Greg Louganis, Olympic gold medalist

b. January 29, 1960

“When you're a kid growing up, and you think you're gay, you're often teased. But sports can be great for building self-esteem.”

The winner of five Olympic medals, Greg Louganis is the world’s most successful diver and among the most high-profile openly gay athletes.

Raised in San Diego, Louganis scored a perfect 10 in the Junior Olympics in 1971. In 1976, he won an Olympic silver in Montreal.

Louganis graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 1983. At the World Championships the following year, Louganis became the first diver to score a perfect 10 at an international meet.

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Louganis won two gold medals—one each in the springboard and platform events—and was the first to exceed 700 points in the two competitions. For these achievements he received the Sullivan Award, which honors America’s best amateur athlete.

During the springboard qualifying rounds at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Louganis misjudged a jump and struck his head on the diving board. Despite suffering a concussion, he continued diving and won two gold medals. He became the first male diver to win double golds in consecutive Olympics.

In 1993, Louganis starred as a chorus boy who dies of AIDS in the Off Broadway play “Jeffrey.” He came out and disclosed his HIV-positive status at the 1994 Gay Games in New York.

Louganis’s best-selling autobiography, “Breaking the Surface” (1995), recounts his experiences as an openly gay athlete. 

Related articles

• Greg Louganis hails emergence of British diving's Jack Laugher and Tom Daley (Telegraph)
• Greg Louganis to Lead Swim for Equality (Passport Magazine)
• 2 March: Matthew Mitcham, Olympic Diver (Its a Queer World)
• Let's get Greg Louganis on “Dancing With the Stars” (Greg in Hollywood)

Angela Davis, Civil Rights Activist

b. January 26, 1944

Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.

A revolutionary of unequivocal prowess, Angela Davis has devoted her life to combating racism and sexism. Despite acrimonious attempts by the U.S. government to suppress her political influence, Davis has never wavered in her commitment towards global social justice.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Davis grew up under the oppression of Jim Crow laws. Her family lived in an integrated neighborhood plagued by racial conflict. Bombings by the Ku Klux Klan were so common that the neighborhood was called "Dynamite Hill." From an early age, Davis encountered political activism. Her mother was a civil rights campaigner and a member of the NAACP.

Davis was a precocious child who possessed an acute awareness of her social status as an African-American woman. By the age of fourteen, she had aligned herself with socialist and communist politics, joining the communist youth organization, Advance.

In 1962, Davis landed a full scholarship to Brandeis University, where she studied French and philosophy. In 1969, after receiving her master's degree from the University of California, San Diego and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, Davis began teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA terminated her position based on her involvement in the Communist Party USA. The university eventually reinstated her professorship following enormous pressure from national and international supporters.

In 1970, Davis was charged with conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide after a shotgun registered in her name was used in a courthouse hostage shooting linked to the Black Panther Party. Fearing for her life, Davis went underground, becoming the third woman on the FBI's Most Wanted List. The Bureau eventually captured her. She was brought to trial in one of the most publicized criminal hearings of the century. In 1972, an all-white jury found Davis not guilty on all charges.

Davis writes and lectures on gender and race issues and remains on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grass-roots organization addressing reform of the "prison-industrial complex."

Bibliography
“Articles about and by Angela Davis.” The New York Times Archives. July 3, 2007
“Interview with Angela Davis.” PBS: Frontline. July 3, 2007
Aptheker, Bettina. The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis. Cornell University Press, 1999
James, Joy. The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Blackwell Publishing Limited. 1998
Selected Works
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire (2005)
Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974)
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1999)
Frame Up: The Opening Defense Statement Made (1972)
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (1971)
Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism (1985)
Women, Culture and Politics (1989)
Women, Race and Class (1981)

Ellen DeGeneres

b. January 26, 1958

Popular comedian Ellen DeGeneres was the first openly gay actor to portray a gay character on a leading primetime television program.

"For me, it's that I contributed . . . that I'm on this planet doing some good and making people happy. That's to me the most important thing, that my hour of television is positive and upbeat and an antidote for all the negative stuff going on in life."

