Marlon Brando

Hollywood’s Rogue Bisexual

UPDATED POSTING: 

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marlon Brando (April 3, 1924 Omaha, Nebraska). It's time to light a candle to this revolutionary actor.

I have revised this post with information from more recent sources. So many readers have questioned the veracity of facts presented below that I have moved my bibliography to the front of this post.

Sources: 

The Contender by William J. Mann (2019; 718 pages)

Brando's Smile by Susan Mizruchi (2014; 512 pages)

Brando: the Biography by Peter Manso (1994; 1,118 pages)

He was a tough guy with a stunningly beautiful face. At first he wanted to be a drummer. Then a dancer; he studied modern dance with Katherine Dunham in the early 40s. Turned out the only things he was good at were sports and drama, invariably coupled with a determined, rogue lifestyle. Known as "Bud," he got kicked out of high school for riding a motorcycle through the hallways. He once came to the rescue of a skinny 9-year-old kid being taunted and beaten by schoolyard thugs, helped him up, threw his arm around him and said, “I’m your new best friend.”

Thus began a bizarre, intimate relationship with fellow actor Wally Cox that would last a lifetime -- for 40 years until Cox's death. Both men were born in 1924, and for many years they were roommates. After Cox died in 1973, Brando kept the ashes for safekeeping, because he wanted his own ashes to be commingled with Wally’s when the time came. Sure enough, in 2004, Brando’s family honored his request. The Associated Press reported, “The ashes of Brando’s late friend Wally Cox, who died in 1973, were also poured onto the desert landscape of Death Valley as part of the ceremony of scattering Brando’s ashes.” Brando not only kept his friend’s ashes for more than 30 years, but, when lonely, would sometimes dine with the urn, holding conversations in which he would perfectly imitate Cox’s distinctive voice, even at times keeping the urn under his car seat.

Unlike many bisexuals (like Cary Grant), who denied their homosexual activity all their lives, Marlon Brando brazenly admitted it. In a 1976 interview, Brando said, “Homosexuality is now so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me.”

Brando was bisexual and possessed of a voracious libido. There were plenty of homosexual experiences to report – among his partners were Burt Lancaster, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Clifford Odetts, Christian Marquand (especially Christian Marquand), Tyrone Power, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift (on a dare, they once ran naked down Wall Street together), James Dean and Rock Hudson. Striving for a balanced diet, however, his conquests also included Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt, Hedy Lamarr, Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid Bergman, Rita Moreno (especially Rita Moreno), Edith Piaf and Doris Duke (the world’s richest woman at the time).

By the age of 23 Brando had achieved stardom as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's stage play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). When he reprised this role in the 1951 film version, Brando received an Oscar nomination for best actor. As success piled upon success, Brando had a hard time dealing with his fame and celebrity. By the time of his death, the American Film Institute had named Brando the fourth greatest male film star, and Time Magazine included him in its list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, near the end of his career he had lost interest in acting; he took on roles only for the money. 

He was a generous and tireless advocate for social justice, particularly for the rights of African-Americans and Native Americans. He supported statehood for Israel, and in 1946 he performed in Ben Hecht's Zionist play, A Flag is Born. When Brando read in a newspaper that actress Veronica Lake had fallen on hard times and was working as a cocktail waitress in Manhattan, he had his accountant mail her a check for $1,000; she never cashed it, out of pride, but framed it and hung it on a wall to show to her gay friends.

The roles he lived off-screen were even more provocative than those he created on film. When filming Mutiny on the Bounty in Tahiti in the early 1960s, he fell in love with the place and purchased a private 12-island atoll. He married the Tahitian actress who played his love interest in the film and became fluent in French, her native tongue (he conducted many interviews in French). Rita Moreno, a long-term lover, responded by attempting suicide.

 
The world knew of his predilection for “dark-skinned women”, particularly those of Tahitian and American Indian descent. That Brando had a skinny, bespectacled male lover called Wally didn’t fit the image. Yet he once admitted that he had never been happy with a woman, adding: “If Wally had been a woman, I would have married him, and we would have lived happily ever after.” Wally Cox was the only person Brando allowed to berate him – many was the time that Cox would put Brando in his place.

In his youth Brando was an electrifyingly handsome and talented star. Exuding a sense of brooding power and bottled-up anger, he changed the way stars, both male and female, acted and even the way young men dressed. 

A fellow student, Mae Cooper, said after a workshop presentation, "people suddenly started looking at him. It gave you the chills, like the dawn of something great. It was like suddenly you woke up and there's your idiot child playing Mozart. It made your hair stand on end."

James Dean based his entire charisma on Brando, whom he worshiped. Marlon’s blue jeans and tight T-shirts became standard issue while  he reigned as the male sex symbol of the 1950s. But he was much more than just a rebel. He later chalked up two Oscar-winning performances in On the Waterfront and The Godfather.

In later years he admitted, “I searched for, but never found, what I was looking for either on screen or off. Mine was a glamorous, turbulent life – but completely unfulfilling.” At the time of his death at 80 years old in 2004, he weighed well over 300 pounds and was suffering from diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, congestive heart failure, liver cancer and failing eyesight. I found a photo of a hugely bloated, fat Brando taken shortly before his death, but I couldn't bear to post it. I'd rather be in denial of what came at the end of this remarkable life.

Born 1924, Omaha, Nebraska
Died 2004, Los Angeles, California

Brilliant, stubborn, eccentric actor

A performance on the night of December 3, 1947, made theatrical history. A Streetcar Named Desire opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in NYC, and no one could remember an actor or actress so electrifying an audience. For days people had lined up around the block to buy tickets. Theater doyenne Jean Dalrymple said, “From the moment Brando walked out on stage, all eyes were riveted on him. He was like an animal in heat, with those tight jeans and sweaty T-shirt. His Stanley was violent and crude, totally mesmerizing. I don’t recall having seen such utter rapture in a drama. It was more than a new star being born – we were devastated by the performance, as if a quart of our blood had been drained from us. I knew that I had witnessed Broadway history – in this performance acting, and theater itself, had changed for all time.”

Marlon Brando, at the tender age of 23, gave a performance that caused people to leap to their feet in a 30-minute ovation after the curtain went down. Jessica Tandy (portraying Blanche) was furious, because she knew the applause was not for her. In the audience were Cary Grant, David Selznick, Montgomery Clift, Edward G. Robinson, Geraldine Page, George Cukor and Paul Muni – all gasping for air. Tandy, whom younger readers might know from her Oscar-winning performance in Driving Miss Daisy, somehow coped with Brando's wildly erratic performances, each varying from night to night.

