20 September

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1890 – in Germany, Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt studied medicine at the Military Medical Academy and graduated in 1917 then worked at the Charité Universitätsmediz inBerlin. He did the initial operations on the first two transsexuals in modern surgery.

In Berlin in 1931, Dora R, born as Rudolph R, became the first known transgender woman to undergo vaginoplasty. According to Dr. Felix Abraham, a psychiatrist working at the Institute for Sexual Science where Dora was employed as a domestic servant, her first step to feminization was made by means of castration in 1922. In 1931 a penis amputation was done, then a highly experimental vaginoplasty was performed by Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt who later became a decorated surgeon-general in the Luftwaffe.

Gordon Heath as 'Othello'

1918 – African-American actor, director, and folk-singer Gordon Heath (d.1991) became a fixture on the Parisian cabaret scene from 1949 until 1976. After an early success on Broadway in the play Deep Are the Roots (1945), he went to Europe, where he spent most of the rest of his life.

He settled in Paris, where he and his partner Lee Payant owned and entertained at a Left Bank nightclub. Heath performed in theater, film, television, and radio productions and also recorded several albums of folk music.

Heath's musical education began at age eight, when an aunt gave him violin lessons. He studied other instruments as well, but was most drawn to the guitar, finding it "friendly and sympathetic . . . to the touch." As a youngster Heath also showed a talent for drawing, winning prizes for both art and music in high school. He began performing in amateur theater groups and took first prize in a municipal drama competition. Heath earned scholarships to two music schools and briefly attended the Dalcroze Institute but decided to pursue an acting career instead. He worked on stage and in radio. When he joined radio station WMCA (New York) in 1945, he became the first black staff announcer at a major radio station in America.

In 1945 Heath scored a major success on Broadway in the play Deep Are the Roots by Arnaud d'Assue and James Gow. When the play closed on Broadway after a fourteen-month run, Heath went to London and reprised his role in a West-End production, again receiving critical acclaim. When the run there ended, Heath decided not to return to America. In 1948 he settled in Paris, which he considered more hospitable to blacks and more accepting of his relationship with his white lover, Lee Payant, a fellow actor whom he had met in New York in the early 1940s.

Like many other American expatriates fleeing racism and homophobia, Heath found a haven in cosmopolitan Paris. In 1949 Heath and Payant became co-owners of a Paris club called L'Abbaye, so named because it was behind the abbey church of St Germain des Prés. For nearly thirty years the two entertained appreciative audiences, playing guitar and singing duets of American and French folk songs. In 1957 Elektra Records released an album of their duets, An Evening at L'Abbaye, comprising seventeen songs, five of them in French. Heath and Payant also recorded an album entitled French Canadian Folk Songs in 1954, and the same year Heath had a self-titled solo album.

Even after acquiring L'Abbaye, Heath continued to act. He toured in Britain in 1950 as the title character in Shakespeare's Othello, a role that he repeated in Tony Richardson's 1955 version of the play on BBC. Heath appeared in other British television productions, again playing the lead in Deep Are the Roots in 1950. He starred in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in 1953, and appeared in a television adaptation of Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country in 1958. Despite the positive reception of his performances on stage and television, Heath did not receive offers for major parts in movies.

He narrated John Halas and Joy Batchelor's animated film of George Orwell's Animal Farm in 1956, and contributed supporting roles in a number of movies, including Les héros sont fatigués (1955, directed by Yves Ciampi), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969, directed by Bryan Forbes), and L'Africain (1983, directed by Philippe de Broca). He and Payant also dubbed many films.

In the 1960s Heath turned his talents to directing, working for a decade with the Studio Theater of Paris, an English-language company that staged plays by Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Bertolt Brecht, among others. Payant acted in many of the plays.

In December 1976 Payant died of cancer at age fifty-two. Devastated by his loss, Heath could not bear continuing to work at L'Abbaye alone. He returned to the United States, where he spent five years doing some acting and directing. Eventually, however, he decided to go back to France, and there he found a new partner, Alain Woisson. Heath died in Paris on August 28, 1991, of an AIDS-related illness.

1917 – Hal Call (d.2000) was an American businessman and LGBT rights activist. Born and raised in Grundy County, Missouri, Call enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1935 on a scholarship. He studied journalism. Call enlisted in the United States Army in June 1941 as a private. He was promoted to sergeant within the year and, after completing Officer Candidate School was promoted to lieutenant. He saw combat in the Pacific Theater, where he was wounded and received the Purple Heart. Returning to the United States in 1945, Call left the Army at the rank of captain and returned to the University of Missouri to complete his journalism degree.

