September 10

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1487 – Julius III (d.1555), pope from 1550 to 1555, created one of the most notorious homosexual scandals in the history of the papacy. He was the protégé of Julius II (pope from 1503 to 1513), himself a "sodomite covered with shameful ulcers," according to the schismatic Council of Pisa convened by his enemies, the Holy Roman Emperor and the French king, in 1511.

Julius III was born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte in 1487. He studied law in Perugia and Bologna before taking religious orders. After holding numerous offices in the Papal States, he was made a cardinal in 1536. A skilled expert in canon law, del Monte served as governor of Rome. As cardinal-bishop of Palestrina, he was one of the three co-presidents who opened the celebrated Counter Reformation Council of Trent in 1545. He achieved the papacy five years later only because the respective candidates of France and the emperor were hopelessly deadlocked in one of the longest conclaves in papal history. Far from being a man of the Counter Reformation, however, Julius fit the earlier pattern of a pleasure-loving Renaissance pope fond of banquets, theater, and hunting. He did, however, effect some minor reforms, and he backed the newly formed Society of Jesus in its missions to India, China, and Japan. More notably, he supported Michelangelo as architect of St. Peter's and discovered the genius of Palestrina, whom he put in charge of the papal choir. Nevertheless, his leadership of the church was largely frustrated when political difficulties with Charles V caused him to suspend the Council of Trent indefinitely.

Julius III caused a major scandal by becoming infatuated with a fifteen-year-old beggar boy named Innocenzo whom he first saw fighting off an attack by a pet ape in 1548. He appointed this unprepossessing, rude, ill-mannered street urchin to the post of cathedral provost, which won him the soubriquet, il provestino. Two years later, in 1550, when Julius became pope, he had his brother adopt Innocenzo, and over the vehement protests from other church leaders he not only named him a cardinal but gave him a responsible administrative position as his "chief diplomatic and political agent," a task for which he was entirely incompetent.

Roman satire called the ill-favored boy Julius's "Ganymede," and the Venetian ambassador reported that Innocenzo shared the pope's bedroom and bed. As may be imagined, Protestant partisans seized on this succulent scandal, which became a staple of anti-papal polemics for over a century. It was said that Julius, awaiting Innocenzo's arrival in Rome to receive his cardinal's hat, showed the impatience of a lover awaiting a mistress and that he boasted of the boy's prowess in bed. No doubt such tales gained color in the telling.

A recent biography has argued that the relation was not sexual, but the outrageous extravagance of Julius's dotage suggests otherwise: Julius bestowed benefices on Innocenzo that gave him one of the highest incomes in Europe—beyond even that of the Medicis. After Julius's death in 1555, Innocenzo's status as a prince of the church was an extreme embarrassment to succeeding popes, who tried to curb the "voluptuous and indecent" lifestyle of the "Cardinal-Monkey." His murder of two servants—a father and the son who tried to defend him—led to his being imprisoned for several years in various monasteries. He was also tried for the rape of two woman "of low estate," but on this charge he escaped punishment. He died in 1577, aged 46.

The bodies of both Julius III and Innocenzo repose in the del Monte chapel in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.

1886 – (Hilda) H.D. Doolittle (d.1961) was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington.

H.D. was born in Pennsylvania in 1886, and moved to London in 1911 where her publications earned her a central role within the then emerging Imagism movement. She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets.

She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality. H.D. married once, and undertook a number of heterosexual and lesbian relationships. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus became an icon for both the gay rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s.

Before World War I, H.D. married Richard Aldington in 1913; however, their first and only child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1915. Aldington enlisted in the army. The couple became estranged and Aldington reportedly took a mistress in 1917. H.D. became involved in a close but platonic relationship with D. H. Lawrence. In 1916, her first book, Sea Garden, was published and she was appointed assistant editor of The Egoist, replacing her husband.

In 1918, her brother Gilbert was killed in action, and that March she moved into a cottage in Cornwall with the composer Cecil Gray, a friend of Lawrence's. She became pregnant with Gray's child, however, by the time she realised she was expecting, the relationship had cooled and Gray had returned to live in London. When Aldington returned from active service he was noticeably traumatised, and he and H.D. later separated.

Close to the end of the war, H.D. met the wealthy English novelist Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman). They lived together until 1946, and although both took numerous other partners, Bryher remained her lover for the rest of H.D.'s life.

