A few events worth celebrating and/or remembering…
AUGUST 24, 79D
Until 2018, this is the date thought to be the day Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii and preserving the city. In a macabre way, it was fortunate for it saved the homoerotic frescos that Christianity would no doubt have destroyed. It also saved the graffiti found centuries later by archaeologists. When the artwork was first discovered, people found it so scandalous that much of it was locked away in the National Museum of Naples where it remained hidden from view for over 100 years. In 2000, the art was finally made viewable to the public, but minors must be accompanied by an adult. (Note: Latest evidence suggests the eruption occurred after October 17th.)
AUGUST 24, 1890
American swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku is born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
AUGUST 24, 1932
Five Nazis are convicted of political murder on August 22nd. On this day, Edmund Heines, a Nazi leader, organizes a protest against their death sentence. Less than two years later, Heines is discovered naked in bed, by Adolph Hitler himself, with another man. Hitler orders Heines to be shot. Hitler’s chauffeur Erich Kempka claimed in a 1946 interview that Edmund Heines was caught in bed with an unidentified 18-year-old male when he was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives, although Kempka did not actually witness it. The boy was later identified as Heines’ young driver Erich Schiewek. According to Kempka, Heines refused to cooperate and get dressed. When the SS detectives reported this to Hitler, he went to Heines’ room and ordered him to get dressed within five minutes or risk being shot. After five minutes had passed by, Heines still had not complied with the order. As a result, Hitler became so furious that he ordered some SS men to take Heines and the boy outside to be executed.AUGUST 24, 1945
Activist and pioneer Marsha P. Johnson is born in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
AUGUST 24, 1947
Paulo Coelho, Brazilian author (The Alchemist), is born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.AUGUST 24, 1953
The summary of Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female is published in Time magazine. The study includes lesbian behavior.
AUGUST 24, 1954
The Wolfenden Committee is appointed to investigate laws in Britain relating to homosexual offenses.AUGUST 24, 1957
Actor Stephen Fry, most famous for playing Oscar Wilde in Wilde (1997), was born in Hampstead, London.AUGUST 24, 1969
The fourth annual North American Conference of Homophile Organizations opens in Kansas City. It includes twenty-four independent gay liberation organizations.AUGUST 24, 1970
The New York Times runs a front-page story with the headline “Homosexuals in Revolt”. The article reports “a new mood now taking hold among the nation’s homosexuals. In growing numbers, they are publicly identifying themselves as homosexuals, taking a measure of pride in that identity and seeking militantly to end what they see as society’s persecution of them.”AUGUST 24, 1972
The Greater Cincinnati Gay Society files suit to require the Secretary of State to grant them articles of incorporation. Their request was denied on the grounds that homosexual acts were illegal. The court agreed that the state was not required to grant incorporation to an organization that promotes the acceptance of homosexuality.AUGUST 24, 1979
The Facts of Life premieres on NBC.
AUGUST 24, 1987
Activity Bayard Rustin, a gay man who organized the March on Washington in 1963, dies of cardiac arrest in New York City. Bayard Rustin was a leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin worked with A. Philip Randolph on the 1963 March on Washington Movement, in 1941, to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King’s leadership and teaching Martin Luther King Jr. about nonviolence. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. At the time of his death in 1987, he was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti. Rustin had been arrested early in his career for engaging in public sex though he was posthumously pardoned. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is survived by his partner Walter Naegle.
AUGUST 24, 1988
Actor Leonard Frey dies of complications from AIDS at age 49. Frey received critical acclaim in 1968 for his performance as Harold in off-Broadway’s The Boys in the Band. He later appeared alongside the rest of the original cast in the 1970 film version, directed by William Friedkin. He is best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated performance in Fiddler on the Roof.
AUGUST 24, 1993
During a Holocaust remembrance, Oregon governor Barbara Roberts criticizes anti-gay ballot initiatives in the state.AUGUST 24, 2000
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted asylum to Geovani Hernandez-Montiel a Mexican transgender woman who feared persecution in Mexico. (Hernandez-Montiel-v.-INS)AUGUST 24, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney told a GOP rally in Davenport, Iowa, that gay marriage should be left up to the states, a reversal of his previous statement on the subject and a return to his original position while running in 2000. His daughter Liz Cheney is a lesbian.AUGUST 24, 2017
Filmmaker Julie “JD” DiSalvatore dies in Sherman Oaks, California. She was an American LGBT film and television producer/director and gay rights activist. She was also an animal rights activist. DiSalvatore won a GLAAD Media Award for Shelter, for best feature film in limited release. In 2009, DiSalvatore was honored at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s An Evening With Women with a LACE (Lesbians and bisexual women Active in Community Empowerment) Award for her work in the community, and was featured in Go Magazine’s “100 Women We Love.”AUGUST 24, 2019
The New York Times reported a complaint against astronaut Lieutenant Colonel Anne McClain, brought by her then-wife Summer Worden through the Federal Trade Commission, accusing her of illegally accessing financial information while residing in the International Space Station. This accusation “outed” McClain as a lesbian, making her the first openly LGBT NASA astronaut and the third known lesbian astronaut after Sally Ride and Wendy B. Lawrence. McClain was a Flight Engineer for Expedition 58/59 to the International Space Station. McClain married Summer Worden in 2014 but divorced in 2017. On April 7, 2020, McClain was cleared of all charges while Worden faces a two-count indictment on charges of making false statements.