After graduating Call worked for several news outlets, including the Kansas City Star. In August 1952, while working for the Star, Call was arrested for "lewd conduct" and paid an $800 bribe to have the charges dismissed. Call resigned his job and he and his lover Jack moved to San Francisco.

With his arrival in the city, Call became involved with the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States. Following the resignations of the original leadership in 1953, Call became president of the Society. Call frequently appeared on local television programs in the 1950s, one of the few openly gay men who spoke about gay issues, and appeared both in The Rejected, the first-ever television documentary on homosexuality, and "CBS Reports: The Homosexuals", the first network broadcast on the subject.

In 1955 Call co-founded Pan Graphic Press, which printed The Mattachine Review, The Ladder and other homophile publications. He also founded Dorian Book Service, a gay and lesbian literature clearinghouse. With the liberalization of obscenity laws beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Call began marketing gay erotica through the Adonis Bookstore, the first gay adult shop in San Francisco. He later expanded the business to include peep shows, eventually opening the Circle J club as a venue for screening pornographic films and hosting "circle jerk" parties. Call also began filming pornographic "loops" of men masturbating on a gold couch in his office. These Gold Couch Capers became collector's items.

Hal Call died in San Francisco on December 18, 2000, at the age of 83.

1918 – George Mosse (d.1999) was a German-born American cultural historian. The author of over 25 books, on topics as diverse as constitutional history, Protestant theology, and the history of masculinity, he is best known for his studies of Nazism. In 1966, he and Walter Laqueur founded The Journal of Contemporary History, which they co-edited.

Mosse was born in Berlin into a very prominent and wealthy German Jewish family. In 1933, with Hitler's rise to power, the Mosse family fled and separated. Mosse attended the Quaker Bootham School in York, England, whose teachers began to stimulate his intellectual curiosity, and where, according to his autobiography, he became aware of his homosexuality. A poor student, he failed several exams, and it was only through the financial support of his parents that he was able to attend Cambridge University.

In 1939, his family relocated to the United States, and he completed his undergraduate studies at Haverford College in 1941. While at Harvard University he studied for his PhD. Mosse's first paid job as a historian was at the University of Iowa. In 1955, he moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and began to lecture on modern history.

Mosse taught for more than thirty years at the University of Wisconsin. From 1969, Mosse spent one semester each year teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also became a visiting professor at University of Tel Aviv and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After retiring from the University of Wisconsin, he taught at Cambridge University and Cornell University. Mosse was the first research historian in residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

His most well known book The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1965) analyses the origins of the nationalist belief system.

In Toward the Final Solution he claimed that racial stereotypes were rooted in the European tendency to classify human beings according to their closeness or distance from Greek ideals of beauty. Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe extended these insight to encompass other excluded or persecuted groups — Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies (or Roma), and the mentally ill.

At the University of Wisconsin, George Mosse was a charismatic and inspiring teacher. Tom Bates' Rads: A True Story of the End of the Sixties (1992) describes how students flocked to Mosse's courses to "savor the crossfire" with his friend and rival, the Marxist historian Harvey Goldberg. Mosse's popularity was not only due to the fact that he laced his critical skepticism with humor, irony and empathy; he also applied his historical knowledge to contemporary issues, attempting to be fair to opposing views while remaining true to his own principles.

His life partner was John Tortorice. Mosse died of liver cancer in 1999, aged 80.

Mosse left a substantial bequest to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to establish the George L. Mosse Program in History, a collaborative program with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also left an endowment to support LGBT studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Amsterdam, where he had taught as a visiting professor. The endowment was largely funded by the restitution of Mosse family properties expropriated by the Nazi regime, which were restored to the Mosses family in 1989-90 following the collapse of East Germany.

1930 – Richard Montague (d.1971) was an American mathematician and philosopher.

At the University of California, Berkeley, Montague earned a B.A. in Philosophy in 1950, an M.A. in Mathematics in 1953, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy 1957, the latter under the direction of the mathematician and logician Alfred Tarski. Montague, one of Tarski's most accomplished American students, spent his entire career teaching in the UCLA Department of Philosophy, where he supervised the dissertations of Nino Cocchiarella and Hans Kamp.

Montague wrote on the foundations of logic and set theory, as would befit a student of Tarski. He pioneered a logical approach to natural language semantics which became known as Montague grammar.

Montague was an accomplished organist and a successful real estate investor.

A homosexual, he died violently in his own home; the crime is unsolved to this day. He often went to bars "cruising" and bringing people home with him. On the day that he was murdered, he brought home several people for some kind of soirée, but they instead robbed his house and strangled him.

1944 – A Georgia appellate court rules that drunkenness is no defense to a charge of sodomy. So much for "I was so drunk I didn't know what I was doing."

