Queering Up History: Sept 12th

"Queer Events On This Day In History...

1772 Marquis de Sade was burned in effigy after being sentenced to death for committing sodomy with his manservant and poisoning prostitutes. Six years later his death sentence was commuted. He would die in a lunatic asylum in 1814.

1969 Less than three months after the Stonewall riots, Gay Liberation Front protests at the offices of the New York Village Voice to oppose their policy of allowing writers to refer to gays as "fags."

1976 Outspoken Episcopal Rev. Malcolm Boyd, author of "Are You Running With Me, Jesus?" comes out in an interview with the Chicago Sun Times. He later wrote "Gay Priest."

1985 Fifteen Chicago police who entered a gay bar with a warrant to arrest the bartender storm in with their guns drawn, ordered all the patrons on the floor, searched them, photographed them, interrogated them about their personal lives, beat one man, and detained them over three hours. After the ACLU filed suit charging unreasonable search and seizure, violations of freedom of association, and illegally obtaining personal information the police settled for $226,500 to be divided among the men. Police also agreed to return all photographs and items confiscated and to expunge the incident and all information collected from their records.

1992 Actor Anthony Perkins, best known for his role as Norman Bates in Psycho, dies of complications from AIDS at age 60, but not in his shower.

1993 Raymond Burr American TV actor Raymond Burr dies at age 76. Starred in Perry Mason and Ironside series.

1995 Des Moines, Iowa, school board member Jonathan Wilson, an openly gay man, is defeated in his bid for re-election by a candidate backed by the religious right.

1997 Bernard Widmar and Henry Korn of Boise Idaho hold a party with 200 guests to celebrate their golden anniversary. They met in Chicago while they were both in college on the G.I. bill.

2000 The Netherlands becomes the second country in the world (after Denmark) to recognize gay marriages as the Dutch parliament votes 109-33 to approve gay/lesbian marriages, allowing gays and lesbians to convert previously registered same-sex partnerships into full marriages complete with divorce guidelines and adoption rights.

2004 The Los Angeles Times reports that Paul Crouch, 70, the founder of the world's largest Christian television network (Trinity Broadcasting Network), paid $425,000 to a former male employee of the network to hush up an affair they had eight years earlier."

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