Jack Nichols was born (d.2005) in Washington, DC. Nichols was an early activist and with Franklin Kameny responsible for some of the first protests for Gay rights in the nation's capitol. He co-founded the Washington, D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin Kameny, and the Mattachine Society of Florida in 1965. The Mattachine Society of Washington was independent of the national Mattachine Society. Beginning in 1963, he chaired the Mattachine Society of Washington's Committee on Religious Concerns, which later developed into the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual. This organization was pioneering in forging links between the Gay rights movement and the National Council of Churches.

Nichols led the first Gay rights march on the White House, in April 1965, and participated in the Annual Reminder pickets at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, held each July 4 from 1965 to 1969. He also successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to rescind its definition of homosexuality as a form of mental illness.

In 1967, Mr. Nichols became one of the first Americans to talk openly about his homosexuality on national television when he appeared in "The Homosexuals," a CBS documentary. Though he allowed himself to be interviewed on camera, Mr. Nichols used the pseudonym "Warren Adkins" in the broadcast at the request of his father, an F.B.I. agent.

Lige Clarke (L) and Jack Nichols

In 1969, after moving to New York City, Nichols and his partner Lige Clarke founded GAY, the first weekly newspaper for Gay people in the US distributed on newsstands. From February 1997, Nichols was Senior Editor at GayToday.com, an online newsmagazine.

He died on May 2, 2005, of complications from cancer. His best friend, Steve Yates, was in attendance at the time of his death. Nichols's last request was to hear his favorite song, Rosemary Clooney's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", which Yates played as Nichols slipped away.

His books include I Have More Fun with You than Anybody, Men's Liberation: A new definition of masculinity, The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to Fundamentalists, and the great memoir The Tomcat Chronicles: Erotic Adventures Of A Gay Liberation Pioneer.

1942 – Jon Hinson (d.1995) was a politician from the U.S. state of Mississippi. Born in Tylertown in Walthall County in southwestern Mississippi, Hinson graduated from the University of Mississippi at Oxford. He was an aide to Representative Thad Cochran, a Republican. In 1978, Cochran did not seek a fourth term in the House but was elected instead to the United States Senate. Hinson was elected to succeed his boss, winning with 51.6 percent of the vote.

During his re-election campaign in 1980, Hinson admitted that in 1976, while an aide to Cochran, he had been arrested for committing an obscene act, exposing himself to an undercover policeman at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. Hinson denied that he was homosexual and blamed his problems on alcoholism. He said that he had reformed and refused to yield to demands that he resign. He won re-election with 38.97 percent of the vote.

Hinson was again arrested on February 5, 1981, and charged with attempted sodomy for performing oral sex on an African-American male employee of the Library of Congress in a restroom of the House of Representatives. He was later charged with sodomy. At the time, the charge was a felony that could have resulted in up to ten years in prison as well as fines of up to $10,000.

Since both parties were consenting adults, the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor by the United States Attorney's office. Facing a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $1,000 fine, Hinson pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted sodomy the following day and was released without bail pending a trial scheduled for May 4, 1981. Soon thereafter, he checked himself into a Washington, D.C.-area hospital for treatment. The charges were quietly dropped.

He resigned on April 13, 1981, early in his second term. He said that his resignation had been "the most painful and difficult decision of my life."

Soon afterwards, he acknowledged that he was gay and became an activist for gay rights. He later helped to organize the lobbying group "Virginians for Justice" and fought against the ban on gays in the military. He also was a founding member of the Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizens Association in Fairfax County.

Hinson also disclosed that he survived a 1977 fire that killed nine people at the Cinema Follies, a Washington theater that catered to a gay clientele. He was rescued from under a pile of bodies—one of only four men who survived.

Hinson died of respiratory failure resulting from AIDS in Silver Spring at the age of 53.

Maccubbin (R) with partner Jim Bennett

1943 – Activist and former bookstore owner, Deacon Maccubbin was born on this day. Well-known as the founder and owner of Lambda Rising Books, Maccubbin has also been a supporter or founder of many gay Washington, DC institutions including youth outreach, media, the annual Pride celebrations, community social and business organizations, and the Lambda Literary Awards.

