Throwback Thursday Looks at Today in Gay History

July 11, 2024
HANK ORSO

1946: Vito Russo is born.

Russo (1946-1990) was a ground-breaking gay author and political activist whose seminal 1981 work The Celluloid Closet laid bare the injustices and negative tropes of LGBT representation in Hollywood films. It is described as "one of the most informative and provocative books written about gay people and popular culture." Russo, concerned about how the community is represented in films and other forms of pop culture, cofounded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) which focuses attention on LGBT representation across all media and presents its annual GLAAD Media Awards. The Vito Russo Award is presented to an open member of the LGBTQ+ community "for their outstanding contribution in combating homophobia." He also appeared in the Academy Award-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt in 1989. He succumbed to HIV infection in 1990.

In 1996, The Celluloid Closet was transformed into a celebrated documentary film co-produced byb Lily Tomlin.

1984: Boston Mayor Ray Flynn approves a gay rights ordinance.

Throughout his career as a Massachusettes legislator, and then as the Mayor of Boston from 1983-1993 when he left to become President Clinton's Ambassador to the Holy See, Flynn wavered back and forth between his socially progressive stances on issues such as minorities, immigration, the working class, unions and education, he also had his conservative side when it came to abortion and the LGBTQ+ community. Early in his career, he opposed marriage equality and was fairly conservative when it came to most matters of gay rights. But in his run for mayor, he began courting the gay community, a necessary move given our community's rise in political activism in the early stages of the AIDS crisis. So while opposing gay marriage, he stood behind and passed the city's first gay rights ordinance protecting the community from job and credit discrimination. Of course, being the staunch Catholic that he was, he'd attempted in 2004 to overturn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in that state. He failed.

1990: Muscatine, Iowa decides gays are okay to read about.

The local public library board held a public meeting to discuss the removal of books mentioning gays and lesbians. Only 75 people showed up to discuss the matter, and only 1 of those people was in favor of the proposal. The proposal failed.

And I'll leave you with this bit of theater weirdness...

1977: Vincent Price performs a one-man Oscar Wilde play.

Diversions and Delights written by John Gay was a one-man play starring the horror auteur Price as the famed and reviled British playwright and author Oscar Wilde. The play finds Wilde in a Parisian concert hall on the evening of 28 November 1899 discussing his life, his work, and his love for Lord Alfred Douglass. Wilde, as you know, was celebrated for his work until his trial and imprisonment for the crime of "gross indecency" and jailed from 1895-1897. He died in France in 1990. The play opened in San Francisco to rave reviews before moving for a limited run on Broadway in 1978. From there Price traveled the world with the play performing it over 800 times in 300 cities. Interestingly, one of those performances was at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado where, almost 100 years before, Oscar Wilde had spoken to local miners about art.

Here is the only known filmed recording of Price playing the part, on the Dick Cavett Show in 1978.