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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTOR

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 … January 6

1367 – Richard II of England (d.1400), born Prince Richard of Bordeaux was the second, but only surviving child, of Edward, Prince of Wales (also known as the Black Prince and the eldest son and heir of King Edward III) and his wife, in Bordeaux, Gascony, where the Black Prince was serving at the time. At the age of four, Richard became second in line to the throne upon the death of his elder brother, Edward of Angouleme, and heir apparent when his father, the Black Prince, died five years later (1376). Richard was dubbed a Knight of the Garter by his grandfather only months before the old king died on June 21, 1377. With the death of Edward III, Richard ascended the throne as King Richard II at the young age of ten.

Richard was deemed fit to govern and a series of councils were set up to conduct business in the king's name for the next three years. When the first of these councils met, not only was John of Gaunt, Richard's powreful uncle left out, but also the king's other remaining uncles, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock, the Earls of Cambridge and Buckingham respectively. But although John of Gaunt had no official title in Richard's government, he was to remain a leading and influential political figure for nearly the entire reign, though he and the king would not be without their differences.

The young Richard managed to weather a number of crises, including the Peasant's Revolt at the ripe old age of 14. During the following years, the king gradually came of age and moved closer to reaching his majority reign. It was also during this period that he began to come under the influence of a small group of courtiers that were to greedily consume all of his attentions. This group consisted of three primary figures: Sir Simon Burley, the king's tutor since he was a young child; Michael de la Pole, the king's chancellor and Earl of Suffolk after 1385; and Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, whom Richard would ultimately upgrade to Marquis and, soon after, Duke of Ireland.

Richard's close friendship to DeVere was disagreeable to the political establishment. This displeasure was exacerbated by the earl's elevation to the new title of Duke of Ireland in 1386. The chronicler Thomas Walsingham suggested the relationship between the king and DeVere was of a homosexual nature, possibly due to a resentment Walsingham had toward the king.

On top of this, it was also wondered whether Richard was a homosexual since he never bore any children. When thinking of the reign of Richard II, it is difficult not to compare it with that of his great-grandfather, Edward II (another supposed homosexual). Like Edward, Richard had difficulty making decisions for himself and came to be dependent on a small group of favorites for advice, usually bad advice, to run the realm.

This reliance on favorites turned the nobility against him, and he was eventually deposed by Henry IV, and died in captivity in 1400.

1412 – Joan Of Arc, Roman Catholic Saint and national heroine of France (this is a legendary date) (d.1431); Joan wore men's clothing between her departure from Vaucouleurs and her abjuration at Rouen. This raised theological questions in her own era and raised other questions in the twentieth century. The technical reason for her execution was a biblical clothing law. The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to that stricture.

Doctrinally speaking, she was safe to disguise herself as a page during a journey through enemy territory and she was safe to wear armor during battle. The Chronique de la Pucelle states that it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. Clergy who testified at her rehabilitation trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape. Preservation of chastity was another justifiable reason for cross-dressing: her apparel would have slowed an assailant, and men would be less likely to think of her as a sex object in any case.

She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter during her condemnation trial. The Poitiers record no longer survives but circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics approved her practice. In other words, she had a mission to do a man's work so it was fitting that she dress the part. She also kept her hair cut short through her military campaigns and while in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Jean Gerson, defended her hairstyle, as did Inquisitor Brehal during the Rehabilitation trial.

Because Joan wore men's clothes and armor, scholars have speculated about her gender identity and sexuality. Did Joan wear male apparel because she was transgendered? Or did she do so in order to be taken seriously by the men whose support she needed to carry out the orders given by her visions? Was Joan a lesbian or bisexual, if those English terms may be applicable to a French woman living almost six hundred years ago? What relationship did her gender expression have with her sexuality? What about Joan's emphasis throughout her life on her virginity?

It is difficult adequately to address these personal issues based on the historical evidence that we now possess. It is clear, however, that Joan's cross-dressing was a significant part of her life, and that as a cross-dressed warrior and military leader she was venerated by French royalty, soldiery, and peasantry alike.

1854 – English fictional detective, born; What!? Sherlock Holmes? Why include the famous, hawk-nosed detective, a figment of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fertile imagination? Why? Because almost no one realizes that Sherlock Holmes, whom his creator almost named "Sherinford," was Gay.

He was, of course, the first consulting detective, a vocation he followed for 23 years. In January 1881, he was looking for someone to share his new digs at 221B Baker Street, and there being no personal ads in the Village Voice or The Advocate (remember those?) in those days, a friend introduced him to Dr. John H. Watson.

Before agreeing to share the flat, the two men, immediately attracted to one another, listed their respective character deficiencies. Holmes admitted to smoking a smelly pipe, although he didn't mention that he was a frequent user of cocaine. Watson owned up to a peculiar habit of leaving his bed at odd hours of the night.

"I have another set of vices," he admitted, but, then, so did Sherlock. The two became friends and roommates for the rest of their lives. For the sordid details of the famous marriage of true minds that followed, read Rex Stout's astonishing "Watson Was Woman," in which the famous creator of Nero Wolfe (himself hardly a paragon of butch studliness) reveals that Watson and Holmes were the most extraordinary Gay team in sleuthing history.