Note: Elia Kazan also directed the 1951 film version. This time Blanche was portrayed by Vivien Leigh, an actress with whom Brando had greater chemistry than Tandy. For younger readers who might know Brando only from his role in The Godfather, this clip will be a revelation. But don’t take my word for it, watch Brando in action:

Marlon Brando & Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire:

Zach Wahls

UPDATED POST:

Mr. Wahls (b. 1991) has achieved significant success since this original posting on 12/30/2011. 

A 2012 quote from Mr. Wahls: To be clear, I don't consider myself an ally. I might be a straight cisgender man, but in my mind, I am a member of the LGBT community. I know the last thing that anyone wants is to add another letter to the acronym, but we need to make sure as a movement we're making a place for what we call "queer-spawn" to function and to be part of the community. Because even though I'm not gay, I do know what it's like to be hated for who I am. And I do know what it's like to be in the closet, and like every other member of the LGBT community, I did not have a choice in this. I was born into this movement.

Mr. Wahls delivered a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in which he thanked President Obama for "putting his political future on the line" in supporting same-sex marriage.

He received his master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University on June 5, 2018 – the same day he won the primary election for Iowa Senate district 37. He won the general election on November 6 and was sworn in on January 14, 2019; since 2023 he is the incumbent senator for district 43.

He and his wife Chloe (m. 2021) welcomed their first child, Elijah, into their home a week ago.

ORIGINAL POST: This first appeared in 2011, the year I began this blog.

Zach Wahls (whose sexual orientation is unknown to me, so including him on this blog is a wild stretch) appeared in the most-watched political YouTube video of 2011 (18,000,000 views within a year). He spoke before the Iowa legislature, urging them to reject a constitutional amendment that would deny marriage equality to homosexuals, his lesbian mothers in particular. It is undeniable that he is a man of influence when it comes to gay people. His video documented one of the most inspiring, convincing and influential speeches I’ve heard; he is obviously passionate about his family, so it’s worth taking three minutes to watch it again. Zach was 19 years old at the time. The Economist magazine introduced his video speech with the words "This is what it's like to win an argument."

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

The Emmy-nominated star’s role on TV’s popular Modern Family (2009-2020) gave him the opportunity to reshape public perception of same-sex relationships and their families. Ferguson played Mitchell Pritchett, an uptight gay lawyer raising an adopted Asian-American baby with his excitable, over-the-top screen partner, Cameron.


At left: Ferguson with husband Justin Mikita.

In an Advocate magazine interview, he said, “I feel like there are a lot of people who still aren’t comfortable with gay characters on television, but what I admire about our show is that it has a plethora of characters for people to attach to, and slowly those people are becoming attached to Mitchell and Cam...It’s kind of like a Trojan horse. We sneak into a lot of people’s living rooms when they aren’t expecting it and maybe change some minds through the back door.

Mitchell is basically me, so when people tell me I’m stereotypical and cliché in that role, then Jesse Tyler Ferguson is stereotypical and cliché, because I’m basically doing no acting at all.”

Nonetheless, his performance as Mitchell earned him five consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. 

 
Jesse and his fiancé Justin Mikita, a lawyer, were married in New York in July, 2013. They met in a gym, where Justin recognized Jesse and came over to say he enjoyed Jesse’s portrayal of Mitchell on the hit television show. They started dating several months later and became engaged in late 2012. Their son, Beckett Mercer Ferguson-Mikita, was born a few months ago, on July 7, 2020.

At about the same time the couple became engaged they launched Tie the Knot, which sells custom bow ties and donates all proceeds to various organizations fighting for marriage equality and LGBT civil rights in general.

Says Ferguson, “Justin came up with the idea. I’ve definitely become more of an advocate, philanthropist, and do-gooder because of him. He has really ignited the civil rights passion within me.”

The couple says they would have loved to have gotten married in California, which is where they reside, but, “unfortunately it was not legal there. We spent a lot of money on the wedding, and that’s money California did not get. But congratulations to New York!”

Currently Jesse hosts Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the revival of a television reality show on the HGTV channel (premiered February 16, 2020). In each episode a family facing hardship receives a makeover of their home.

 

Dr. Richard Isay

Psychiatrist Richard Isay Fought
Mental Illness Label for Gays

Dr. Richard A. Isay (1934-2012) was a psychiatrist and gay-rights advocate who badgered the professional psychiatric community to declassify homosexuality as an illness. Dr. Isay (pronounced EYE-say) was a married father of two sons who did not accept that he was gay until he was forty years old. At the time of his death from cancer, he was married to Gordon Harrell, an artist twenty years his junior.

Isay, who was a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and faculty member at Columbia University, also authored several books, among them “Commitment and Healing: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love” (2006), “Becoming Gay” (1997), and “Being Homosexual” (1989).

Along his path to changing the way the psychoanalytic profession viewed homosexuality, Isay was attacked by his peers. Troubled by his own sexuality, Isay underwent ten years of therapy, after which he accepted that he was homosexual. Although he remained closeted for a time, he assisted gay patients in accepting their sexual orientation, instead of promoting a “cure” by way of therapy. He published articles promoting homosexuality as normal, not an illness or defect of development.

When Isay acknowledged his homosexuality at professional gatherings, he was attacked by his colleagues, who stopped referring patients and suggested the he needed more therapy himself. Nevertheless, over the course of fifteen years Dr. Isay championed the premise that the medical field based its views on ideology, not evidence.

Even though the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a disease in 1973, many members of the American Psychoanalytic Association (the oldest professional group for analysts in the United States and one of the most influential) continued to regard it as an illness. In 1992 Isay threatened to sue that association, ultimately forcing them not to discriminate in training, hiring or promoting gay psychoanalysts. Isay’s stubbornness paid off. By 1997, in a major turnaround, the American Psychoanalytic Association became the first national mental health organization to support gay marriage.

During the course of his illustrious career Isay also served as vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association and as a member of the board of the Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBT youth in Manhattan.

Steven Sampson, a patient who became a friend, wrote after Isay’s death, “I think Richard was sort of a ‘bridge’ person, providing a bridge between different worlds that don’t always communicate. He was married with children, yet he was gay and had a long-term committed relationship with a man, in an environment in which long-term relationships were rare.”

From Andy Humm for Gay City News: Tobias Picker, the composer and a patient of Isay’s, wrote in an e-mail, “Richard said that fear of death came from feeling unloved. He knew he was completely loved by his husband, Gordon, and his family, and it was easy to see that he felt that love utterly and completely. He knew he was much beloved by his patients too. Not long ago, he told me...that he had no fear of death –– that he never gave it a thought.” Picker added, “For those who didn’t know him, his writings leave behind a lasting legacy of love.” Both his sons said that Isay’s favorite literary figure was Ferdinand the Bull from the Munro Leaf children’s book, the gentle beast who preferred flowers to bullfights. Richard Isay, famous for the fights he took on and won, was himself a "gentle beast".

