The Gay Holocaust: We must remember

In 1928 there was an estimated 1.2 million "out" homosexual men living in Germany. As Adolf Hitler rose in power, gay organizations were banned and scholarly books regarding homosexuality were burned. Hitler's racial state ideology branded homosexuals not only as "parasites" and degenerates, but as enemies of the state. In 1935, the Nazi government significantly expanded the criminalization of homosexuality.

Under the direction of SS head, police drew up "Pink Lists", and embarked on a vicious crackdown on homosexual men and women. Many were sent to mental hospitals, others were castrated by court order, and100,000 of these men were sent to concentration camps.The pink triangle (now a symbol of Gay Pride) was placed on the prisoners to mark that they were homosexuals. An estimated 55,000 were executed

Heinz Dormer, spent nearly ten years in prisons and concentration camps. He spoke of the "haunting agonizing cries" from "the singing forest", a row of tall poles on which condemned men were hung: "Everyone who was sentenced to death would be lifted up onto the hook. The howling and screaming were inhuman, beyond human comprehension".

The principal of a catholic school in Ottawa, Canada, has stepped in to halt a school project from two 11-year-old pupils on the topic of gay rights

Grade 6 students Quinn Maloney-Tavares and Polly Hamilton, who attend St. George’s Catholic School in Ottawa, were asked to complete a project on social justice and allowed to choose their own specific theme.

They chose gay rights, because, as Quinn told the Ottawa Citizen, ‘A lot of people, they don’t know they’re being rude, but they make being gay a bad thing.

‘They need to know that it’s not a bad thing.’

However, principal Ann Beauchamp had other ideas and immediately vetoed the idea when she heard about it, leaving the girls ‘upset and disappointed’, according to Quinn’s mom, Ann Maloney.

In fact, the girls were so disappointed by their principal’s decision that they decided to paint small rainbow flags on their hands in silent protest; the gesture was picked up and repeated by several of their classmates.

Maloney and Polly’s mother, Kate, had a meeting with Beauchamp last week to see if they could persuade her to change her mind, but Maloney said afterwards that the principal had ‘felt strongly about her decision,’ saying that she didn’t think gay rights was an appropriate topic for children of that age, and that she also had concerns about receiving criticism from more conservative parents at the school.

Beauchamp has since refused to comment, but the school board’s communications department issued a statement from chairman Ted Hurley. It said that the school’s curriculum, ‘covers all topics around personhood, relationships and sexuality and is developed and taught in an age-appropriate manner.

‘The principal’s decision was made in this context and with the understanding that the project was going to be presented to younger students … Our board’s focus on equity and family life programs ensures students are taught within the context of our faith, with a focus on the dignity of personhood.’

Archaeologists Find Possible Male Lover of Alexander the Great

Casta Hill near Amphipolis in northern Greece, where archaeologists are excavating a large 4th century B.C. tomb.  (Source:AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

The bones of an honored person, rumored to possibly be Hephaestion, Alexander the Great's close friend and possible lover, were found in a tomb in Amphipolis in Northern Greece.

Discovery News reports at least one archaeologist on a team led by Katerina Peristeri found the human remains in a box-shaped grave. The 10.6 by 5.1-foot limestone burial was found about 5.3 feet beneath the floor of the third chamber in the huge tomb site.

Within the grave, they unearthed the remains of a wooden coffin with iron and copper nails, and bone and glass fragments they believe were decorative elements of the coffin.

"Parts of the skeleton were found scattered within and outside of the grace. Obviously, an anthropological investigation will be carried on the remains," said the Greek Ministry of Culture in a statement.

Dorothy King, an archeologist not involved in the excavation, said that because the bones were found both in and around the sarcophagus, that the tomb was looted. But she said that the fact that a body was buried indicates that it was someone important.

"A burial like this in a sarcophagus, a whole body rather than a box with ashes, is unusual in Macedonia," said King, who noted that only the most important people like Alexander or possibly his lover Hephaestion, would be embalmed like this.

"If the bones are male, they are most likely to be those of someone like Hephaestion," wrote King in herblog. "The remains show that the sarcophagus was very elaborate and made of precious materials, as the sources say his funerary cortege was."

When Hephaestion died in Western Iran in October 324 B.C., Alexander reportedly mourned by shaving his hair, refusing to eat, executing Hephaestion's doctor, and commissioning the expensive funeral pure. Alexander the Great died eight months later.

The memory and meaning of Matthew Shepard, 16 years later

Courtesy the Matthew Shepard Foundation

On October 7, 1998, Aaron Kreifels was riding his bike through a field in Wyoming.

He wasn’t expecting that day to be different from any other beautiful sunny afternoon in the vast plains surrounding Laramie, but that day would change many lives.

Aaron spotted what he initially thought was a scarecrow next to a fence. Then he noticed a glisten of blood. The sun sparkled on what he barely recognized as a face.

Aaron had discovered 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, clinging to life.

The young college student had been viciously attacked and bludgeoned, and then tied to a fence and left to die. Matthew was targeted because he was gay.

Most of you know what happened next. Matthew held on for five more days and as his parents held his hand and prayed — Matthew slipped away quietly on October 12th, leaving in his wake a new movement for equality.

The outcries for justice and for greater protections were immediate and resonating.

Since then, Matthew’s mother Judy has made it her personal mission to protect all young LGBT people from Matthew’s horrific fate. In founding the Matthew Shepard Foundation, she has created safe spaces in and outside of schools for kids, and worked with parents to ensure their children learn to erase hate from their lives.

