September 29

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 Added 2024

1922 — Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo on this date. 1950s Hollywood set out to make her a star. They gave her a glamorous American name, taught her to act, dress and carry herself. Lizabeth Scott was born.

Paramount introduced her to the press with a fake biography, and made sure all press releases included the words, "beautiful", "blonde", "aloof", and "alluring". Later they decided she would be a tough femme fatale, and created for her a nickname: “The Threat.”

Critics were relatively complimentary of her performances, and she worked with some of the biggest leading men in Hollywood. Sometimes the gossip columnists wondered why she didn’t have a steady boyfriend. A few also noted that while all of her leading men praised her as an actress, none of them seriously dated her. At the time it was expected for leading men to have passionate flings with their leading ladies. The flings were usually just publicity stunts, but Scott stayed out of that.

As you may have guessed, she was a lesbian. Many male stars from the golden age of Hollywood were gay and the big studios threatened them with humiliation and sometimes even bodily harm if the came out. But there was a thriving underground gay culture in Hollywood that was discreet and gave the male stars a chance to connect, bond and date.

Lesbians were not so fortunate. Hollywood made no allowances for them and they had to remain deeply in the closet. When she could, Scott traveled to Paris which was more tolerant of her lifestyle. She even began to date Frede, an openly gay Parisian entertainer. Returning to America, she turned to comfort in the arms of prostitutes. There were many highly expensive courtesans that catered to Hollywood’s lesbians.

Unfortunately, many of Hollywood’s top call girls had a second source of income-selling stories to the tabloids. Some also made fortunes with blackmail but that is another story.

In 1954 the gossip rag Confidential purchased the address books of several of Hollywood’s most popular prostitutes, including a prostitute who had never before sold information so Scott trusted her, and sadly liked her. The call girl recorded everything. Confidential revealed everything!

After that, Scott kept away from public view and declined most interview requests. From the 1970s on, she was engaged in real estate development and volunteer work for various charities, such as Project HOPE and the Ancient Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she was also a major donor.

Unlike her favorite actress, Great Garbo, Scott's seclusion was not total. She continued to date within a close circle of old Hollywood insiders. One of her best friends was the singer Michael Jackson and on very rare occasions, she could be spotted on his arm.

Scott died of congestive heart failure at the age of 92 in January 2015.

1926 – The Captive, a melodrama about a young woman seduced by an older woman (her “shadow”), creates a sensation on Broadway for its lesbian undertones.

1938 – A Georgia appellate court rules that interfemoral intercourse (sex between the thighs) does not violate the state's "crime against nature" law.

1941 – John M. Clum, born in Ashbury Park, New Jersey, is professor of English and professor of the practice of drama at Duke University. His most recent book is "Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture." He is also a playwright, whose play "Randy's House" has been produced in a number of theaters, and a director of more than 60 professional and university productions.

He is the author of several books exploring gay issues in theatre and film. His 1992 work Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama takes a three-part view of homosexual themes on the contemporary stage. In the section titled "Bodies and Taboos" the author discusses "three forms of representation found to be controversial or problematic in mainstream theatre—kissing, frontal nudity and drag."

Clum has applied his theories to film in the 2002 book "He's All Man": Male Homosexuality and the Myths of Masculinity in American Drama and Film. This book gives readers a definitive treatment of how a popular form represents gay men and, more generally, manhood.

His life partner is Walter Melion

1942 – The California Supreme Court overturns the lewd and lascivious act conviction of a man for fondling the crotch of the complainant because he never touched the bare skin,, and the complainant made inconsistent statements in court.

1955 – Ann Bancroft is an American author, teacher, and adventurer. She was the first woman to successfully finish a number of arduous expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.

Ann Bancroft grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is reported that she struggled with a learning disability, but nevertheless graduated from St. Paul Academy and Summit School. Bancroft was a camper and staff member at YMCA Camp Widjiwagan. Bancroft became a wilderness instructor and a gym teacher in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

She gave up her teaching post in 1986 in order to participate with the "Will Steger International North Pole Expedition". She arrived at the North Pole together with five other team members after 56 days using dogsleds. This made Bancroft the first woman to reach the North Pole on foot and by sled.

She was also the first woman to cross both polar ice caps to reach the North and South Poles, as well as the first woman to ski across Greenland. In 1993 Bancroft led a four-woman expedition to the South Pole on skis; this expedition was the first all-female expedition to cross the ice to the South Pole. In 2001, Ann and Norwegian adventurer Liv Arnesen became the first women to ski across Antarctica.

Her achievements led to her induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame for the United States.

She currently co-owns an exploration company, Bancroft Arnesen Explore, with Liv Arnesen. In March 2007, Bancroft and Arnesen were taking part in a trek across the Arctic Ocean to draw attention to the problem of global warming. However, according to The Washington Post, the expedition was called off "after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment."