In addition to his sons and husband, at the time of his death Isay was survived by his former wife,  a brother, and four grandchildren, one of whom served as best man when Isay and Gordon Harrell were married in the living room of Isay’s son Josh. Dr. Isay is buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery (below), along with other gay luminaries Leonard Bernstein, Fred Ebb (of Kander and Ebb) and Louis Moreau Gottschalk (see individual blog posts in sidebar).

Sources:
New York Times (Denise Grady)
Gay City News (Andy Humm)
Headline photograph: Ozier Muhammad (NYT)

Frank Kameny

Kameny picketing in front of the White House in 1965 (he is second in line, immediately to the right of the policeman's elbow, his face partially obscured).


Gay rights activist Frank Kameny (1925-2011) died eight years ago at age 86, in Washington, DC, not far from your blogger's home. He was crusty, in-your-face stubborn and possessed of a one track mind: equality for homosexuals. He was out, loud and proud 24 hours a day. I consider him the most important person I’ve ever entertained in my home, although he was a difficult guest. Frank was not capable of chit-chat or polite discourse. Nevertheless, we all owe this man, big time.

Born and raised in NYC, Kameny saw combat as an Army soldier in Europe during WW II. After earning a doctorate degree in astronomy from Harvard University, he went to work as an astronomer for the US Army map service in the 1950s and was fired in 1957 after authorities discovered he was homosexual. Kameny fought the firing and appealed his case to the US Supreme Court, becoming the first known gay person to file a homosexual-related case before the high court. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling against Kameny and declined to hear the case, but Kameny’s decision to appeal through the court system motivated him to become a lifelong advocate for LGBT* equality.

*Actually, he disliked the moniker LGBT. He used the word "gay" as an all inclusive term. An article in the current issue of The  Atlantic magazine ("Don't Call Me LGBTQ" by Jonathan Rauch) proposes using the single letter "Q" as a replacement for LGBTQ, countering that the procession of letters has become too unwieldy. So stay tuned.

1961: Kameny and Jack Nichols co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, an organization that embraced aggressive action for the civil rights of homosexuals. In 1963 the group was the subject of Congressional hearings over its right to solicit funds.

1968: He gave us the phrase ''Gay is Good'' back when homosexuality and shame were partners. The Library of Congress archives contain this original example.

1973: The American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder, and Kameny had played a major role in that change. Kameny “crashed the APA conference in Washington DC, seized the microphone and shouted, ‘We’re not the problem. You’re the problem!’” He and lesbian activist Barbara Gittings were the first recipients of the American Psychiatric Association's John M. Fryer, M.D., Award, recognizing their contribution to fighting against that association’s earlier homophobia.

2006: the Human Rights Campaign presented him with the National Capital Area Leadership Award. That same year the Library of Congress accepted 77,000 items from his collected papers.

2009: President Obama signed an executive order that granted benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees; Kameny was by his side in the Oval Office and received a pen from Obama. Also that year, he received a formal apology from the U.S. government for his treatment all those years ago, and Kameny’s home in Washington DC was designated a Historic Landmark by the District of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Review Board.

The Smithsonian Institution’s “Treasures of American History” exhibit includes Kameny's picket signs carried in front of the White House in 1965. The Smithsonian now has 12 of the original picket signs carried by homosexual Americans in the first-ever White House demonstration for gay rights. 

By his example, perseverance and sacrifice, he showed Americans what courage looked like.

Note: Controversy followed Kameny even after his death. After cremation, his legal heir Timothy Clark took possession of the ashes. Because the estate did not have financial resources to purchase a memorial, a gay charitable group known as Helping Our Brothers and Sisters purchased a plot at DC's Congressional Cemetery* and erected head and foot stones, which have become a gay tourist attraction. But Clark would not allow interment of the ashes to take place until ownership of the plot was signed over to Kameny's estate. To this day the grave remains empty, and Clark interred Kameny's ashes at an undisclosed location, requesting the public to respect his "wishes and privacy."

*The grave's location is right behind that of Leonard Matlovich, a gay Vietnam veteran whose tombstone bears the epitaph: When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. Other gay rights activists and members of American Veterans for Equal Rights have chosen to be buried in this cemetery.

Ray Hill

1940-2018

Before Houston, TX, native Ray Hill became a galvanizing gay activist, he had been a Baptist evangelist and a convicted burglar who served four years in prison. Not a typo.

Mr. Hill, who died November 24,  was a larger-than-life character who said, "I was born to rub the cat hair the wrong direction." He described his occupation as a "journeyman-quality hell raiser, and on his business cards the words "Citizen Provocateur" were printed under his name. He partnered with San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk to organize the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 80,000 activists showed up. But the second national march he helped organize drew more than 200,000 people in 1987, the largest gay rights demonstration in history.

A renowned radio broadcaster, he co-founded KPTF-FM in Houston, where he started a program on LGBTG issues. In 1980 Texas prisoners could not call home to speak to immediate family or close relatives. Although Hill lobbied for a 2007 state law allowing such, his prior efforts resulted in radio's "The Prison Show" with a call-in segment that allowed families to update inmates with greetings, family details and news of births and deaths and such trivialities as children's soccer game scores.

He bullied Anita Bryant in 1977 but campaigned for several female politicians, most notably Annise Parker, who became Houston's first gay mayor in 2010. But that's not all. When his sister died in an automobile accident in 1977, Mr. Hill raised her two children. In fact, his entire life became a legacy of service to others. 

After losing his left leg and right foot to diabetes, he resided at Omega House in Houston, a hospice center he helped establish in the 1980s. He had been hospitalized earlier this year with heart problems. His funeral was held yesterday on the steps of Houston's City Hall, where Mayor Sylvester Turner delivered a statement that called Mr. Hill a warrior in the fight for gay rights, human rights and criminal justice reforms.

Michael Lucas

Born in 1972 in Moscow, activist, columnist, documentary film-maker, lecturer, porn star and explicit gay film producer Michael Lucas (birth name Andrei Treivas) was raised in a secular Jewish family during the oppressive communist era. He was the target of anti-Semitism as a youth, and some of his ancestors had been killed in the Holocaust. His great-grandfather was a rabbi who was murdered in his own synagogue by the Nazis. Michael was given his mother's maiden name at birth specifically because Treivas sounded less Jewish than his father's surname, Bregman.

Lucas has an interesting back story. He earned a law degree from Moscow State Law Academy in 1994, after which he owned and operated a travel agency. Three years later he was living in New York city, with stops in Germany and France along the way. Treivas began his porn career in Munich by working in straight films, but while in France he began an association with Jean-Daniel Cadinot in gay porn. By the age of 25 Andrei Treivas became an exclusive porn actor for Falcon Studios, who, without his counsel or permission, had given him an Americanized name – Michael Lucas. Nevertheless, he had greater ambition than being a porn star, and he got lucky. He was awarded  a green card through a lottery system.

