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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

August 9

1855 – The French symbolist poet, novelist and reluctant journalist Jean Lorrain, was born on this date (d.1906). Born Paul Duval, Lorrain was a dedicated disciple of dandyism, and (for the times) openly Gay. Lorrain wrote a number of collections of verse, including La foret bleue (1883) and L'ombre ardente, (1897). He is also remembered for his decadent novels and short stories, such as Monsieur de Phocas (1901) and Histoires des masques Sonyeuse, which he links to portraits exhibited by Antonio de La Gandara in 1893.

The once famous journalist worked only because he had to. He preferred to spend his life sleeping with the sailors along the Paris, Nice and Marseilles waterfronts. "Fucking," he once wrote, "is basically a sport for idle minds. When you work, it's good-bye ass!"

Although his works are largely forgotten today, they should be revived and vigorously pursued. How can one ignore an author who, in a fashionable Parisian restaurant, once shouted at the top of his lungs the following couplet: "I spent the night between two fellows from the docks, / who took turns, and cured me of the hots!"

His best novels appeared in his final years. Monsieur de Bougrelon (1897), Monsieur de Phocas (1901), and Le Vice Errant (1902) center on men mired in decadence, vice, and (implicitly) homosexuality; La Maison Philibert (1904) gives a picture of life in a provincial brothel and a panoramic tour of Parisian prostitution and criminality.

Most of Lorrain's income derived from journalism. Beginning in the mid-1880s, he wrote regular columns for a series of mass-circulation newspapers, most notably Le Courrier francais, L'Evenement, and L'Echo de Paris. He chronicled Parisian life of the day--the literary, theatrical, and artistic worlds, as well as French society, both high and low--using his savage wit to attack and ridicule many of the era's leading figures. In the process, he made countless enemies. Edmond de Goncourt wondered in 1895, "What's Lorrain's dominant trait? Is it spite or a complete lack of tact?" (Most people thought it the former.) But as Sarah Bernhardt once wrote Lorrain, "inside the abominably depraved being that you are, there beats the heart of a great artist, a genuinely sensitive and tender heart."

1875 – Although born in Caracas, Venezuela, Reynaldo Hahn (d.1947), was raised and educated in France, studying music at the Paris Conservatoire under Massenet. He also studied with Gounod and Saint-Saëns, with whom he is widely believed to have had a relationship. He is said to have been a lover of Proust. He appears to have been rather handsome, intelligent and charming.

A child prodigy, Reynaldo made his "professional" début at the salon of the eccentric beldam Princess de Metternich (Napoleon's niece). Hahn played the piano accompaniment to his own singing of Jacques Offenbach's arias on this occasion; just a few years later at the age of eight, Hahn would compose his first songs.

Despite the Paris Conservatoire's tradition of antipathy towards child prodigies (Franz Liszt had famously been rebuffed by the school many years before), Hahn entered the school at the age of ten. His teachers included Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns; Alfred Cortot and Maurice Ravel were fellow students.

Ironically, there are personal letters Hahn wrote in which he was frequently critical of homosexuals and homosexuality. This is understandable considering the epoch in which he lived: the disgrace of Oscar Wilde was to occur shortly.

1894 was to prove a fateful year for Hahn. At the home of artist Madeleine Lemaire, he met an aspiring writer three years older than himself. The writer was the then little-known, "highly strung and snobby" Marcel Proust. Proust and Hahn shared a love for painting, literature, and Fauré. They became lovers and often traveled together and collaborated on various projects. One of those projects, Portraits de peintres (1896), is a work consisting of spoken text with piano accompaniment.

Hahn honed his writing skills during this period, becoming one of the best critics on music and musicians. Seldom appreciating his contemporaries, he instead admired the artists of the past , shown in his portraits of legendary figures. His writing, like Proust's, was characterized by a deft skill in depicting small details.

Proust's unfinished autobiographical novel Jean Santeuil, posthumously published shows nascent genius and foreshadows his masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu. Proust began to write it in 1895, one year after meeting Hahn, on whom the hero is reportedly based. Although by 1896 they were no longer lovers, they remained lifelong friends and supporters until Proust's death in 1922.

Hahn is best known as a composer of French songs in the classical song tradition, including settings to Victor Hugo and the poems of Verlaine, but he also wrote operettas, chamber and orchestral music. The fine craftsmanship, remarkable beauty, and originality of his works capture the insouciance of la belle époque.

He was also a conductor, specialising in the works of Mozart; was general manager of the Cannes Casino opera house; and was for years the influential music critic of the French newspaper Le Figaro.

Forced to leave Paris in 1940 during the Nazi occupation, he returned after the war in 1945 to fulfill his appointment as director of the Paris Opéra. Unfortunately, he died shortly afterwards without executing the reforms for which his supporters had hoped.

1923 – Born: the Portuguese surrealist poet Mário Cesariny also known by his full name Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos (d.2006). Among the most important Portuguese surrealist poets, Cesariny published several major works during a career spanning 50 years. Cesariny was also a painter, but his work became more centered on poetry in the 1950s.

Cesariny studied in the prestigious Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio and also studied music with the composer Fernando Lopes Graça. Later he joined the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he met André Breton in 1947. He soon became influenced by the French surrealist movement and was one of the biggest supporters of the movement in Portugal, where he founded the Lisbon Surrealist Movement with other Portuguese artists including Alexandre O'Neill and José-Augusto França.

