Throwback Thursday: On This Day in Queer History, Nov. 13th

Well, the fun of Halloween is over, and the fun of tension-filled holiday family gatherings hasn't really kicked in yet. So let's mosey through the history books for Throwback Thursday and see who was born, and terrible and wonderful things happened within our community on this day, November 13th.

Oh, look, a really old white guy was born.

St. Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis) was born in 354 A.D. in Tagaste, North Africa. This Roman African was a theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He is considered one of the most important early Christian thinkers for his over 100 writings in the Patristic period. Yer boy Hank here seems to remember him being at the center of the mystery in the novel The Name of the Rose, something about his disdain for laughing. He also might have had queer leanings. Anyone who says of his best friend, whom he contemplated following in death, “I felt that his soul and mine were one soul in two bodies," might just have a little more than Christ's body on his mind.

Oh, look, Nazis start exterminating gay people.

In 1933, the Third Reich, after recently naming homosexuals as a prisoner designation, recommended to the police to begin transporting gay men to Fuhlsbuttel, a concentration camp near Hamburg.

Oh, look, Manchester elects its first openly gay person.

Margaret Roff (1943-1987) became Wengland's first openly queer mayor in 1985, appointed to the position out of her political and activist experience on the Manchester council. This was also the first year of Manchester Pride. She would tragically die only a couple of years later in a hotel fire in Puerto Cabezas when she had been part of a women’s delegation to Nicaragua.

Oh, look, a political bigot gets his ass handed to him.

1989, and the Armstrong Amendment in DC is deemed unconstitutional by a Federal Court. The amendment, submitted by U.S. Sen. William Armstrong (R-CO), would have stymied DC's entire budget if religious exemptions weren't allowed to the city's human rights law regarding equality for queer folks in public institutions. The argument came about when Georgetown University was ruled not to be exempt from the gay rights law and required to provide equal representation to gay student groups as it provided to other student groups.

Oh, look, a lesbian is named Poet Laureate of NY.

In 1991, the esteemed lesbian writer and activist became the New York State Poet Laureate when she received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit from Gov. Mario Cuomo, Sr.

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