In 2004 he became a citizen of the United States, and in 2009 took dual citizenship with Israel. The following year he renounced his Russian citizenship as a protest against Russian homophobia and anti-Semitism.

With money earned from working as a male escort, Lucas started his own gay porn production company in New York in 1998. Lucas Entertainment is now a leader in the adult entertainment industry, having produced more than 300 films. His production company employs fifteen people who work in a midtown Manhattan office rented for nearly $20,000 a month, and Michael’s home apartment boasts original Robert Mapplethorpe art on the walls. To say that this immigrant has achieved success is understatement.

In 2000 Lucas moved his Jewish grandparents to New York, and one of the first things he did was take them to see the giant menorah in Central Park, so that they could witness that it had not been vandalized. He wanted to share with them the unbelievable freedoms Americans have.

In 2008 he married his partner of eight years, Richard Winger, a businessman and president emeritus of New York’s LGBT Center. In 2014 Lucas announced that they had divorced.

As a columnist for Out, The Advocate, Huffington Post and Pink News, Michael’s reputation is controversial, and his writing is highly opinionated and outspoken. Speaking regularly at universities such as Stanford, Yale, and Oxford, he discusses social, political, and sexual issues. Lucas has been on the cover of hundreds of magazines worldwide and has been profiled in many mainstream publications ranging from New York magazine to The New Republic.

In 2012 he wrote, produced and directed a documentary titled Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land, which extols the tolerance of the Israeli State. A second documentary was made in 2014, Campaign of Hate – Russia and Gay Propaganda. Both received critical acclaim and have been presented at numerous film festivals.

As the gay news magazine The Advocate wrote, “Michael Lucas has used the stardom porn gave him as a platform to speak out against drugs, unsafe sex, child exploitation, anti-Semitism, religious oppression of gays, and a host of other social problems. Bold, honest, and passionately opinionated, Lucas continues to challenge conventional thinking in all of his pursuits.”

(Sources: MichaelLucas.com, vice.com, The Advocate, Wikipedia)

Joseph John Bertrund Belanger

This photo booth portrait was taken in California in 1953, at a time when laws allowed police to target homosexuals, who could be arrested for holding hands in public or wearing clothing of the opposite sex. A photo such as this could have gotten the men arrested.

Time magazine recently reported that the man shown on the right was J. J. Belanger, a Canadian born in 1925 who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1942 to 1944. He then moved to California, where he was one of the founding members of the Mattachine Society, an early LGBT organization which originated in 1950 in Los Angeles. Their initial name of Society of Fools was replaced by Mattachine Society, after Medieval French secret societies of masked bachelors who, through their anonymity, were empowered to criticize ruling monarchs with impunity. The name change was meant to symbolize the fact that gays were a masked people, unknown and anonymous.

During the 1970s Belanger became the Los Angeles coordinator of the Eulenspiegel Society, the oldest and largest BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) education and support group in the United States. During the next decade Belanger became involved with three LGBT organizations, the San Francisco chapter of the Stonewall Gay Democratic Club, Project Inform and the Quarantine Fighter’s Group.

Throughout his lifetime, Belanger was a devoted collector of historical LGBT artifacts and materials. This photograph of him is now part of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries (Los Angeles), the largest repository of LGBT materials in the world, which includes letters, notebooks, and audio recordings owned by Belanger. Many of Belanger's effects relate to gays in the military and AIDS activism.

Kyle Morgan, of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, recently wrote, “Here, in the midst of the 2014 (gay) pride season, what remains so remarkable and moving about this particular image is how quietly radical it feels all these years later. Belanger and another man have found a private safe space in the unlikeliest of places, an ordinary photo booth, where they felt so at ease...(that) they could kiss each other far from the prying eyes of a disapproving public.”

Sources: Time Magazine and Wikipedia

Andrew Tobias

Born in 1947, Andrew Tobias is an American journalist, author, and columnist. He has written chiefly on investment, politics and insurance, but, using the pseudonym John Reid, published an autobiography titled The Best Little Boy in the World (1973), an early classic of gay coming-out literature. It has remained in print for over forty years and was reissued under his real name in 1998, when he was comfortable enough to reveal his sexual orientation to the general public. Subsequently, Tobias served as grand marshal of the 2005 New York City LGBT Pride Parade. An influential gay rights activist, he is also a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign.

A staunch Democrat, since 1998 he has served as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, and he has been a strong opponent of Republican efforts to reduce taxes for high-income individuals.

Among his other accomplishments, Tobias created one of the most popular early financial computer programs, Andrew Tobias’s Managing Your Money, later sold to and subsumed by the makers of Quicken. Although a major voice in the financial industry, he has never been employed in that field. As well, he has written investment advice columns for New York Magazine, Esquire, Playboy and Time. One of his most controversial books proposes radical insurance reform. He has appeared numerous television shows, including Today, Good Morning America, Oprah, Tonight and Face the Nation.

For 7 years Tobias was in a relationship with journalist Scot Haller. Fashion designer Charles Nolan, Tobias’s subsequent partner of 16 years, died of cancer in 2011 at age 53. Nolan mixed politics and fashion, causing shock waves when he left as head designer of Ann Klein in 2003 to volunteer for the presidential campaign of Howard Dean.

http://andrewtobias.com

Ian Roberts

Out in Sports: Gay Australian Rugby Player

(Updated February 20, 2014) London-born Australian rugby player Ian Roberts came out in 1995, the first person in the sport’s history to do so. This admission surprised many, because Ian did not fit many stereotypes of gay men. It was noteworthy that there were minimal repercussions that resulted, and lucrative endorsements continued to pour in. He remains an inspiration to young gay men all over the world who see in him a brave, tough role model who stands against the clichés of what gay men are like. However, both epilepsy and recognition of his homosexuality nearly led to his giving up the game. Instead, by the mid-1990s he had become the highest paid rugby player in Australia.

Roberts forged a stellar career as an aggressive forward with Souths, Manly and North Queensland and represented both New South Wales and Australia. In 2005, he was named one of the 25 greatest ever New South Wales players.

Ian's first clear, public statement that he was gay was made to The Advocate magazine and then quoted in a Sydney newspaper without Roberts' permission. Regardless, he never denied it, and the press jumped all over the story. News of his sexuality was followed by photos of his male partner Shane Goodwin and mention of their intention to adopt children.

Having come out, Ian was called on by most gay charities and many youth charities to do fund raising work, appear in poster campaigns, and sit on Mardi Gras floats, among others. Acutely aware of his media position, Roberts kept up a busy charity schedule as well as his Rugby League career, shifting from the Manly Sea Eagles in Sydney to the North Queensland Cowboys in Townsville. During this period his biography, Finding Out, was released.