In 1919, H.D. came close to death when she gave birth to her daughter Frances Perdita Aldington—although the father was not Aldington, but Gray—while suffering from war influenza. During this time, her father, who had never recovered from Gilbert's death, died.

In 1919, H.D. wrote one of her few known statements on poetics, Notes on Thought and Vision, which was unpublished until 1982. In this, she speaks of poets (herself included) as belonging to a kind of elite group of visionaries with the power to 'turn the whole tide of human thought'.

H.D. and Aldington attempted to salvage their relationship during this time, but he was suffering from the effects of his participation in the war, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder, and they became estranged, living completely separate lives, but not divorcing until 1938. They remained friends, however, for the rest of their lives.

From 1920, her relationship with Bryher became closer and the pair travelled in Egypt, Greece and the United States before eventually settling in Switzerland. Bryher entered a marriage of convenience in 1921 with Robert McAlmon, which allowed him to fund his publishing ventures in Paris by utilising some of her personal wealth for his Contact Press. Both Bryher and H.D. slept with McAlmon during this time. Bryher and McAlmon divorced in 1927.

In 1933, H.D. traveled to Vienna to undergo analysis with Sigmund Freud. H.D. was referred by Bryher's psychoanalyst due to her increasing paranoia about the rise of Adolf Hitler which indicated another world war, an idea that H.D. found intolerable. The Great War (World War I) had left her feeling shattered. She had lost her brother in action, while her husband suffered effects of combat experiences, and she believed that the onslaught of the war indirectly caused the death of her child with Aldington: she believed it was her shock at hearing the news about the RMS Lusitania that directly caused her miscarriage.

H.D. and Bryher spent the duration of World War II in London. After the war, H.D. and Bryher no longer lived together, but remained in contact. H.D. moved to Switzerland where, in the spring of 1946, she suffered a severe mental breakdown which resulted in her staying in a clinic until the autumn of that year.

Apart from a number of trips to the States, H.D. spent the rest of her life in Switzerland. H.D. visited the United States in 1960 to collect an American Academy of Arts and Letters medal. Returning to Switzerland, she suffered a stroke in July 1961 and died a couple of months later in the Klinik Hirslanden in Zürich.

1923 – David Mossman (d.1971) was a British journalist, broadcaster, a TV reporter, film-maker, interviewer and former MI6 agent with a famously acerbic interviewing style. For several years before his death, James Mossman was one of the best-known faces on British TV. However, the distinguished BBC correspondent had a secret - he was gay.

A member of the Panorama team in the 1960s specialising in foreign affairs, he was reassigned to presenting regular arts slot by the BBC because of the controversy around his interviewing style.

Generally recognised to be very handsome, he had a Canadian male lover called Louis Hanssen. Hanssen was married and 8 years younger than Mossman. He died in 1968 of an accidental overdose. Work colleagues of Mossman described Hanssen as domineering.

Probably suffering from depression, Mossman committed suicide in his cottage in Norfolk by taking a fatal overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a note that read: 'I can't bear it any more, though I don't know what "it" is.'

Peter Shaffer, the author of the play Equus claimed that during a stay at the Norfolk cottage that Mossman, of whom he was a friend, told him the story on which he based the play.

In February 2007, The Reporter, a play by Nicholas Wright based on his book and directed by Richard Eyre premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London. The play explores the social climate in the years before Mossman's death as well as the reasons for the death itself.

1926 – The Nevada Supreme Court reverses the sodomy conviction of a man because there was no proof of penetration.

1933 – Karl Lagerfeld (d.2019) was a German fashion designer, artist, and photographer based in Paris. He was the head designer and creative director of the fashion house Chanel as well as the Italian house Fendi and his own eponymous fashion label. Over the decades, he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects. He was well recognized around the world for his trademark white hair, black sunglasses, and high starched collars.

In 1993, he caused U.S. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour to walk out of his Milan Fashion Week runway show, when he employed strippers and adult-film star Moana Pozzi to model his black-and-white collection for Fendi.

There was much controversy from Lagerfeld's use of a verse from the Qur'an in his spring 1994 couture collection for Chanel, despite apologies from the designer and the fashion house. The controversy erupted after the 1994 couture show in Paris, when the Indonesian Muslim Scholars Council in Jakarta called for a boycott of Chanel and threatened to file formal protests with the government of Mr. Lagerfeld's homeland, Germany. The designer apologized, explaining that he had taken the design from a book about the Taj Mahal, thinking the words came from a love poem.

