fadó

1st July

The Dublin Gay Collective, now defunct, was formed on this day in 1982.

7th July

George Bermingham, Minister of State for Youth Affairs, refused to officially open the 2ndInternational Gay Youth Congress in Dublin's Hirschfeld Centre (NGF'S Youth Group contribution to International Youth Year) 1985.

8th July

The Department of Justice confirms that it has banned the London newspaper, Gay News, 1982.

11th July

Film historian, Vito Russo, whose "Celluloid Closet" is justly famous as a critical documentary on homosexuality in cinema, bom in New York city, 1946.

13th July

American anarchist Amelda Sperry, who in love letters addressed Emma Goldman as "my one dear, my cherry blossom, my moonbeam, my mountain, my drop of dew", bom 1879.

18th July

Playwright/novelist Laurence Housman, the gay brother of gay poet A.E. Housman (their sister Clemence, a wood engraver, was lesbian) and one of Oscar Wilde's circle in the 1890's, bom in England, 1865.

20th July

Sex between consenting male adults in Scotland is made legal by the UK Government, 1980.

21st July

Former Italian M.P., Enzo Francone, attempted to chain himself to the railings of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow as part of the International Gay Association's protest against the imprisonment (for 'homosexual offences") of Soviet citizens Viktoras Piatkus and Galery Trifonov, 1980.

Also on this day...Pope Sixtus IV, who was so openly gay that a group of his cardinals safely petitioned for "permission to practice sodomy during the warm months", bom 1614.

23rd July

Mystery writer Raymond Chandler, who once uttered the classically ambiguous line-"In the artistic society of London about one man in three is homosexual, which is very bad on the ladies but not at all bad on me"- bom, 1888.

27th July

Rev. Troy Perry, gay activist and founder of the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, bom in 1940. Gertrude Stein, the celebrated author, dies in Paris, 1946.

31st July

David Norris, Senator, Joycean scholar, wit and leading gay rights activist, bom in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Zaire), 1946.

2nd August

Author James Baldwin, whose "Giovanni's Room" (1956) remains a breath-taking work of fiction, bom in New York City, 1924.

7th August

Catherine Glendon, co-founder of Gay Community News, General Secretary of the National Gay Federation, one-time Divine impersonator, and spiritual "mother" to many, dies in Dublin, 1987.