After retiring from Rugby League at the age of 34, Ian moved to Sydney and completed an acting degree at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA, the alma mater of Mel Gibson)) and began a second career as an actor. Ian drastically reduced his public visibility as a sports idol and concentrated on his new career.

In a 2000 father-son newspaper interview, Ian talked about his relationship with his dad:

“Most of the time my father and I talk about sport. We never stop fighting. We've always disagreed about everything, especially politics. Dad is a bit of a racist We'd also argue about the whole gay thing. He came from the old school, where everything was black and white and no grey. Now he's mellowed; he really believes that there should be allowances for gay couples, that they should have equal rights and they should be able to marry in some form...

...I was surprised how cool he was about it when I told him I was gay; it was my mum who freaked out. I was about 25 at the time. Dad said, 'Your mum's heard something at work today; we don't believe it, but we just want to hear you say it. Tell us you're not gay.' I said, 'No, Dad, I am gay.' He went white as a sheet. Mum started screaming. Dad said, 'Shut up, Jean, and talk to your son!' I was upset, so I went out to the car, and Dad followed me. He gave me a hug and said, 'This is still your home, boy.'

We didn't bring the subject up for a while, because Mum was still having a really difficult time accepting it. One day, Dad tried to have this safe-sex talk with me. I told him that I knew what I was doing, but I appreciated his concern. He was very inquisitive; he wanted to know all about it.”

From Ian’s father:

“One of the proudest moments of my life was when he finally did come out. That took a hell of a lot of guts. I think he was just fed up with living a lie, and he got to the stage where he didn't care what people thought about him. I'd go along to watch him at the football, and some of the crap I used to hear from the crowd made me very upset.

We argue about everything. That's what most of his friends could never understand. When they first meet us, they think we're forever fighting, but it's just the way we are. We talk about everything. Nothing is taboo. I just wish he'd told us earlier. It would have been easier for me, and for him.”

Roberts finished playing professional rugby league in 1999, and began studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Roberts had a brief cameo part in the Australian film “Little Fish,” starring Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, playing an ex-rugby league star. He appeared in the 2006 motion picture “Superman Returns” as Riley, a henchman of Lex Luthor, and the highly acclaimed Australian television series “Undervelly: A Tale of Two Cities.” Roberts also won second place in the Australian version of "Dancing with the Stars" competition.

This video features highlights of his rugby days, acting career and even some clips from "Dancing with the Stars." Enjoy.

Michael Huffington

Republican politician, LGBT activist, philanthropist, business executive and film producer Michael Huffington (b. 1947 in Dallas, Texas) was born rich. His father, Roy Huffington, was founder of the natural gas exploration company, Huffco, and Michael served as the company’s vice chairman from 1976 to 1990. He married Greek-born socialite Arianna Stassinopoulis (of Huffington Post fame) in 1986, but by 1998 he was a divorced man with two daughters who had revealed that he was bisexual.

In a Time magazine article by John Cloud (December 1998), it was revealed that openly gay financial guru Andrew Tobias, an old Harvard chum, said he was the first person Huffington told about his sexuality, forty years ago. In an Advocate interview (2006), Huffington stressed that he is bisexual, not gay. He claimed that on the Kinsey scale (from 0 as totally straight to 6 as totally gay), he is a 4.

According to a 1998 Esquire magazine profile by David Brock, Huffington said he began dating men in the 1970s while working at his family’s energy company in Houston, but suffered guilt and depression over the relationships. An affair with one man lasted about a year, but Huffington also continued to date women. At one point he made a private vow to stop sleeping with men. The profile makes the distinction that Huffington is homosexual, but not “gay”. Brock wrote, "Gay means so much more, carries so much cultural baggage, and he's not that. The word gay just doesn't describe him. It really doesn't.”

In a 2008 New Yorker profile of Arianna, we learned that before their marriage Michael Huffington informed her about his interest in men. “In my Houston town house I sat down with her and told her that I had dated women and men so that she would be aware of it.”   

During the 1990s Michael won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served one term as a Republican from California. By just 1.7 percent of the vote he lost his subsequent bid for the U.S. Senate when Californians re-elected Dianne Feinstein. In the 2003 California recall election, Michael endorsed Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of his ex-wife, Arianna Huffington, who was an opposing candidate. Although she withdrew before the election, her name remained on the ballot.

Since his coming out as bisexual, Michael has worked with various organizations such as GLAAD, GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign, the Log Cabin Republicans, the Point Foundation and other groups to help educate Americans about gay, lesbian and bisexual people. Earlier this year Huffington was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

Huffington's philanthropic activities and commitments are varied and worldwide. A partial list of those organizations that he has supported financially and on which he has served on the Board of Directors include: the Aspen Institute (Aspen, Colorado), the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (NYC), the Culver Educational Foundation (Culver, Indiana), Georgetown University (Washington, DC), the Greek Orthodox Archdioceses of America (NYC), the Music Center of Los Angeles, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NYC), the Salzburg Seminar (Salzburg, Austria) and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

From 1991 to 2000 he was the co-owner of Crest Films Limited, a full-service film production company known for its Emmy-winning commercials, documentaries, and adventure films as well as its work on behalf of non-profit organizations. He produced or executive produced many award-winning films, including For the Bible Tells Me So, an insightful non-fiction film which was shortlisted for the 2008 Academy Award nominations for best documentary. Some of his other credits include Bi the Way, Dissolution, American Primitive, Grassroots and Father vs. Son. Huffington is also a producer of The Geography Club, a gay/bisexual-themed film that opens in limited release on November 15, 2013.

Colby Melvin

Brought up to be a "Southern gentleman," LGBT Rights activist Colby Melvin got a job in the oil and gas industry after graduating from college in Mobile, Alabama. He worked in a major management position while assisting in the recovery efforts following the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill.

However, one of his bosses discovered that Colby was gay, which unfortunately led to corporate bullying. Even so, Colby stood his ground, determined not to hide his sexual orientation. He came out to friends and his family and left the Gulf of Mexico job, immediately shifting his career emphasis to LGBT activism, with special emphasis on marriage equality.

Colby now works as a spokesmodel for Full Frontal Freedom (FFF), a coalition of independent artists and media executives who use their talent and creativity to raise awareness and enhance civil discourse. Colby appeared in an FFF video that was a parody of a One Direction hit, and that “Disclosure” video (at end of post) was one of the most-watched political videos of the 2012 campaign season. For his work on that video Colby received the Human Rights Award for Political Performing Arts from the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club in New York.