After being acquainted with the surrealist movement, Cesariny moved away from the neorealist movement, important at the time in the country for being composed mainly by members of the resistance against the fascist-leaning regime of Oliveira Salazar. He adopted an attitude of constant experimenting in his work. This principle is the main characteristic of his work and was present throughout his career.

From 1960 until April 25, 1974, Cesariny was mercilessly harassed by the Portuguese Polícia Judiciária "on suspicion of vagrancy," a euphemistic term used by the police in those days for homosexuality, The poet suffered this persecution courageously. His homosexuality and the persecution are mentioned several times in his writings in a veiled way. They were one of the causes of his intermittent stays in Great Britain and France during the 1960s and 1970s. Later he talked publicly about it.

1967 – The influential British playwright Joe Orton died on this date. (b. 1933). He was murdered by his partner Kenneth Halliwell , who then killed himself.

In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, Orton shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is now used to refer to something characterised by a dark but farcical cynicism.

1980 – Charlie David is a Canadian actor, who stars in the LGBT horror series Dante's Cove. He has also worked as a producer, writer, and TV host on a number of shows like F.Y.E!, SpyTV, Bump! and Crash Test Mommy. He is co-owner, alongside Derek James and Linda Carter of Border2Border Entertainment, a production house of film and television projects.

Charles David Lubiniecki was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, and raised in Yorkton. During high school, David performed in the musical group Sask Express. In 2000, he graduated from the Canadian College of Performing Arts, Victoria, British Columbia.

He then moved on to co-found the boy band 4Now, in which he played piano. The band performed around Canada and the United States and opened for acts including Destiny's Child, The Black Eyed Peas and Pink. The band released two recordings and is currently on hiatus.

David later turned his attention to hosting and acting. He hosted for E! Television, NBC, OUTtv, here! TV, Pink TV, EGO, and Life Network.

He appeared in the mini-series Terminal City in 2005 and is in the movies A Four Letter Word (2007) and Kiss the Bride (2008). He wrote the screenplay and stars in the film Mulligans, which had its premiere at the InsideOut LGBT Film Festival in Toronto in May 2007.

In addition to the movies he has been in, he also wrote several books: Mulligans, Boy Midflight and Shadowlands. He has also narrated the audiobook for Shadowlands.

David plays Toby in the LGBT horror series Dante's Cove. The character is portrayed in a monogamous and loving relationship with boyfriend Kevin (Gregory Michael). David said in an interview,

"What was attractive [about the role] was for me to portray a gay relationship, in which it's not always a different guy every night. Many gays and lesbians do pursue—and have—loving relationships in which we are very committed to each other. I think that is what Toby brings to the show. He is kind of a voice of reason, and has a definite dedication to his boyfriend."

1982 – Aiden James is an American folk-pop singer, songwriter and musician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has released two albums to date, and has toured extensively throughout the United States both as a solo performer and as an opening act for Matt Morris, Shawn Colvin and Andy Bell.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in the foster care system and does not know his mother and father. He started playing the piano at age 4, and started to sing at age 6. He started performing in children's choirs and small theatre productions. He has told the press that his first musical memory was trying to play Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" on a toy keyboard at the age of four or five.

In 2008, James released his debut album On the Run. His video for the album's title track received airplay on both MTV and Logo, expanding his audience beyond Philadelphia. Over the next few years, he supported the album by touring extensively, including an appearance at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2010, a live performance on SiriusXM, and a tour with singer-songwriter Christopher Dallman which included performances in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

In 2013, his live performances included a show with Matt Morris in Denver, Colorado, performances at the Viva la Vida Festival in Pioneer, California, and the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, and a headlining spot at Pride Northwest in Portland, Oregon. In 2014, James released the single "Last Reminder", which was cowritten with Morris, and performed at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco.

James, who is openly gay, supports organizations including PAWS, a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia dedicated to saving homeless, abandoned and unwanted animals.

1995 – Justice Smith is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Franklin Webb in the 2018 science fiction film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Tim Goodman in Detective Pikachu and Theodore in All the Bright Places alongside Elle Fanning.

Smith was born in Anaheim, California. His father is African-American and his mother is of European descent. He is the fifth of nine siblings. Smith graduated from the Orange County School of the Arts in 2013 and has performed in shows around Orange County.

Justice Smith participated in a live reading adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and This is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan with Acting for a Cause, a live classic play and screenplay reading series, created, directed and produced by Brando Crawford during the 2020 pandemic to help raise funds for non-profit charities including Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Smith came out as queer in an Instagram post on June 5, 2020, and said he is in a romantic relationship with actor Nicholas L. Ashe. Smith took to his Instagram with a call-to-action for the Black Lives Matter movement to be more inclusive of Black queer and Black trans voices. His post culminated with a declaration of his love for his boyfriend, the actor Nicholas Ashe, a decision he didn’t take lightly. As he wrote under the photo: “There is so much tragedy on the timeline these last couple of days so I added some photos of me and Nic to show some [blackqueerlove].

Justice and Nicholas Ashe

2007 – On this date, the gay cable channel LOGO and the Human Rights Campaign hosted a first-ever Gay Debate for presidential candidates. Present at the debate were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Chris Dodd. Candidates from the two major parties were invited but none of the Republican candidates showed up.

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