In 1971, The Traveller's Companion, Inc., an affiliate of Olympia Press, published a book based on the assumption that Holmes and Watson were lovers: The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Claiming to be from a newly-discovered secret cache of John Watson's papers, the book retells, very erotically, some of the original stories. It is hard-core gay porn at its best!

1961 – Bill Hayes is an American non-fiction writer and photographer. He has written four books – Sleep Demons, Five Quarts, The Anatomist, and Insomniac City – and has produced one book of photography,��How New York Breaks Your Heart. His freelance writing has appeared in a number of periodicals, most notably The New York Times.

Hayes was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the fifth of six children, five of them girls. He remains close with his sisters. His mother Jean was an artist; his father John a military man who had lost an eye as a paratrooper in the Korean War. When Bill was three, the family moved to Spokane, Washington, where his father bought a Coca-Cola bottling plant. His mother opened an art school, where Hayes learned to develop and print film. Hayes was close with his maternal grandmother, Helen, from the age of eleven until he left home for college. In high school, Hayes was drawn to the writing of Joan Didion. Hayes attended Santa Clara University in California.

Hayes knew he was gay at a young age, though he had relationships with women in high school and college. He came out at age 24, and considers his orientation to be a core part of his identity.

Hayes' father never accepted him as a gay man and did not maintain a relationship with him, but when John Hayes developed dementia, he came to believe Bill was an old Army friend, and spoke with him warmly. Bill's mother also suffered with dementia until her death in 2011.

Hayes lived in San Francisco for many years, where he worked at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. His partner of sixteen years was HIV-positive. In 2009, Hayes moved to New York City, where he had a relationship with neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, until the latter's death in 2015. Hayes' experiences in New York and his six-year relationship with Sacks are the subject of his book Insomniac City.

Hayes has described his adult life as "colored by death" – the deaths he dealt with in his AIDS Foundation work, the sudden death of his longtime partner in San Francisco, and later the death of his partner Oliver Sacks.

1965 – Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author and adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School as well as President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world’s rising temperature.

Lomborg spent a year as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.

Lomborg is gay and a vegetarian. As a public figure he has been a participant in information campaigns in Denmark about homosexuality, and states that "Being a public gay is to my view a civic responsibility. It's important to show that the width of the gay world cannot be described by a tired stereotype, but goes from leather gays on parade-wagons to suit-and-tie yuppies on the direction floor, as well as everything in between".

1968 – Today is the birthday of the Hungarian politician Gábor Szetey. Szetey is the former Secretary of State for Human Resources, a role he held since July 2006. He is a member of the Hungarian Socialist Party.

Szetey publicly declared that he was gay at the opening night of Budapest's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, on July 6, 2007. He is the first LGBT member of government in Hungary, and the second politician to come out, after Klára Ungár. Szetey's coming out came at the end of a speech on equality and tolerance:

"When we can be proud of being Hungarian, Romanian, Jewish, Catholic, Gay or Straight... If we can be proud of our differences, we will be proud of our similarities. I believe in God. And I believe that all men and women have the right to love and be loved. Everywhere. Love has no party preference. Neither does happiness or choosing a partner. So: I am Szetey Gábor . I am European, and Hungarian. I believe in God, love, freedom, and equality. I am the Human Resources Secretary of State of the Government of the Republic of Hungary. Economist and HR director. Partner, friend, sometimes rival. And I am Gay."

!n the audience was Klára Dobrev, the wife of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, as well as four other members of the Hungarian cabinet. The Prime Minister supported Szetey on his blog and called for public debate about same-sex relationships in Hungary. Hungary currently recognises same-sex registered partnerships. After the coming out of Mr. Szetey, the Parliament adopted the Registered Civil Union Act, which came into force 1 January 2009.

In a subsequent interview, Szetey declared:

"There is a small but vocal group of right-wing extremists which is intent on offending everyone... According to a survey, 51 percent of the respondents thought my speech was courageous and that it would improve the situation for homosexuals. It's strange that the conservatives, who attach such great importance to neighboring states giving their Hungarian minorities equal rights, couldn't care less about equal rights in their own country."

1976 – Today's the birthday of child actor Danny Pintauro. Pintauro played Jonathan Bower, son of Angela Bower in the series 'Who's the Boss' from 1984 till 1992. He was born as Daniel John Pintauro in Milltown, New Yersey, USA. Pintauro studied English and drama at Stanford University.

Pintauro first appeared on the television soap opera As the World Turns as the original Paul Ryan and in the film Cujo, but he came to prominence on the television series Who's the Boss?. After the conclusion of that series, he was less frequently cast. Pintauro went on to act in stage productions like The Velocity of Gary and Mommie Queerest. He also worked as a Tupperware sales representative and as of 2013, he was managing a restaurant in Las Vegas.

In 1997, in an interview with the National Enquirer tabloid, Pintauro declared that he is gay.

Pintauro (R) with husband Wil Tabares

In April 2013 he was engaged to his boyfriend, Wil Tabares, and they married in April 2014.

In 2015, Pintauro revealed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he has been HIV positive since 2003. He also disclosed that he had previously been addicted to methamphetamine.

2015 – Florida recognizes same-sex marriages.

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