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17th August

The first theatrical showing of MGM's The Wizard of Oz, 1940. Friends of Dorothy take note. German gay activist Kurt Hiller bom, 1885.

18th August

London newspaper, Gay News, relaunced as the New Gay News, 1984.

21st August

Decadent artist - Aubrey Beardsley (who died at the age of 24) bom in Brighton, England, 1872.

22nd August

Composer Claude Debussy bom in St. Germain-en-Laye, France, 1862 . . . also bom this day,Rev. Carter Heyward, one of the "Philadelphia Eleven" first women priests of the Episcopal Church, famous for coming out in the pages of Christianity and Crisis, bom US, 1945.

24th August

Today we remember Bathyllus, a stunning Greek youth who made such an impression on Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, that a statue in his honour was erected in the Temple of Hera, Goddess of women.

26th August

Christopher Ishwood, leading 20th Century author, creator of "Sally Bowles" and A Single Man, one of the most powerful novels about male homosexual life, bom in Cheshire, England, 1904.

Also today . . .the National Gay Federation protested against Garda surveillance of public toilets in Dublin, also a month of countless "queer-bashing" incidents, 1984.

28th August

The first Gay "Olympic" Games opened in the 65,000 seater Kezar Stadium at San

Francisco. 1982 . . . also, the International Gay Association was founded at Coventry, England, 1978.

31st August

Roman Emperor Caligula, eventually murderedby his "fuck buddy", bom in Anzio, Italy, 12 A.D.

1st September

Sir Roger Casement, whose detailed diaries ("Stanley Weeks, 20, stripped, huge one circumcized, swelled and hung 9 inches quite") proved his undoing, bom in Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) Co. Dublin, 1864.

2nd September

The Rev. John McNeill, Jesuit scholar (later silenced by the Church) who wrote The Church and the Homosexual, bom in 1925. Also today . . . Winifred Ellerman, better known as the novelist Bryher, who married as a matter of convenience gay writer Robert McAlmon but managed a long relationship with poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), bom in Kent, England, 1894.

3rd September

The first issue of In Touch, journal of the National Gay Federation, published in Dublin, 1979.

5th September

The homo-monument is unveiled in Amsterdam, just outside the Westerkerk, 1987.

6th September -

Don Donnelly presented the first-ever Irish radio programme by gay people for (primarily) gay people, RTE Radio 1, 1983.

7th September

Fundamentalist forces win the day as a Constitutional amendment is passed upholding the equal right to life of die "Unborn Child", 1983.