In April 1997, Ellen DeGeneres, the star of her own popular sitcom, "Ellen," took a step that was a turning point in her personal life and her career: she outed herself and her character on primetime television. Her coming out led to a storm of media attention, including her photo on the cover of Time Magazine with the tag, "Yep, I'm gay." There was also criticism that the show was now "too gay." For a time after her public declaration, her career suffered from backlash.

DeGeneres returned to the national spotlight when she was chosen to host the Emmy Awards only a few weeks after the September 11 attacks in 2001. At the ceremony she quipped, "We're told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?" She was praised for her poise and decorum in emceeing the awards show.

Ellen DeGeneres attended the University of New Orleans and worked at a variety of jobs before she entered stand-up comedy. Her selection by cable channel Showtime as The Funniest Person in America led to opportunities to appear on television. During her first appearance on The Tonight Show, DeGeneres was the first female commedian ever invited to sit on the sofa and visit with Johnny Carson. She has been labeled a "female Seinfeld" for her quirky observational humor.

In 2003 she launched her daytime television talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It won 15 Emmy Awards and is the first talk show to win the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show for its first three seasons.

In 2005 DeGeneres was again selected to host the Emmy Awards, this time just three weeks after Hurricane Katrina. She joked, "You know me, any excuse to put on a dress."

Bibliography:

• Tracy, Kathleen. Ellen: The Real Story of Ellen DeGeneres, Pinnacle Paperbacks, 2005.
  
• Yahoo! Movies

Selected works by Ellen DeGeneres:

• Here and Now, 2003. (DVD)
  
• My Point... And I Do Have One. Bantam, 1995.
  
• The Funny Thing Is . . . Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Raymond Gravel: Former Sex Worker, Politician - Gay Priest.

Sometimes I hunt down information, sometimes it finds me. I have been looking up information for a forthcoming post on openly gay or lesbian politicians of ministerial rank - and came across this piece on a politician who is also relevant to another of my interests - gay priests !

For now, I post without further comment the entry from Wikipedia:

Raymond Gravel (born 1952 in Saint-Damien-de-Brandon, Quebec) is a priest and politician from the Canadian province of Quebec, who was formerly the Member of Parliament for the riding of Repentigny, as a member of the Bloc Québécois. He was elected to the House of Commons in a November 27, 2006 by-election following the death of Benoît Sauvageau.

Gravel had an eventful youth during which he worked in bars in Montreal's Gay Village; he has been open about the fact that he was a sex-trade worker during that time.^[1] He entered the seminary in 1982 and became a priest. Gravel is controversial among the Catholic clergy and laity for his support of abortion and same-sex marriage — two issues officially opposed by the Church. He is currently the priest at St-Joachim de la Plaine Church in La Plaine, Quebec.

He was acclaimed as the Bloc's candidate on October 29, 2006. He received a dispensation from Gilles Lussier, bishop of Joliette, to enter politics. Elected with a large majority in the Bloc stronghold, he became the Bloc critic for seniors' issues.

However, following his opposition to Bill C-484, which would have recognized injury of a fetus during a crime as a separate offence from an injury to the mother, and his support for Dr. Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada, Gravel was ordered by the Vatican to either give up the priesthood or leave politics, and he finally announced he would not run in the 40th Canadian federal election, saying that the priesthood was his life.^[2] He cited as his biggest regret his inability to pass hisprivate member's bill C-490, which aimed to improve seniors' access to guaranteed income supplements.^[3]He was removed from a position as a catechist in the Quebec Diocese of Joliette during 2010. Gravel then launched a law suit against the LifeSiteNews (LSN) agency, a project of the Campaign Life Coalition, for $500,000 in damages.^[4] In his motion, Gravel suggests that articles on the LSN website caused him to lose this responsibility. Gravel stated that LSN misrepresented him by identifying him as 'pro-abortion'.