Larry Lillo and John Moffat

1946 – Larry Lillo was a Canadian actor and theatre director.

He was born in Kinuso, a tiny village in Alberta northwest of Edmonton. He attended Royal Roads Military College, Nova Scotia, earned a BA at St. Francis Xavier. He studied at the Univerity of Washington, then in New York City, and later received an MA at the University of Britich Columbia in directing.

Lillo was the co-founder and a director and actor with Tamahnous Theatre in British Columbia from 1971 to 1981, a freelance theatre director, 1981-85, and artistic director of the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario in 1986. In 1988 he became artistic director of the Vancouver Playhouse. Under his leadership, Playhouse subscriptions rose from 5,800 to nearly 12,000 (1992/93).

He won a Jessie Award (Vancouver) and a Dora Award (Toronto) for his direction of Sam Shepard’s play A Lie of the Mind, which was at the Playhouse from October 4 to November 5, 1988. Lillo directed and developed many new Canadian plays.

His 1992 production of Macbeth provided the backdrop for Michelle Bjornson’s award-winning documentary It Shall Not Last the Night: The Theatre of Larry Lillo, which narrated his struggle with AIDS.

His partner, John Moffat (d.1995), was an award-winning actor.

The John Moffat & Larry Lillo Award is an annual Award, intended to assist mature Canadian West Coast theatre artists to further their artistic development.

1948 – Chuck Panozzo (born Charles Salvatore Panozzo in Chicago) is a bass player. A longtime member of the rock band Styx, he founded the group with his fraternal twin brother, drummer John Panozzo, who died in July 1996. After three decades as a Styx mainstay, Chuck Panozzo left the band shortly thereafter, though he has reappeared with the band occasionally.

Styx is an American arena rock band that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, with such hits as Come Sail Away, Babe, Lady, Mr Roboto, and Renegade. They were the first band to have four consecutive multi-platinum albums. After a hiatus during which several band members were involved in solo and other group projects with varying success Styx reformed in 1995 and have continued to record and tour with some success, although failing to match their 80s heyday.

In 2001, Panozzo announced to the world he was gay and living with HIV, and having been diagnosed way back in 1991. The death of brother John Panozzo in 1996 and a serious illness in 1998 gave him the determination to get well, return to performing and come out as a gay man with HIV. Since his coming out he has been involved in campaigning for AIDS awareness and gay rights. He has also survived prostate cancer.

Among Panozzo's bandmates, only his twin brother, drummer John, knew Chuck's secret. In his book, The Grand Illusion, Panozzo writes about growing up gay in Chicago, his double life in Styx, and his HIV diagnosis in 1991 - yet another secret he once kept hidden.

In denial, Panozzo opted to forgo treatment, nearly dying from fear of the medication then available to AIDS patients. After all, acquaintances were committing suicide rather than endure AZT's side effects, he writes. He still gets a catch in his voice when he talks about a close friend being shunned by family while dying from the disease. Panozzo was diagnosed with AIDS in 1998 and had most of the symptoms: Kaposi's sarcoma, anemia, thrush. His weight dropped to 130 pounds. Still, he's one of the lucky ones.

Advancements in medication and diligence in monitoring his health have made Panozzo's viral load nearly undetectable. Three times a week, he works out in a nearby gym. He's toned, muscled, strong; so is partner Tim McCarron, who is on the same AIDS regimen as Panozzo.

1956 – Kevin Alderson, Canadian psychologist and author. Kevin Alderson has a Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in counselling psychology. His dissertation was based on interviews with gay men with positive identities. Before joining the university of Calgary in July 2001, he was the Head of Counselling and Health Services at Mount Royal College in Calgary. He also works part-time in private psychological practice. Throughout his career, Kevin has counselled hundreds of gay men and lesbian women. He presently works as an Assistant Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

His books include:

• Beyond Coming Out: Experiences of Positive Gay Identity
• Breaking Out: The Complete Guide to Building and Enhancing a Positive Gay Identity for Men and Women
• Same-Sex Marriage: The Personal and the Political (co-authored with Dr. Lahey)

1958 – The New York chapter of Daughters Of Bilitis is formed by a group of Lesbians which includes the late Barbara Gittings. For a time, Daughters of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society joined together in "Common Cause". Some women even wrote for Mattachine's ONE Magazine.

As the women's movement began to grow in the U.S., it became apparent that the men of Mattachine showed little desire to champion women's issues. At the same time, the women's movement was not particularly welcoming. The National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) was afraid that Lesbian involvement would only bring further hostility from the media and a male dominated world. They called Lesbians "the lavender menace" and sought to eject them from the movement.

