A few events worth celebrating and/or remembering…
AUGUST 28, 430
St. Augustine of Hippo dies. He was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa and is viewed as one of the most important founders of Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions. Some of his writings in Confessions reveal his attraction to men.AUGUST 28, 1603
During a trial Italian painter Caravaggio was charged with libel when Baglione testified that he had a male lover. Baglione’s painting of Divine Love has also been seen as a visual accusation of sodomy against Caravaggio. Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595?) and 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, and they had a formative influence on Baroque painting. Since the 1970s both art scholars and historians have debated the inferences of homoeroticism in Caravaggio’s works as a way to better understand the man.
AUGUST 28, 1749
Polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is born in Frankfurt, Germany.
AUGUST 28, 1814
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is born in Dublin, Ireland. He wrote vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897) by 26 years. His best known, written 25 years before Dracula, is Carmilla, a story of a lesbian vampire who preyed on young women.
AUGUST 28, 1825
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, German jurist and activist, was born in Aurich, Germany. He would become one of the earliest activists in Germany to attempt to abolish the German sodomy law. In 1862, Ulrichs, a lawyer, theologian, and pioneer of the modern gay rights movement, described his own homosexuality as anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa– a female psyche confined in a male body. “I may have a beard, and manly limbs and body,” he writes in Latin “yet confined by these, I am and remain a woman.” Ulrichs’ fusion of gay and gender identities dominates discussion of transsexualism for almost a century.
AUGUST 28, 1920
The first post-WWI general membership meeting of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, the first LGBT rights organization in history (founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897), passes a motion to establish connections with homosexual organizations in other countries.AUGUST 28, 1921
Nancy Kulp, famous for her role as Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies, is born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the show’s cancellation, Kulp ran unsuccessfully for state office in Pennsylvania. Kulp lived her life completely in the closet. After her retirement from acting and teaching, she moved first to a farm in Connecticut and later to Palm Springs, California, where she became involved in several charity organizations including the Humane Society of the Desert, the Desert Theatre League, and United Cerebral Palsy. Later in life, Kulp indicated to author Boze Hadleigh in a 1989 interview that she was a lesbian. “As long as you reproduce my reply word for word, and the question, you may use it…. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me phrase the question. There is more than one way. Here’s how I would ask it: ‘Do you think that opposites attract?’ My own reply would be that I’m the other sort – I find that birds of a feather flock together. That answers your question.” Her lesbianism was not publicly acknowledged until after her death from cancer in Palm Springs on February 3, 1991.
AUGUST 28, 1951
The California Supreme Court rules in Stoumen v. Reilly that the mere congregation of homosexuals at a bar was not sufficient grounds for suspending the bar's liquor license. The ruling came in the case of Black Cat Bar, a San Francisco gay bar, that was the target of a 15-year campaign by state and local authorities to shut it down.AUGUST 28, 1957
Gender-bending lesbian and Jewish folk/punk singer/songwriter Phranc is born. Phranc is the stage name of Susan Gottlieb who began her performing career in the late 1970s and early 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles. She had a bleached blonde crewcut and wore male attire, creating an androgynous persona for her first band, Nervous Gender, which formed in 1978. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her partner and children.AUGUST 28, 1963
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Openly gay Bayard Rustin was the march’s prime organizer.
AUGUST 28, 1965
Keith Boykin, African American activist and author, is born in St. Louis, Missouri. As if a forecast of his future activism, his birthday and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech” share the same day. Working in the Clinton Administration, Boykin held the positions of Special Assistant to the President and Director of News Analysis, and Director of Specialty Media. In 2001, Boykin founded the National Black Justice Coalition, the largest African American GLBT rights organization in America. Boykin has authored several books, including One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America, Respecting the Soul: Daily Reflections for Black Lesbians and Gays, Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America, and For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough. He teaches politics at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York. From December 2003 until April 2006, Boykin served as president of the board of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington-based civil rights organization dedicated to fighting racism and homophobia which he co-founded.AUGUST 28, 1970
Just over a year after the Stonewall Riots, NYPD officers force their way into The Haven, a private, unisex non-alcohol gay club. It was the third of four raids on the club that would take place in a two-week period. Six were arrested, detained overnight, and released the next morning. Between these and other raids, over 300 homosexuals were arrested during the month of August. There were also cases of threats and harassment. New York City was sued for false arrest and harassment in three of the cases. All other cases were dismissed.AUGUST 28, 1970
The Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, and other gay activists hold a protest at NYU after the campus administration cancelled a series of dances at NYU’s Weinstein Hall when they learned a gay organization was sponsoring them. After a discussion with the dean they were allowed to use the property. The dean had been called by campus police who arrived to break up the demonstration.AUGUST 28, 1981
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announces a sudden, unusual increase in cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the first sign of the worldwide epidemic of what would eventually be called HIV/AIDS. The CDC formally recognizes AIDS as an “epidemic.”AUGUST 28, 1982
The first Gay Games are held at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. 1,600 people participated and 50,000 people attended. At that time, it was still called the “Gay Olympics” until the U. S. Olympic Committee sued for trademark infringement and won. Author Rita Mae Brown hosted opening ceremonies. The Gay Games is a worldwide sport and cultural event that promotes acceptance of sexual diversity, featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) athletes, artists and other individuals.
AUGUST 28, 1989
A law took effect in Texas that requires that real estate agents tell potential buyers or tenants if the person who previously occupied a property had AIDS.AUGUST 28, 1993
Keith Douglas Pruitt and another gay man were attacked in Manhattan. Pruitt once played a part on the soap opera As the World Turns. Pruitt required 14 stitches in his head. Three men from New Jersey were arrested and charged with the attack.AUGUST 28, 1996
In response to threats to out him after the city of Tempe, Arizona granted $1,500 in fee waivers to the annual gay pride festival, Mayor Neil Giuliano comes out in an interview with the Tempe Daily News Tribune. He was named to the OUT 100 by OUT Magazine, which notes the top 100 people in gay culture in the U.S. While he was Mayor in 2003, Tempe was named an “All American-City,” an award honoring local governments demonstrating success in problem solving. He was named Tempe Humanitarian of the year in 2014.AUGUST 28, 1998
The Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, a fund of the Gill Foundation, announces $195,950 in grants to 22 Colorado organizations.AUGUST 28, 2002
Nevada teen Derek Henkle settles a lawsuit (Henkle v. Gregory, 150 F. Supp.2d 1067 (D Nev. 2001) against the Washoe County School District for $451,000. The settlement is believed to be the largest pre-trial award ever in this kind of case. Derek’s suit alleged that administrators in three separate schools failed to protect him from years of being beaten, spat upon, called names and threatened with a lasso because he is gay.AUGUST 28, 2007
The world learns that Republican U.S. Senator Larry Craig had been arrested for lewd conduct in the men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 11, 2007 and entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct on August 8, 2007.
Whenever I’m at the Minneapolis airport I always think it would be fun to find Larry Craig’s bathroom stall and leave a plaque of some kind.