Related articles

• Gay priests: coming out, discovering love - 2 (queering-the-church.com)

"Alfredo's Fire": The Self- Martyrdom of Alfredo Ormando

In January 1998 Alfredo Ormando, an Italian writer, set himself on fire in St Peter's Square in the heart of the Vatican. Ormando was Catholic, and gay.

In Catholic hagiography, the most famous image of a martyr burned at the stake is that of St Joan of Arc, condemned by the approved theologians of the Church as a heretic and martyred by the church, essentially for her transgression in dressing as a man. In the centuries that followed, thousands more were burnt as sodomites. These were viewed by the church as irredeemable sinners - but later history may come to view them differently. The church now views Joan as a canonized saint. Pope Benedict has explicitly acknowledged the clear lesson - official theologians may be wrong. In years to come, those burnt for sodomy may also come to be more widely recognized as collective martyrs - martyred by the church, for the nature of their love.  In his horrifying echo of the centuries - long great persecution of sexual minorities, Alfredo Ormando's suicide after years of attempting to stifle his sexuality in accordance with Vatican rules, may be seen as a unique act of self-martyrdom.

January 19: Zhou Dan, Pioneer Chinese Gay Activist

b. January 19, 1974

Law and policy always involve compromise and sometimes being a progressive means taking things one step at a time.

One generation removed from the persecution of gays under the People's Republic of China, Chinese gays encounter different obstacles than their American counterparts. Many Chinese believe that homosexuality exists only in the western world. The absence of legal protection and the threat of social isolation keep most Chinese GLBT individuals in the closet.

GLBT activist and attorney Zhou Dan came out to his friends in 1998 and the media in 2003. A champion of GLBT rights in China, Zhou writes articles on Chinese gay and lesbian Web sites. Although many GLBT Chinese use pseudonyms, Zhou uses his real name. After revealing his sexuality to a Shanghai newspaper in 2003, Zhou appeared across China in newspapers and magazines and on television. Earlier that year, he established the Shanghai Hotline for Sexual Minorities.

In 2004, Zhou attended Yale Law School's China Law Center as a visiting scholar. In 2006, he taught China's first graduate class on homosexuality at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Bibliography

“Zhou Dan.” Yale Law School: The China Law Center. July 3, 2007

Beech, Hannah and Susan Guangzhou. “Changing the Game in China.” Time. June 20, 2005. July 3, 2007

Related articles

• GLBT History Month 2010 (mlp.org)

Zhou Dan, Chinese Gay Pioneer

b. January 19, 1974

Law and policy always involve compromise and sometimes being a progressive means taking things one step at a time.

One generation removed from the persecution of gays under the People's Republic of China, Chinese gays encounter different obstacles than their American counterparts. Many Chinese believe that homosexuality exists only in the western world. The absence of legal protection and the threat of social isolation keep most Chinese GLBT individuals in the closet.

GLBT activist and attorney Zhou Dan came out to his friends in 1998 and the media in 2003. A champion of GLBT rights in China, Zhou writes articles on Chinese gay and lesbian Web sites. Although many GLBT Chinese use pseudonyms, Zhou uses his real name. After revealing his sexuality to a Shanghai newspaper in 2003, Zhou appeared across China in newspapers and magazines and on television. Earlier that year, he established the Shanghai Hotline for Sexual Minorities. Zhou also fights for rights of people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS in China, by advocating a human-rights-based approach to the epidemic. In April 2003 he founded the Shanghai Hotline For Sexual Minorities  

In 2004, Zhou attended Yale Law School's China Law Center as a visiting scholar. In 2006, he taught China's first graduate class on homosexuality at Fudan University in Shanghai. 

Zhou was profiled in the May 2005 issue of Têtu, a French gay and lesbian magazine, and in the June 27, 2005 issue of TIME Magazine.

Bibliography

“Zhou Dan.” Yale Law School: The China Law Center. July 3, 2007

Beech, Hannah and Susan Guangzhou. “Changing the Game in China.” Time. June 20, 2005. July 3, 2007

Related articles

• GLBT History Month 2010 (mlp.org)