Colby recently announced his engagement to Brandon Brown, and Gabriel Gastelum, who designed and compiled their engagement album (and took the two photos above), said, "I’ve worked a lot with these two and they have become incredible friends. No fancy lights, no magazine or online features, no concepts. Not this time. Just love. Colby and Brandon are fighting hard for their love. It shouldn’t have to be that way. It’s hard to love yourself, let alone someone else, when there are a lot of ignorant people out there who don’t accept you for who you are. Well, you know what? Screw them. Yeah. I said it. It doesn’t matter who you love. Underneath it all, it’s the same love. Colby and Brandon. Thank you so much for letting me capture your love. It was truly special."

You likely do not know that Colby Melvin and his fiancé Brandon Brown have both worked as Andrew Christian underwear models. Colby took that job because it combined his love of politics with his flair for entertainment – a perfect fit (pun intended).

A photo from Colby's modeling days:

Last year Colby starred in Full Frontal Freedom's "Disclosure" political video:

George Cecil Ives

Englishman George Ives (1867-1950) was the most famous gay activist you’ve never heard of. He formed a secret society for homosexuals called the Order of Chaeronea, named after the battle site where the Sacred Band of Thebes (an army of male lovers) met their annihilation in 338 BC. Members dated letters and other materials from the year of that battle, so that 1950 would be written as C.2288.

Ives believed that since homosexuals were not accepted openly in society, they needed to have a means of underground communication. The Order’s rituals were based on the writings of Walt Whitman, and the society took on issues beyond the realm of homosexuality, making efforts to reform laws affecting STDs, birth control, abortion and other repressive sex related statutes. This was in 1897! The Order, which promoted what Ives referred to as "The Cause," soon attracted members worldwide.



The Order of Chaeronea’s manifesto:

"We believe in the glory of passion.
We believe in the inspiration of emotion.
We believe in the holiness of love."

According to Ives, the Order was to be "A Religion, A Theory of Life and Ideal of Duty", although its purpose was primarily political. Ives stressed that The Order was not to be a means for men to meet other men for sex. It is estimated that, under Ives, the society numbered about 300 participants, the same as the number of soldiers of the Sacred Band of Thebes, but the Order’s secrecy meant that no membership lists were in circulation. The Order of Chaeronea was resurrected in the United States in the late 1990s and today has chapters in South Africa, France and the United Kingdom, as well.

When he was in his mid-twenties, Ives met Oscar Wilde, who was attracted by his youthful good looks. Through Wilde, Ives met Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas, with whom he had a brief affair. Although Ives recruited both men to join his "Cause," neither chose to join him. Their acquaintance, however, did provide Ives with an important entry into the Victorian literary scene. Ives figured prominently in the published diaries of Oscar Wilde.

In 1914 Ives became a co-founder of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, which in 1931 became the British Sexological Society. Ives was the archivist for this society, whose papers are now housed at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

Ives was also a noted authority on prisons who wrote several books and lectured about English penal methods. A true polymath, Ives thus had multiple careers as a poet, penal reformer, writer and gay rights activist.

Sources: "Queers in History" by Keith Stern and "The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde" by Neil McKenna.

Wentworth Miller

Actor Wentworth Miller was in the headlines last month by declaring that he was gay, upon declining an invitation to attend a Russian Film Festival. His refusal was his way of condemning Russia’s anti-gay homosexual propaganda legislation. Now, the sexy 41 year old "Prison Break" star revealed that he attempted suicide as a teenager, unable to come to terms with his sexuality.

All this time I did not report on Miller’s coming out, because I resented his earlier (2007) statements on the matter. Long rumored to be gay, here's what he had to say:

"No, I’m not gay. I know these rumors are out there – I’m cool with the fact that they exist, I mean this is about fantasy," the actor said. "Certain people are going to have certain fantasies, if someone wants to imagine me with a woman, or a man or one of each, that’s cool with me as long as you keep watching the show."

Spineless (the above quote comes from a 2007 interview with the Australian Associated Press), I know. But I think he can now serve as a role model to those who face similar fears, so it’s time I get over myself and cut the guy some slack.

The New York Daily News reported that Miller was a special guest at the Human Rights Campaign Seattle Gala on Saturday, Sept. 7, and during that time he admitted that he had tried to take his own life "more than once," as he struggled to understand that he was gay.

"Growing up I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way...Every day was a test and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else’s standards of what was accepted, of what was normal...

...The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 15. I waited until my family went away for the weekend and I was alone in the house, and I swallowed a bottle of pills," Miller added. "I don’t remember what happened over the next couple of days, but I’m pretty sure come Monday morning I was on the bus back to school, pretending everything was fine. And when someone asks me if that was a cry for help, I’d say, ’No.’ You only cry for help if you believe there’s help to cry for. And I didn’t need it, I wanted out." (Source: TMZ video interview)

Miller said after he became famous for his role in "Prison Break," he had a number of chances to come out but didn’t, "because when I thought about the possibility about coming out, and about how that might impact me and the career I worked so hard for, I was filled with fear."

His comments about refusing to attend the St. Petersburg International Film Festival:

"As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes," Miller wrote in the letter, posted on GLAAD’s website. "However, as a gay man, I must decline."

"I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government," Miller continued. "The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systemically denied their basic right to live and love openly."

Brian Sims (update)

On June 27, out and proud Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Sims (182nd Dist.) joined Rep. Steve McCarter (D-154th Dist.) In stating that they would introduce a bill to allow Pennsylvania to join the 13 states and Washington, DC, that now have marriage equality (at present Pennsylvania and New Jersey are the only northeastern states that do not allow gay marriage). Anti-gay legislator Rep. Daryl Metcalfe sought to silence Sims on the House floor when Sims tried to speak about the Supreme Court decision on DOMA and Prop. 8. Metcalfe said Sims was acting in “open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God’s law*.” Sims states that the bipartisan support he saw after that incident was encouraging. With the legislature now in recess, Sims and McCarter plan to introduced the marriage equality bill in early fall.

Three things you don’t know about Brian Sims:

“I play the harmonica...I can walk on my hands, and I still hold Pennsylvania’s bench-press record. I pressed 500 pounds in college and every year I get a call from a school saying that somebody’s going to break my record, but so far they’ve all failed.”

*Note from your blogger: While I support Mr. Metcalfe’s right to his religious beliefs and opinions, shouldn’t this guy be at least familiar with the U.S. Constitution and its intentional separation of church and state in the First Amendment? As authors of the constitution, both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson wrote and spoke of the “total separation between church and state,” and their writings were used in the first legal test cases. As far back as 1797, the U.S. Senate ratified a treaty with Tripoli that stated in Article 11:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen (ed.: Muslims); and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan (ed.: Muslim) nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

To this day I keep this quote stored on my cell phone, and I have cited it many times when conversing with ignorant right-wingers. I just ask if they are aware of the language of our nation's Treaty with Tripoli of 1797, then I whip out my phone and read it. Shuts them up every time. Just a suggestion.