Lagerfeld was the target of a pieing by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 2001 at a fashion premiere at Lincoln Center in New York City. However, the tofu pies hurled by animal rights activists in protest of his use of fur within his collections went astray, instead hitting Calvin Klein. A PETA spokesperson described the hit on Klein as "friendly fire," calling Klein, who doesn't use fur, "a great friend to the animals" and Lagerfeld a "designer dinosaur," who continues to use fur in his collections.

Lagerfeld had a long-term relationship from the early 1970s with socialite Jacques de Bascher until his death in 1989.

1937 – Daniel Defert is a prominent French AIDS activist and the founding president (1984-1991) of the first AIDS awareness organization in France, AIDES. He started the organization after the death of his partner, the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Daniel Defert met Foucault while he was a philosophy student at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France and their relationship lasted from 1963 until Foucault's death in 1984. They described their relationship as a "state of passion". It was Foucault's death from AIDS, a disease about which little was known at the time, that led Defert to enter the field of AIDS activism. He also co-edited with François Ewald volume 4 of Dits et Ecrits of Michel Foucault (1994), a posthumous collection of Foucault's thought.

1942 – Gilbert Price (d.1991) was an American operatic baritone and actor.

Price was a protégé of Langston Hughes. He was a life member of New York's famed Actors Studio. Price first gained notice in 1964, for his performances in Hughes' Off-Broadway production of Jerico-Jim Crow. For his work, Price received a Theatre World Award.

Price was born in New York City of African-American heritage. In 1960, he graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, where he stood out for both his talent and gentle, easygoing manner. Price became a lead singer in the school choir, along with fellow member Barbra Streisand.

Price played a lead role in Hughes’ pioneering gospel musical, “Jerico-Jim Crow,” which appeared off-Broadway in 1964. It was based on a book written by Hughes, and was co-directed by Alvin Ailey. While he was a protégé of Langston Hughes, Hughes became smitten with the young Price. Unpublished love poems by Hughes were addressed to a man Hughes called Beauty; it has been posited these poems referred to Price.

Price made guest appearances on several television talk and variety shows including The Ed Sullivan Show, Red Skelton, Garry Moore and The Merv Griffin Show. Price also sang oratorios, including Leonard Bernstein's Mass, in 1971.

Price was nominated for three Tony Awards and was the recipient of a Theatre World Award.

Receiving an offer to teach at a school in Vienna, Price left the United States and told friends he was happy to be in such an artistic and music-appreciating environment. He recorded one CD in Vienna, but it was difficult to market, and sold poorly. In 1991, when Price did not show up at his classes for several days, students went to his apartment and found him lifeless. He had died unexpectedly of accidental asphyxiation, due to a faulty space heater. Price, who was 48, had long suffered from diabetes, but it was not believed the illness contributed to his death.

1951 – Kris Kovick (d.2001) was an American writer, cartoonist and illustrator. Her books include What I Love about Lesbian Politics is Arguing with People I Agree With, How Would You Feel if Your Dad was Gay?, and Glibquips: Funny Words by Funny Women.

Kovick was born in Fresno, California and attended California State University in the early 1970s, moved to Seattle for five years, and then settled in San Francisco in 1980. In San Francisco, she lived in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where she became known as "The Mayor of Norwich Street", a take-off on assassinated San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk's nickname "The Mayor of Castro Street." She was the first woman to become a member of the printing trade union in the Pacific Northwest.

Kovick was well known as a cartoonist in Lesbian and feminist publications. Her writings and cartoons were published in LGBT publications such as the San Francisco Bay Times and Gay Comics. Kovick was friends with other writers and cartoonists such as sex columnist Susie Bright, and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the artist behind the popular "Dykes to Watch Out For" series who memorialized Kovick in cartoon form in 2008.

Kovick was also known as a writer and performer. She is credited with launching the Lesbian spoken-word scene in San Francisco. She toured nationally with Sister Spit, a group of women writers that also included such well-regarded authors as Michelle Tea, Eileen Myles, and Lynn Breedlove. In 2000, she founded a reading series at the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts, called "San Francisco in Exile." She died of breast cancer in 2001.

1960 – Cartoonist Alison Bechdel is best known for her long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which has run in alternative gay and lesbian newspapers for nearly two decades.