While still in the Army, Maccubbin became a gay activist, joining the Gay Liberation Front-DC briefly. In 1971, he took over a craftshop at 1724 20th St NW, turning it into the Earthworks tobacco and headshop. On June 8, 1974, Earthworks’ shelves of magazines and books became the core stock for the new Lambda Rising, one of the nation’s largest and most successful groups of gay bookstores.

As leader of the Community Building (a nickname from antiwar and counterculture days), Maccubbin turned the building into an incubator and haven for many new and struggling community groups, including the Gay Switchboard, gay youth groups, the Blade, off our backs, Roadwork, and many others.

Maccubbin was a founder and chair of the first major community group, the Washington Area Gay Community Council (WAGCC). In 1975 WAGCC launched the planning process for the second gay community center and published Just Us, the first guide to DC’s gay community. That same year, Maccubbin organized the first official Gay Pride, held on 20th St NW in front of the building.

In the 1973, he was arrested with Cade Ware and Bill Bricker from Gay Activists Alliance at a sit-in protesting police entrapment. His protests and civil disobedience continued during the 1980's in response to federal inaction on AIDS research and funding with an arrest at the White House, and in the 1990's in response to Clinton's signing the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as additional arrests at protests against apartheid at the South African Embassy and against the Pope at Catholic University.

Maccubbin has played important roles in the reform of D.C.'s sodomy law, passage of the D.C. Human Rights Act, and in responding to Bible-based attacks on homosexuality.

In 1982, he and his life partner, Jim Bennett, were among the first to celebrate a Holy Union and they were the second couple to be registered as Domestic Partners in the District of Columbia.

In 2003, Deacon saved the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City (which had inspired him to launch Lambda Rising) from closing. Maccubbin commented, "The store never closed its doors. It was open right on through. Historically, that's important to me." In 2006, the bookstore was sold to a local manager.

Facing competition with online book stores, the store closed its doors on December 31, 2010. It was part of a spate of LGBT brick and mortar bookstores closures in the early 21st century, including the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York and A Different Light in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

1949 – Victor Garber is a Canadian film, stage and television actor and singer. Garber is known for playing Jesus in Godspell, John Wilkes Booth in Assassins, Jack Bristow in the television series Alias, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, Thomas Andrews in James Cameron's Titanic, and as Canadian ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor, in Argo. He currently guest stars as Dr. Martin Stein on The Flash and stars as a regular on Legends of Tomorrow.

Born in London, Ontario, Garber is of Russian Jewish descent. His mother is Hope Garber, actress, singer, and the host of At Home with Hope Garber. He attended Ryerson Elementary School. He also was enrolled in the children's program of the Grand Theatre, and at age 16 he was accepted at a six-week summer theatre training program at the University of Toronto taught by Robert Gill.

Garber began acting at the age of nine, and studied at the University of Toronto's Hart House at age 16. In 1967, after a period working as a folk singer, he formed a folk band called The Sugar Shoppe with Peter Mann, Laurie Hood and Lee Harris. The group enjoyed moderate success, breaking into the Canadian top 40 with a version of Bobby Gimby's song "Canada" in 1967. The band even performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson before breaking up.

He has worked in various American and Canadian films and television, including James Cameron's Titanic (1997), in which he used a Northern Irish accent to play the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, and CTV's E.N.G. (1991-1993), on which he had a recurring guest role.

Other well-known appearances include Godspell (Canadian stage version, 1972, and film version, 1973) as Jesus, Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Annie (1999), Legally Blonde (2001), and Tuck Everlasting (2002).

He is most well known for his portrayal of Jack Bristow on ABC's show, Alias, for which he earned three Emmy nominations. He recently appeared on the now-canceled television series Justice on Fox and ABC's Eli Stone. His most recent TV appearance is as a mysterious character named "Olivier Roth" in 4 episodes of the Canadian science drama ReGenesis. He appeared in the third episode of the Fox series Glee as Will's father.