It was not always so. Myself a native Virginian, I know from studying history that the official church of the State of Virginia was the Anglican Church, to which tithes had to be paid during the 17th and 18th centuries. Presbyterians, Baptists and so forth were allowed to gather for worship, so long as they continued to pay tithes in support of the Anglican Church. These tithes were suspended in 1776 and never restored, and today, of course, Virginia has no state religion.

That said, legislative and religious bodies continue to react to one another. Although I live in Virginia along the shores of the Potomac, I can see the great mass of National Cathedral from Lynn Street upon exiting my building’s parking lot. Situated high atop Mount St. Alban, the cathedral pealed its bells for an hour beginning at noon on June 26, celebrating the Supreme Court’s decisions on DOMA and Prop. 8. Take THAT, Rep. Metcalfe.

My original blog post about footballer turned lawyer turned activist turned politician Brian Sims can be found here:

http://gayinfluence.blogspot.com/2013/01/brian-sims.html

Magnus Hirschfeld

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was Germany’s equivalent of American sexologist Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956). Hirschfeld, known as the “Einstein of Sex”, was a major theorist of sexuality and the most prominent advocate of homosexual emancipation of his time.

Hirschfeld was born to Jewish parents in the Prussian city of Kolberg (now in Poland) on the Baltic Sea. He studied modern languages in various German cities and eventually took his degree in Berlin in 1892.

In 1896, he wrote Sappho and Socrates, a pamphlet on homosexual love. The following year he joined leaders of the gay journal, Der Eigene (The Self-Possessed), to establish the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. Their first order of business was to work toward the overturn of Paragraph 175, the 1871 German law that criminalized male homosexuality. They collected more than 5,000 signatures on their petition to repeal the law, including such notables as Albert Einstein, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Rainer Maria Rilke. When their efforts failed in an unsuccessful vote before the Reichstag in 1898, Hirschfeld was so infuriated by the hypocrisy of certain members of parliament that he threatened to out some of those who had voted against it. The committee pressed on, working tirelessly to have their bill reintroduced repeatedly over the following decades. Unfortunately, they were never successful.

The Scientific Humanitarian Committee’s motto, "Through Science to Justice", describes an encompassing sexological platform that moves from acknowledgment of biological facts of human sexuality to a vision of a culture capable of coping with endless sexual diversity. Hirschfeld was convinced that scientific understanding of sexuality would lead to tolerance and acceptance of sexual minorities. Thirty-four years before Kinsey, Hirschfeld collected detailed information about sexual behavior in surveys from 10,000 people, and he published the results in his book,  Homosexuality in Men and Women (1914).

During the height of the Weimar Republic, Hirschfeld co-wrote, co-funded and acted in a movie called Anders als die Anderen (Different from the Others, 1919), a silent film whose main character comes out to thwart his extortionist gay ex-lover, but subsequently loses his job and commits suicide. The project was intended as a polemic against Paragraph 175. The film's basic plot was used again in the 1961 British film, Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde (see entry in sidebar).

That same year, the German government offered Hirschfeld a former royal palace in Berlin to house his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research), which offered medical and psychological consultations, marriage counseling, contraception and general sex education. The institute also promoted women’s emancipation and rights for gay and transgender people. The institute quickly became headquarters for the German national gay emancipation movement. Its museum of grotesque sexual paraphernalia was a “must-see” stop for visiting intellectuals like English novelist Christopher Isherwood and French expressionist artist Marc Chagall. It also became a gathering place for Berlin’s thriving subculture of homosexuals, transsexuals (Hirschfeld coined the term in 1923) and transvestites.

The Institute and its work also increasingly came to the notice of the Nazi party. At one point, following a lecture Hirschfeld gave in Munich, he was set upon by a group of Brown Shirts, who fractured his skull and left him for dead in the street. They were bent on eradicating the triple evils of socialists, homosexuals and Jews – and Hirschfeld was all three.

Then things got worse. Unfortunately, on the heels of Hitler’s ruthless elimination of a powerful band of hyper-masculine homosexuals (including many of Hitler’s friends) known as the “Night of the Long Knives”, the Nazis ransacked the institute’s archives on May 6, 1933, confiscating names and addresses. Four days later the Nazis held a massive book burning in Berlin’s Opernplatz, destroying the institute’s collection of 20,000 volumes and 5,000 images on the basis that they depicted “deviants” and “ideas that were un-German.” The institute’s buildings were confiscated and sold to the state. At the time Hirschfeld was on a lecture tour in Paris and never returned home. Hirschfeld learned of the ruinous acts while watching newsreels in a Paris cinema, seated next to his Chinese lover, Li Shiu Tong, who was also Hirschfeld’s life-long traveling companion and fellow researcher.

Barnhard Schapiro (left), a Latvian Jew, was the medical director of the Institute for Sexology at the time it was closed and plundered by the Nazis in 1933. Li Shiu Tong (right) was Hirschfeld’s young Chinese lover.

In France, on his sixty-seventh birthday in 1935, Hirschfeld died from a heart attack, and his remains were buried in a cemetery in Nice. Hirschfeld was survived by Li Shiu Tong, his young partner, colleague, former student, and heir, who lived until 1993. Li was eighty-six years old at the time of his own death in Vancouver. While Hirschfeld was on a round-the-world lecture tour, the two met in Shanghai, and despite the difference in age (Li 24, Hirschfeld 63), the attraction was immediate, and Li joined Hirschfeld’s tour as his “interpreter”. Li, the handsome son of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, inherited Hirschfeld’s personal letters and effects.

That Which Is Hidden (1939) a novel by Robert Hichens, is based on the relationship between Hirschfeld and Li. The novel opens with the protagonist visiting the tomb of a famed Austrian sex expert, Dr. R. Ellendorf, in a cemetery in Nice. At the tomb, he meets the late doctor's protégé, a Chinese student named Kho Ling. The character of Ling refers to the memory of his mentor at numerous points in the novel.

In 1982, a group of German researchers and activists founded the Magnus Hirschfeld Society in Berlin, in anticipation of the then-approaching 50th anniversary of the destruction of Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research. Ten years later, the society established a Berlin-based center for research on the history of sexology.

Omar Sharif Jr.

Photo by M. Sharkey for OUT Magazine

The grandson of legendary Doctor Zhivago actor Omar Sharif has been the face of Coca-Cola for the Arabic world (2006) as well as a Calvin Klein model for a major print campaign in Egypt (2008). But last year he made a bold move when he published a letter in The Advocate, in which he came out as gay AND half-Jewish. He went on to castigate Egypt’s government for denying its citizens basic human rights.