But overwhelmingly what you saw in 1998 was a community ready to act, ready to change something. And Matthew’s story was the catalyst for that.

Many of you have seen or read the Moises Kaufman play, The Laramie Project – Matthew’s story as told through interviews of those who were living in Laramie at the time – some of his friends and some who just happened to be riding a bike through the plains of Wyoming that day.

If you think of nothing else today, please consider the importance of telling your story – and how your story can change the world around you.

This young man, unbeknownst to him, has changed the world with his.

See The Super Gay Penis Doodle Uncovered In Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebook

Besides the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man, it seems we also have Leonardo da Vinci to thank for this penis doodle.

Yes, the same genius who is credited as the archetype of the “Renaissance man” also seems to have had a thing for the men of the Renaissance.

Here’s the drawing that was uncovered in Leonardos’s notebook, which was actually drawn by his apprentice Salai (who was very likely also his lover):

The drawing shows two crudely drawn penises marching towards a mysterious hole. The hole, consequently, is labeled “Salai.” So either he picked an interesting place to sign his masterpiece, or there is much to be read from this historic piece of art.

If you have kids and ever find questionable doodles among their schoolwork, rest assured that some of history’s greatest minds operated the same way.

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Leonardo’s drawing of Salai

Here’s some background on Leonardo’s sexuality from author and historian Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper:

According to Lomazzo’s account, Leonardo’s passion for the beautiful Salai therefore reached its peak at about the time work began on The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie. 

In the fifteenth century, Florentines were so well-known for homosexuality that the German word for sodomite was Florenzer. By 1415 the sexual behavior of young Florentine men had caused the city fathers such concern that “desiring to eliminate a worse evil by means of a lesser one” they licensed two more public brothels to go with the one they had opened with similar aspirations a dozen years earlier. 

When these establishments failed to produce the desired results, and still “desiring to extirpate that vice of Sodom and Gomorrah, so contrary to nature,” the city fathers took further action. In 1432, a special authority, the Ufficiali di Notte e Conservatori dei Monasteri, or Officers of the Night and Preservers of Morality in the Monasteries, was formed to catch and prosecute sodomites. Over the next seven decades, more than ten thousand men were apprehended by this night watch. 

According to Vasari, Salai was “a very attractive youth of unusual grace and looks, with very beautiful hair which he wore curled in ringlets and which delighted his master.” Giacomo seems to have served as a model for Leonardo. No definitive image of him exists, but art historians refer to a distinctive face that appears repeatedly in his drawings—that of a beautiful youth with a Greek nose, a mass of curls and a dreamy pout—as a “Salai-type profile.” 

Leonardo was almost certainly homosexual by the standards of later centuries. Freud was no doubt correct when he stated that it was doubtful whether Leonardo ever embraced a woman in passion. Two years after the Saltarelli affair, Leonardo wrote a partially legible declaration in his notebook: “Fioravante di Domenico at Florence is my most beloved friend, as though he were my….” A nineteenth-century editor of Leonardo’s writings hopefully filled in “brother,” but the relationship may well have been more intimate.

Anti-gay activist furious over recognition of lgbt history

LaBarbera

We're going to teach our kids and our citizens that homosexuality is a civil rights issue when it's not," he laments. "It's a human misbehavior issue. It's just a sin movement – and we're elevating it to civil rights icon status. . . . I fear for our country, because when a nation starts celebrating sexual immorality as the norm and as a social good, then that nation cannot survive in the long run," he explains. "Every other civilization has been brought down for sexual immorality as part of the factors bringing it down, and I think the United States of America will not be an exception in that regard." - 'Porno' Pete LaBarbera

LaBarbera was reacting to the news that the National Park Service will now be identifying places and events associated with the history of lgbt Americans for inclusion in the parks and programs of the National Park Service as a part of its Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Initiative.

Maybe one of these days, people like LaBarbera will recognize that acknowledging lgbt history is not a part of a plot or a "sin movement" (which is a phrase I have NEVER heard before), but a way to recognize that lgbts exists and that we have a diverse history.

But that is the problem with folks like LaBarbera, isn't it? The fact the lgbts exist.

Never Before Heard Confession of Dan White, Murderer of Harvey Milk and George Moscone

Mike Weiss, the author of the book “Double Play“, about the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, while doing research obtained a copy of the audiotape of Milk and Moscone murderer’s Dan White’s confessional interview with officers of the San Francisco Police Department, conducted the day of the fatal shootings at San Francisco’s City Hall.

Weiss gave a copy of the audiotape to Randy Shilts when he was conducting research for his book “The Mayor of Castro Street”, and he placed his copy in his archive which is now housed at the San Francisco Public Library History Center where it has been kept since

This never before heard audio of White’s confession made on 11/27/1978 has now been made available for all to hear thanks to San Francisco queer activist and blogger Mike Petrelis of The Petrelis Files who obtained a CD version, and uploaded it to SoundCloud for all to hear

Listen to this very important and disturbing piece of LGBT history .

Brooklyn Nets Clinch Playoff Berth

Last night the Brooklyn Nets clinched a berth in the Eastern Conference playoffs with their 14th consecutive home win at Barclays Center, setting the stage for Jason Collins to add a another item to his list of first-ever accomplishments when he enters a playoff game with his Matthew Shepard-honoring jersey. 

Most of the hubbub about the NBA's first openly gay player died down within a week or so of Collins returning to the game in February, but a couple of sportswriters have pleasantly joked this week that Collins has been a good luck charm in light of the team's surprising comeback. The playoffs begin on April 19th.