Rainer Andreesen and Victor Garber

Victor Garber has confirmed that he's a gay man and has been quietly living with his longtime partner, artist Rainer Andreesen, in New York. Garber first spoke of his relationship with Rainer to blogger Greg Hernandez, who pressed the actor to publicly confirm that he's gay after learning via Wikipedia that the 63-year-old star is partnered with a man. He asked the Garber if his partnership with Rainer had ever been made public, and noted that Garber seemed surprised by the question:

"I don't really talk about it but everybody knows," Garber told Hernandez before adding, "He's going to be out here with me for the SAG Awards." The handsome, happy couple have been together for 14 years.

On October 10, 2015, Andreesen announced on his instagram page that he and Garber were just married in Canada.

1954 – The Army-McCarthy hearings convene to investigate conflicting charges made by the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy about allegations of preferential treatment that McCarthy and his aide Roy Cohn  had secured for Cohn’s friend David Schine. The hearings include inquiries into the supposed security risks posed by homosexuals employed by the federal government and include instances of gay-baiting by Special Counsel for the Army Joseph Welch. Notably, Welch defines a pixie as being "a close relative of a fairy". "Fairy" is a slang term for "homosexual" and Welch's remark is interpreted as a jibe at Cohn, a closeted homosexual who later died of AIDS.

1976 – Matt Evers is an American pair skater, model and TV personality. He is the 1998 U.S. Junior champion.

With his partner Heather Allebach, Evers won the Junior pairs title at the 1998 U.S. Championships. The following season, they competed at three senior international events, 1998 Skate Canada International, 1998 Cup of Russia and 1998 Nebelhorn Trophy. He quit competing and moved to Los Angeles where he worked for a number of years before receiving an invitation to join Dancing on Ice.

Evers is currently training as a professional actor, model and spokesperson for U.S. and European manufacturers at trade shows, in commercials and print media.

Evers, who was married to a woman previously, came out as gay in January 2018 in an interview with Attitude magazine. He said it was partly the death of his uncle from AIDS and the presidency of Donald Trump that resulted in his decision to announce his sexuality publicly, saying: "I live my life by example, and I want to show young people that what you feel or how you were born isn't something bad."

1977 – Donal Óg Cusack is an Irish hurler who played as a goalkeeper for the Cork senior team. He is current Chairman of the Gaelic Players Association. (Hurling is a kind of cross between grass hockey and football.)

Born in Cloyne, County Cork, Cusack first excelled at hurling whilst at school. He arrived on the inter-county scene at the age of eighteen when he first linked up with the Cork minor team, before later lining out with the under-21 side. He made his senior debut in the 1996 Oireachtas Tournament. Cusack went on to play a key role for Cork, on and off the field, and has won three All-Ireland medals, five Munster medals and two All-Star awards. His brother, Conor Cusack, was an All-Ireland runner-up with Cork.

Cusack represented the Munster inter-provincial team on a number of occasions in the early part of his career, winning one Inter-provincial medal on the field of play in 2005. At club level he won one championship medal with divisional side Imokilly, while he also plays with Cloyne.

Cited by many as one of the most influential inter-county players of his generation, through his championing of the cause of player welfare with the Gaelic Players Association and his innovation as a goalkeeper, Cusack became the first openly gay elite Irish sportsman in 2009.

Cusack and team-mates in traditional salutory (and very homo-erotic) stance.

Cusack has made 54 championship appearances for Cork, more than any other goalkeeper in the county's history. He announced his retirement from inter-county hurling in March 2013 after effectively being dropped from the team.

On 18 October 2009, ahead of the release of his autobiography, Come What May, Cusack disclosed to the Irish Mail on Sunday that he is gay. In Come What May he writes:

The following was serialised in the Mail on Sunday:

According to Cusack, discussing his sexual orientation strengthened his bond with his fellow players. He went for a walk with then captain Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, whom Cusack had known since they were boys, and told him "the whole story, stuff that I thought he would have guessed", had "a deep and complex conversation from both sides and we came out of it like brothers."

Since then Cusack has been noted as one of the few "openly gay sporting heroes" both at home and abroad. Come What May won the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year for 2009.

1987 – A Louisiana appellate court upholds the solicitation conviction of a man for placing his finger through a glory hole in a bookstore and then placing his mouth at the hole, without saying a word.

1998 – Pope John Paul II asks God for forgiveness for the inactivity and silence of some Roman Catholics during the Holocaust.