Bancroft also received a number of other awards and honors. She is an out lesbian and in 2006, she publicly campaigned against a proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution to prohibit any legal recognition of marriages or civil unions between members of the same sex.

1948 – Rope, an Alfred Hitchcock film with a gay subtext, opens in theaters. Based on the play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn, it was inspired by the real-life thrill kill murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by gay University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

1955 – Jane Velez-Mitchell is an award winning television journalist and author. She currently has her own show on HLN, Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell. She is often seen commenting on high-profile cases for CNN, TruTV, E! and other national cable TV shows. Velez-Mitchell frequently guest hosts for Nancy Grace on her Headline News show. Velez-Mitchell reported for the nationally syndicated Warner Brothers/Telepictures show Celebrity Justice.

Born to a Puerto Rican mother and an Irish American father, Velez-Mitchell has been on the forefront of many headline news stories during the past decade. She was in the courtroom during the entire child sexual abuse trial against singer Michael Jackson. During the trial, Velez-Mitchell appeared daily on Nancy Grace. She was featured on CNN's Larry King Live on several occasions, including on the evening of the verdict.

Velez-Mitchell authored the non-fiction book, Secrets Can Be Murder: What America's Most Sensational Crimes Tell Us About Ourselves, which delves into the secrets unearthed in more than twenty of the most widely covered murder cases of recent times. The book's premise is that, by studying the secrecy and deceit embedded in these tragic scenarios, we can learn to opt for honesty in our own lives and avoid similar outcomes.

In September 2009, Velez-Mitchell released her memoir on addiction recovery titled iWant: My Journey from Addiction and Overconsumption to a Simpler, Honest Life. "iWant" became a New York Times Best Seller.

In addition to being one of the few openly gay journalists on television, she also has dedicated her time and resources to various charitable and humane causes. She is well known for her animal rights advocacy, is a vegan and an environmentalist. While working at Celebrity Justice, Velez-Mitchell's reporting on animal cruelty earned that show two Genesis Awards from the Humane Society of the United States. She earned an additional Genesis Award for her show "Issues" in 2010. In January 2010, she was awarded the Ruby Award by Soroptimist International for her "War on Women" coverage on her television show.

1965 – Boris Izaguirre Lobo, born in Caracas, is a Venezuelan-Spanish screenwriter, journalist, writer, TV host and showman.

Izaguirre wrote the scripts of some of the Venezuelan telenovelas: Rubí and La dama de Rosa. After their success in Spain, he went to live in Santiago de Compostela. In Spain, Izaguirre started to write scripts and participate in TV shows. He is considered one of the most important showmen, especially after his participation in the late night television show Crónicas Marcianas.

Izaguirre has written articles in several publications: Zero, El País Semanal, Fotogramas and Marie Claire. He was one of the presenters of the TV show Channel nº4 with Ana García-Siñeriz between 2005 and 2008, when the program was removed. He also has been host of Miss Venezuela pageant in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013.

In February 2006, Izaguirre married his longtime boyfriend Rubén Nogueira.

He was finalist of the Premio Planeta in 2007 with his novel Villa Diamante.

Since 2015 Izaguirre is in the panel of TV show Suelta la Sopa of Telemundo (Miami, Florida) with descriptive segments that reveal the best kept secrets of favorite soap opera stars narrated in a docudrama style.

1967 – Christian McLaughlin, born in Houlton, Maine, is a television writer, producer, and author. McLaughlin is a graduate of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas. He gained notoriety in his early twenties with the publication of his gay-themed novels, Glamourpuss and Sex Toys of the Gods.

He met his writing partner, Valerie Ahern, at the University of Texas, and started writing sitcom spec scripts together a year later. Together, they created and produced MTV's Emmy nominated soap opera Spyder Games (originally called Spyder Web) after being approached by Drew Tappon at MTV Series Development; they are currently working with Maverick Television to create the first all-LGBT serial, San Rafael, for MTV's new gay channel, Logo. According to Logo, San Rafael is about "the unexpected schemes and twists in the intertwined lives of a group of LGBT friends and foes living in the same apartment complex."

David Holman, then a production executive at Columbia Pictures Television, helped McLaughlin land an internship job at The Young and the Restless in 1989. His supervisor was Michael Minnis, then a script coordinator and writers' assistant. His internship included script synopsis of Y&R episodes and extras casting.

He served as a creative consultant for the 2004 Fox reality special Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay but the special was pulled from the schedule before airing following complaints from media watchdog GLAAD. McLaughlin responded to the criticism, saying, "It's unfortunate that a group as well-intentioned as GLAAD is going to set themselves up as censors and judge what other people should be allowed to air or see."