Bechdel was born on September 10, 1960 in Lock Haven, Pennsyvlania, one of three children of high school English teachers. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania and graduated from Oberlin College in 1981, after which she moved to New York City.

Having been rejected by all the art schools to which she had applied for graduate study, Bechdel was working several publishing jobs when she included in a letter to a friend a drawing of a woman titled "Marianne, dissatisfied with the morning brew." She labeled the drawing "Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27," as if it were another installment of a long-running series. More sketches of increasing detail followed, and a friend encouraged her to send them to the feminist monthly newspaper Womannews. It published the first comic in 1983, and Dykes To Watch Out For began appearing in every issue.

The first four years of Dykes To Watch Out For consisted of single strips of unrelated plots and characters, published in Wommannews and other newspapers. During this time, Nancy Boreano, founder of Firebrand Books, approached Bechdel about publishing a book of her strips. This first book, Dykes To Watch Out For, appeared in 1986, and nine others have since ensued. Three of the Dykes To Watch Out For books have won Lambda Literary Awards, as has Bechdel's memoir The Indelible Alison Bechdel (1998).

Following the publication of the first book, Bechdel made two important changes: first, she began drawing the strip biweekly and, second, in 1987 she introduced a regular cast of characters that continues from strip to strip. Bechdel describes her strip as "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel." At its center is Mo (Monica), who embodies the values that Bechdel assumed were what being a lesbian meant when she came out. Mo is "an antiracist, anticlassist, anti-big business, anticonsumerist feminist socialist"; and much of the strip's humor is derived from her and her friends' struggles to live out their politics.

The strip's appeal lies in its reflection of both its characters' complex history and of the larger culture as well. Its characters have gone to the marches on Washington and to the Michigan Womyn's Festival, for example, and they have commented on a myriad of contemporary news events. However, Dykes To Watch Out For particularly shines at dealing with an enormous number of lesbian issues: relationships, race and ethnicity, adoption and marriage, transgenderism, assimilation and separatism, bisexuality, coming out to family, women's health issues, and aging, among others. For its passionately devoted readers, Dykes To Watch Out For is more real than actual life; Bechdel has thus made a lasting contribution to literature, popular culture, and social history.

In February 2004, Bechdel married her partner since 1992, Amy Rubin, in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. However, all same-sex marriage licenses given by the city at that time were subsequently voided by the California Supreme Court. Bechdel and Rubin separated in 2006

In 2006, Bechdel published a "graphic memoir" entitled Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic in which she details the the pains and joys of growing up, coming out, and discovering that her father was also gay. Haunted by her father's apparent suicide after being accused of molesting a teenager, the book, Bechdel has said, is really "about my creative apprenticeship to my father; it [is] about becoming an artist." Highly praised in the mainstream as well as the glbtq press, Fun Home is likely to bring Bechdel to a wider audience.

 Added 2023

1965 – Paul Burston is a Welsh journalist and author. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the LGBT section of Time Out and founded the Polari Prize.

Born in York and raised in South Wales, Burston attended Brynteg School and studied English, Drama and Film Studies at university. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the gay and lesbian (later LGBT) section of Time Out magazine and was a founding editor of Attitude magazine. He has also written for publications including The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and The Sunday Times.

His first novel Shameless, published in 2001, was praised by The New York Times and shortlisted for the State of Britain Award. His third novel Lovers & Losers, published in 2007, was shortlisted for a Stonewall Award.

In 2007, Burston became the founder and host of award-winning LGBT literary salon Polari, which began in a bar in Soho before moving to the Southbank Centre. He was also the founder, in 2011, of The Polari Book Prize for new and established LGBTQ+ writing, which is now based at the British Library. In 2016, he was featured in the British Council's Five Films 4 Freedom Global List of 33 "inspiring people who use culture to promote freedom and equality and provoke debate, or who are risking their lives to promote the rights of LGBT communities".

Burston's novel The Black Path was published by Accent Press in September 2016 and was long-listed for The Guardian's "Not The Booker Prize".

By October 2018, five novels and two short story collections by Burston had been published. In that month, The Bookseller reported that his sixth novel The Closer I Get was published by Orenda Books as part of a two-book deal. The Closer I Get, published in July 2019, was partly inspired by the author's experience of online harassment.

In December 2021, The Bookseller announced that his memoir We Can Be Heroes would be published by Amazon imprint Little A in June 2023.