With such choices, the direction of the Daughters of Bilitis was split. Some members favored focusing their energies on Gay rights, while others favored women's issues. Just before the 1970 National Conference of D.O.B., the publishing group for The Ladder was secretly moved to another location and devoted itself to feminist issues instead of Gay issues. The group never really recovered after this, and in time the individual chapters began to die out.

1966 – An Alabama appellate court says that a sodomy case reminded them of "the savage horror practiced by the dwellers of ancient Sodom from which this crime was nominally derived."

1967 – The North Carolina Supreme Court upholds a sentence of 4-6 years in prison for consensual sodomy.

1976 – Jon-Marc McDonald is an American born blogger, publicist, political activist and baker.

McDonald gained national attention when, at the age of 21, he simultaneously came out of the closet as a gay man and resigned as campaign manager from the 1998 United States congressional campaign of conservative Republican candidate Brian Babin.

Currently McDonald owns and maintains a website devoted to baking that has received widespread media attention.

He also writes a political blog that was transformed in late 2008 into an online diary of McDonald's daily journey since learning that his partner of eight years, to whom McDonald was joined in a Civil Union, was thought to be in the final stages of AIDS. McDonald learned of his partner's status on Christmas Eve, 2008 while at his partner's bedside at the hospital, a revelation that his partner kept from McDonald for many months. McDonald writes of the sudden and rapid deterioration of his partner that he is "watching the love of [his] life waste away from the plague in the supposed non-plague years".

Spotting Love, a play based upon the diary, premiered as part of New York University's 2010 Creating Original Work season and is currently being adapted into a screenplay.

McDonald currently serves as the publicist for the estate of Rue McClanahan.

1980 – Arsham Parsi is an Iranian LGBT Human Rights activist who lives in exile in Canada. He is the founder and head of the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees (IRQR).

Parsi was born in Shiraz, Iran. As a gay Iranian, he felt alone until at age 15 he discovered solace in the Internet. Parsi began volunteering for underground gay organizations. At age 22, he began working for the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization and networked with doctors to provide HIV testing. He responded to emails from suicidal gay teenagers. The strict laws against homosexuality forced Parsi to keep his work secret from friends and family. But in March 2005, Parsi realized the police were looking for him and fled from Iran to Turkey, where he spent 13 months. Unable to return to Iran, Parsi lives in Toronto, Canada.

Parsi works as a queer activist to make sure Iranian gay citizens are not being improperly treated. Parsi has faced death threats, excommunication, but he is resilient in his fight.

1984 – Brian Joubert is a French figure skater. He is the 2007 World Champion, a three-time European champion (2004, 2007 & 2009), a six-time French National champion, and the 2006 Grand Prix champion.

Joubert was born in Poitiers, France to Jean-Michel and Raymonde Joubert. He suffered a life-threatening illness at the age of 11 months, which led to the removal of one kidney. Because of this illness, Joubert chose figure skating over more violent sports that he favored. He began skating at the age of four with his two older sisters. The siblings started out with Ice dancing, but Joubert became fascinated with the jumping aspect of singles skating and switched disciplines.

Joubert has been considered somewhat of a heartthrob in his native country, France. This reputation has been contributed to by Joubert's short relationship with former Miss France, Lætitia Bléger. He later brought a lawsuit against Bléger for 40,000 Euros for insinuating that he was homosexual and that their relationship was arranged to hide this. Bléger and two magazines that published her allegations were ordered by a French court to pay a total of 17,000 Euros, and to publish the court ruling in one of the two magazines.

1990 – Cory Wade Hindorff, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American singer, actor, model, and spokesperson in the LGBT community. He is best known for placing third on the 20th cycle of America's Next Top Model (ANTM).

He was the first homosexual male contestant on ANTM. According to interviews on the show he loves to sing, act, model and being a drag queen. He has been criticized for his feminine style and sexuality. During the ANTM cycle, he continuously got criticized by judge Rob Evans for being effeminate and for having a lack of masculine poses in his photoshoots. He is biracial, and currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Cory Hindorff also appeared in the 21st season of America's Next Top Model as a special guest in episodes 1, 4 and 8.

1996 – President Bill Clinton announced his signing of a bill outlawing homosexual marriages, but said it should not be used as an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against gays and lesbians.

1996 – Saudi Arabia: Twenty-four Filipino workers receive the first 50 lashes of their 200-lash sentence for alleged "homosexual behavior." Despite protests from Amnesty International, the government goes ahead with the sentence and later deports the workers.

2010 – In Peru, LGBT activist Alberto Osorio was found murdered in his apartment in Lima. Eight similar crimes against LGBT individuals in Peru occurred in the same year.

2011 – The military’s Don't Ask Don't Tell policy is officially repealed. It had been in effect since 1993.