1973 – Douglas A. Martin, born in Nassawadox, Virginia, is a poet, a novelist and a short story writer. He was raised in Warner Robins, Georgia and moved to New York City in 1998. Beginning as a performance poet and dramatist, Martin then moved to the novel form, and he has concentrated most of his creative energies here since his first full-length prose work Outline of My Lover.

In 1991, when Douglas A. Martin was a senior in high school, he was so captivated by R.E.M.'s homoerotically charged video "Losing My Religion" that he told his sister, "I'm going to marry Michael Stipe." (Stipe is the frontman for R.E.M.) After high school, the obsessed adolescent went to study theater at the University of Georgia in Athens — the relatively small college town where R.E.M. hail from and still maintain residence as Athens' multi-millionaire heroes.

In "Outline of My Lover", a fictionalised autobiography, Martin, 26, writes in first person about a teenager who moves to Athens and seeks out a relationship with a luminous rock star.

Martin's work since Outline of My Lover includes Branwell, a novel based on the life of Branwell Brontë, and They Change The Subject, a collection of stories. The Haiku Year was co-authored with Michael Stipe, Tom Gilroy, Grant Lee Phillips, and others. A volume of poetry, In the Time of Assignments was published in 2008. This work was followed by an experimental narrative, Your Body Figured (Nightboat books), which deals with aspects of the lives of the artists Balthus, Francis Bacon and his muse and model George Dyer, and the poet Hart Crane. In 2009, Martin published a third novel, Once You Go Back.

He says of himself:

1973 – Megan Leslie is a Canadian politician and environmental advocate. She is the president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada and on the advisory board of the Leaders' Debates Commission.

In 2012, Leslie was named as one of the deputy leaders of the Official Opposition – one of the youngest MPs ever to be selected for the post.

Leslie lost her Halifax seat to Andy Fillmore in the October 2015 federal election as the Liberals swept all the Atlantic Canada seats. In December 2015, Leslie was hired by World Wildlife Fund Canada as a senior consultant on ocean governance as part of a five-year plan to cooperate with the federal and provincial governments. However, the World Wildlife Fund Canada temporary role ended in June, when she was expected to work back home in Halifax, where her partner was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University. On October 26, 2017, she was announced as President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Leslie has called herself a queer activist, although she did have a male partner.

Leslie did an undergraduate thesis on Supreme Court of Canada case law relating to gay and lesbian issues.

She also presented an educational workshop for the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission on gender identity, and was involved in the campaign to get sex reassignment surgery covered by Nova Scotia's provincial health care plan. She has stated that her goal in politics is to "use the law to make Canada a better place for people who are marginalized."

 Added 2024

1989 – (Glenn Anthony) TJ House, born on this date, is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cleveland Indians and Toronto Blue Jays from 2014 to 2017.

House spent the first 1.5 months of the 2014 season with the Clippers, going 1–4 with a 3.79 ERA and 42 strikeouts in ten games. The Indians promoted House to the major leagues on May 17, 2014, and he made his major league debut that day. For the season, he had five wins, three losses, and a 3.35 ERA in 19 appearances.

The Toronto Blue Jays signed House to a minor-league deal on December 14, 2016. House was struck in the head by a line drive on March 10, 2017, during a spring training game in Lakeland, Florida. He remained on the ground for many minutes being attended to by medical staff, and left the field in an ambulance. He was assigned to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons to begin the 2017 season.

On March 3, 2020, House was traded to the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. However, the 2020 ALPB season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. House stayed in Sugar Land, however, and signed on to play for the Eastern Reyes del Tigre of the Constellation Energy League (a makeshift 4-team independent league created as a result of the pandemic) for the 2020 season. After recording a 3.38 ERA and 1–2 record in 7 games, he became a free agent after the year.

House came out as gay in December 2022, announcing his engagement to his boyfriend, Ryan Neitzel.

1991 – California Governor Pete Wilson vetoes AB 101, a gay and lesbian employment rights bill, inciting what some call Stonewall II, a month of marches and angry protests across the state.

2006 – Closet case Florida Republican congressman Mark Foley resigns after Instant Messages of a sexual nature between him and underage male congressional pages are revealed.

2006 – GLAD files and wins lawsuit on behalf of Rhode Island to allow out-of-state same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts, the only state in the country in which same-sex marriage is legal.

2008 – At an all-candidates debate staged for a high school student audience in Sudbury during the 2008 federal election, independent candidate David Popescu responds to a question about same-sex marriage by stating that "homosexuals should be executed". His remarks are widely criticized across Canada, and the Greater Sudbury Police Service investigates whether the comments constitute a crime under Canadian hate speech legislation. On October 2, he also calls for the execution of Egale Canada executive director Helen Kennedy in an interview on CFRB, leading to a second hate crimes investigation by the Toronto Police.

2012 – California becomes the first state to ban gay conversion therapy on minors to "cure" them of their homosexuality.