1978 – A visit by Anita Bryant to London, Ontario sparks a protest demonstration outside London Gardens Coliseum. 

1978 – Trevor Boris is a Canadian comedian and writer from Selkirk, Manitoba. He is openly gay. Boris is one of the stars of MuchMusic's Video on Trial, and is also a star of Stars Gone Wild. He has also appeared on many other MuchMusic specials.

Boris recently had his very own Comedy Now! standup special air on CTV and The Comedy Network, was the runner-up in the 2006 Great Canadian Laugh Off (the winner received $25,000) that aired on The Comedy Network, and was the host of the same-sex wedding show I Now Pronounce You... on OUTtv. He has been nominated twice for the "Best Stand-up Newcomer" Canadian Comedy Award, and has performed at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, as well as the CBC Winnipeg, Halifax, and Vancouver Comedy Festivals and at the 2006 Cape Town Comedy Festival in South Africa.

He was also part of season five of Last Comic Standing when they auditioned in Montreal. He made it to the Finals of Canada (Top 15) but did not advance to L.A. He has also worked as a television producer, most recently on Big Brother Canada. He also produced Canada's Got Talent, which was retired after only one season.

1981 – Gays of Ottawa (GO) celebrates tenth anniversary with official opening of a community center at 175 Lisgar Street. The reception is attended by mayor Marion Dewar, Gordon Fairweather, head of Canadian Human Rights Commission, and MPP Michael Cassidy, leader of the Ontario provincial New Democratic Party.

1981 – Filippo "Pippo" Pozzato is an Italian road racing cyclist with UCI Professional Continental team Wilier Triestina–Selle Italia.

A northern classics specialist, Pozzato has finished 13th (2006), 14th (2007), 6th (2008), 2nd (2012) and 8th (2017) at the Tour of Flanders. His best finish at the Paris–Roubaix was 2nd in 2009. (He also delivered a respectable 15th in 2006). At the Gent–Wevelgem Pozzato finished 13th (2008) and 4th (2006). In the Omloop Het Volk he finished 6th (2003) and 1st (2007). Pozzato also won the 2006 Milan–San Remo, and has won stages in all three Grand Tours.

Born in Sandrigo, Veneto, Pozzato turned professional in 2000 with the Mapei–Quick-Step cycling team, part of the famous classe di '81 a group of emerging young riders born in 1981 who were part of the Mapei TT3 development team. Other alumni include Fabian Cancellara and Bernhard Eisel, Alexandr Kolobnev and Gryschenko.

In 2012, Pozzato was banned from cycling for three months by the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) after it was found that he had worked with infamous doctor Michele Ferrari from 2005 to 2008. CONI had looked to ban him for a year but were forced to reduce it to a three months thanks to a technicality.

In May 2016 during the 2016 Giro d'Italia, Pozzato disclosed via his Twitter account that he was 'coming out'. Although he did not specify that he was coming out as gay, the tweet included an image of Pozzato in bed with another man.

Pozzo's Coming Out pic

1982 – Bret Iwan is an American voice actor and illustrator. He has been the fourth official voice of Mickey Mouse following the death of Wayne Allwine in May 2009.

He attended LeRoy High School in LeRoy, Illinois from 1996–2000. He graduated from the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, in 2004. Iwan was previously an illustrator at Hallmark.

Iwan was hired to voice Mickey Mouse and replace Wayne Allwine, after the latter died on May 18, 2009. They never had the chance to meet each other.

Iwan first recorded Mickey Mouse dialogue for the Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park as well as the 2009 shows Disney On Ice: Celebrations and Disney Live: Rockin' Road Show. He voiced Mickey Mouse in Have a Laugh! He gave his first full performance as Mickey Mouse for the English version of the PlayStation Portable game Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep.

His first voice-over work in a Disney Park could be heard in the Animal Kingdom closing show "Adventurers' Celebration Gathering" as well as on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover attraction at the Magic Kingdom, in which upon passing through Mickey's Star Traders, Mickey responds with his signature laugh and says "That's right, it's outta this world!"

Iwan is gay and married his partner Douglas Hoffman, an art director, in July 2021.

1997 – The U.S. Senate thrashes GLBT civil rights twice in one day, passing the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) denying to LGB and many T Americans the right to federally recognized marriages to those they love; and relieving states of the obligation to recognize marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states. The Senate also defeated the “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” which would have barred job discrimination based on sexual orientation.