From The Advocate:
 “I write this article in fear. Fear for my country, fear for my family, and fear for myself. My parents will be shocked to read it, surely preferring I stay in the shadows and keep silent, at least for the time being. But I can’t.

And so I hesitantly confess: I am Egyptian, I am half Jewish, and I am gay.”

The Jerusalem Post noted that Sharif's Jewish heritage comes from his mother's side, making him fully Jewish according to rabbinical tradition. His maternal grandparents are Jewish Holocaust survivors, Muslim tradition, however, is patrilineal, meaning the faith is passed down via the father. Omar Jr. was born in Montreal (1983) with the given name Omar Joseph El Sharif.

“That my mother is Jewish is no small disclosure when you are from Egypt, no matter the year. And being openly gay has always meant asking for trouble, but perhaps especially during this time of political and social upheaval. With the victories of several Islamist parties in recent elections, a conversation needs to be had and certain questions need to be raised. I ask myself: Am I welcome in the new Egypt?

...While to many in Europe and North America mine might seem like trivial admissions, I am afraid this is not so in Egypt. I anticipate that I will be chastised, scorned, and most certainly threatened. From the vaunted status of Egyptian actor and personality, I might just become an Egyptian public enemy.

And yet I speak out because I am a patriot.

I am a patriot who remembers a pluralistic Egypt, where despite a lack of choice in the political sphere, society comprised a multitude of beliefs and backgrounds. I remember growing up knowing gay men and women who were quietly accepted by those around them in everyday society.”

Sharif, an actor like his award-winning grandfather, received wide acclaim and international recognition by appearing on a hit Egyptian TV show in 2007. This breakout role propelled Omar Jr. into the world of stand-up comedy, where he has since worked on five continents and in five languages (!).

Mr. Sharif left Egypt in January, 2011, just before the revolution, and today resides in Los Angeles, where he studies at The Lee Strasberg Institute of Theatre and Film. He has since made appearances across the US in some of the most reputable stand up comedy houses.

Omar Jr. holds a Master's degree in Comparative Politics from The London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Queen's University. Fluent in English, French, Hebrew, Arabic and Yiddish, he also speaks conversational Spanish. In 2011, he was selected to be the lone male trophy presenter at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards, during which he participated in a comedic sketch with Kirk Douglas, the two men grappling over a cane.

Kevin Jennings

Activist, teacher and author Kevin Jennings (b. 1963) responded to his anger over being taunted as a young student by founding the first organization to address gay bullying in the U.S. As leader of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Jennings campaigned tirelessly to educate teachers, parents, students, and community members about ending bias in K-12 schools. Although Jennings left his post as executive director of GLSEN in 2008, his legacy lives on in the GLSEN chapters that proliferate throughout the country.

Constantly bullied by his brothers, teachers and fellow students, at the start of the tenth grade Jennings, with the assistance of his mother, transferred to a high school for gifted and talented students. There he joined the debate team and had his first sexual experience with another male. Jennings’ father, a Baptist preacher, had died of a heart attack when Kevin was nine years old, and his mother struggled to support her children as a single, uneducated parent working at a fast food restaurant. Just before his high school junior year, Kevin and his mother moved to Hawaii to live with his sister, because his mother was exhausted from trying to scrape by on a minimum wage. When it came time to consider college, Jennings applied to Harvard and was accepted. Kevin thrived in that collegiate atmosphere and did well academically. He somehow gained the confidence to come out of the closet and subsequently told his mother that he was gay. She did not take the news well, and for years afterward they had a strained relationship.

After graduating from Harvard in 1985, Jennings accepted a teaching job in Rhode Island. Two years later he took a position on the faculty of Concord Academy in Massachusetts, where he came out to the entire campus in a Chapel Talk in the fall of 1988. His students embraced his bravery and convictions. One of his students, a girl whose mother was lesbian, asked Jennings to help her start a "Gay-Straight Alliance" at the academy. Jennings took up the cause and thus began his two-decade effort to support, protect and encourage glbtq students, and today there are more than 4,200 Gay-Straight Alliances. As he accepted speaking engagements at other schools, he was convinced that a national organization was needed to address the concerns of glbtq students, and in 1990 Jennings was one of four founders of GLISTeN, the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teacher Network. The next year the organization changed its name to GLSTN, Gay and Lesbian School Teachers Network.

Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld asked Jennings to serve on the Governor's 1992 Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. The following year the state board of education voted to make the Commission's recommendations the official policy of the state. This program, called Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students, was the first of its kind.

Jennings was awarded a Klingenstein Fellowship at Columbia University's Teachers College. After receiving his M.A., he began work to make GLSTN a national organization. Jennings met financial consultant Jeff Davis, his life partner, at GLSTN's first event in NYC in 1994. Kevin also published two books that chronicled the stories of gay students and teachers. Four other books on related issues followed later in his career.

Shortly thereafter Jennings conceived, helped write and produce a documentary called Out of the Past, a film based on the story of Kelli Peterson, a lesbian student who tried to start a Gay-Straight Alliance at a Utah high school in 1996. The incident, in which the school system banned all school clubs to prevent Kelli’s success, grabbed national headlines. The film went on to win the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

Jennings was invited to the White House in 1997, at the request of  President Clinton’s liaison to the glbtq community. Clinton wanted to repair his relationship with that constituency after he was unable to keep his promise to end the ban on gays in the military.

Jennings went on to be named to Newsweek Magazine's "Century Club" a compendium of 100 people to watch in the new century. He was also the recipient of the Human and Civil Rights Award of the National Education Association.

In 2005, Jennings suffered a heart attack after coming off the ice in a game with the New York Gay Hockey Association. Although Kevin and his partner Jeff Davis reside in NYC, Jennings joined the Obama administration as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education and director of the Office of Safe & Drug-Free Schools in 2009. That appointment sparked a series of hysterical and libelous attacks by conservative activists (example at right), abetted by irresponsible reporting from the Washington Times newspaper and Fox News Network. Fortunately Jennings received strong support from President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The challenges from right wing activists spurred him on to ever more ambitious plans to prevent bullying in schools.

When a spate of suicides by bullied gay youths occurred in 2009, Jennings helped convene the first White House Conference on Bullying Prevention, headlined by the President and Mrs. Obama. In 2011, Kevin resigned his position at the Department of Education in order to head a new non-profit organization, "Be the Change," dedicated to addressing the growing problem of economic inequality in the country (Jennings had grown up dirt poor). A deciding factor was his ability to return to NYC to spend more time with his partner. Jennings has said that the anti-bullying movement he started has enough momentum and resources to go on without his active participation.

Note: This post is a condensation of an article by Victoria Shannon on the www.glbtq.com web site.