Rainbow Lives: Queer Biography and History

2004-04-22T05:54:00.000-05:00

I'm sure that many of you have been following, or at least have heard of, the bizarre Mike Danton murder-for-hire story. It appears more and more likely that the unusual relationship between Danton and his agent David Frost was more master-disciple than sexually oriented.

2004-04-21T22:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I have started adding a few new names, but I'm way behind (*sigh*). I've also been thinking seriously about a major redesign of the site. And I also have about four months' worth of email to respond to... Me and my crazy hobbies :-)

2004-02-04T07:04:00.000-06:00

Effective March 1st, 2004, the focus of the Rainbow Lives project will be narrowed considerably. While it has been great fun, over the past five years, to throw in the names from as many queer people from as many places around the world as possible, it's also tiring, and what started out as fun is turning out to be not-so-fun. So as of March, I will only be including the names of queer Canadians (selectively) and queer Manitoban (as exhaustively as possible). I want this list to be a resource about (and for) Canada's queer community, with a Manitoba emphasis. I will endeavour to add all the great suggestions people leave with me, as long as they meet the qualification above.

2003-12-15T07:23:00.000-06:00

Well, it's time for me to kick that magnificent time-waster Friendster to the curb and update the Rainbow Lives list a little bit. One of the things I love about being a librarian is that often we are asked to evaulate various online databases for potential purchase; one of these that we're looking at until the end of the month is the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. Here's one little historical gem from their archive: the writer rants about how coddling the handicapped can turn them gay (source: Los Angeles Times, June 6th, 1917, p. 14)

2003-11-20T11:10:00.000-06:00

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been updating Rainbow Lives lately, or posting to this blog. Well, I've been doing this and that, updating the Ryan Schultz blog, reading, writing, etc. The reason is that I have been busy exploring various forms of social software over the past two months: LiveJournal, Friendster, Tribe.net, MySpace.com, Yafro.com, LinkedIn.com, itsnotwhatyouknow.com, etc. If you want to see what I've been up to on Friendster, the one site where I have been a frequent visitor, check out my blog Friendster Slut :-) ....

Anyway, there was a 25%-off booksale at the University bookstore today :-) and I bought myself an early Christmas present: Homosexuality & Civilization, by Louis Crompton. I plan to settle in over the next couple of months, especially during my Christmas holidays, and do some reading, and add some more links to Rainbow Lives.

2003-10-11T08:28:00.000-05:00

Today (October 11th) is National Coming Out Day: National Coming Out Project Homepage || Human Rights Campaign

I've been too busy being a Friendster whore to update the Rainbow Lives site these past couple of weeks, but never fear, I will get back to it... :-)

2003-10-03T01:49:00.000-05:00

After reading this post on Plain Layne, I realize that I'd better yank her from Rainbow Lives. She doesn't want people to know her full name, and she especially doesn't want her employer to know she blogs. So, out she goes. (Sorry Layne.)

2003-10-01T09:43:00.000-05:00

God I just love this...BlogsCanada : Canada's Blog Site, complete with faux federal government banner :-) I decided to submit the Rainbow Lives blog to it.

2003-09-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

Sportswriter Ed Gray has come out of the closet in an article in his newspaper: The Boston Herald, "Out and proud", September 30th, 2003:

"I'm out because I no longer, in good conscience, choose to ignore the unabashed homophobia that is so cavalierly tolerated within the world of sports. I'm out, because the silence of a closeted gay man only serves to give his implicit approval to bigotry. I'm out, because I refuse to continue hiding from the truth that an openly gay man has as much right as a straight man to play sports or report on them.

Frankly, I'm out because I can't come up with a single logical reason why I should have denied myself the right to live and work as openly and freely as everyone else."

2003-09-30T07:59:00.000-05:00

Every so often I take off on a tangent, and do a Google search for something like "first openly gay", just to see what results I can pull up. This time, I found police officer Tony Crespo, boxer Charles Jones, record executive Howie Klein, and Contemporary Christian artist T.J. Williams. God, I love Google :-)

2003-09-27T22:50:00.000-05:00

What I find so fascinating about this post from the Gay Porn Blog: Achin' for A Blind Item (WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK) is the candidly matter-of-fact way the author discusses Barry Manilow's and Ricky Martin's sexual orientation. As for Johnny Mathis and Richard Chamberlain, well, they've both come out publicly (Mathis many years ago, Chamberlain more recently) and I therefore have both of their names on the Rainbow Lives list. But I hesitate to put people like Manilow and Martin on, even if it is an open secret, because I simply don't have a good documented source (print or electronic) for either one (requirement #2 to be added to the Rainbow Lives list).

Here's how I tend to make my decisions re: Include? or Not include?:

If the person is dead, that's easy; in that case, the historians descend like buzzards to pick over the person's life anyway, and if there's any documentation, I use it to justify including her/him on the list (my examples in this case are Sir Arthur Sullivan and Hans Christian Anderson).

If the person is still alive, and has personally come out, then again that's an easy one. They get added to the list (my examples in this case are Frank Kameny and Rosie O'Donnell).

However, it can be extremely difficult to decide what constitutes "good documentation" of someone's sexual orientation, particularly if that person has been outed without their knowledge or consent. I don't have any easy answers for that one; I decide on a case by case basis myself. If the matter is well-documented in reputable media (as opposed to tabloid gossip), especially several independent sources, then I usually include it (my examples in this case are Jodie Foster and Billy James Hargis). If the matter is documented only in a newsgroup or a blog, I don't consider that to be good enough (my examples in this case are Barry Manilow and George Takei).

I still have problems making some decisions, though. For example, Canada's minister of foreign affairs, Bill Graham. He has been outed by playwright Sky Gilbert in a column in eye, a free weekly arts and entertainment newspaper distributed by Torstar, the company that also publishes the mainstream newspaper The Toronto Star. The reason I hesitate to include Graham is that this assertion has simply not been backed up with any other documentation in more reputable media, either online or offline. This, despite the following news item which was extensively covered in all the major Canadian news media (quote from the Equal Marriage for Same-Sex Couples website):

On April 10, 2002, Alliance Party member of parliamentCheryl Gallant, who represents the Ontario riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, heckled Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister with anti-gay sentiment in parliament's House of Commons.

"Ask your boyfriend," Gallant shouted at Bill Graham, a reference to the Foreign Affairs Minister's sexual orientation, during debate on middle-east policy.

Alliance Party house leader John Reynolds said no one was complaining about the remark and therefore it hadn't happened as far as he was concerned. Gallant, meanwhile, went underground, refusing to speak to reporters while she remained absent in the House of Commons.

The Alliance Party's (then) new leader, Harper, also remained silent, until mounting pressure caused him to order Gallant to apologize. On April 14th, Gallant emerged defiant, speaking to the Ottawa Citizen, blaming the media for the controversy surrounding her offensive behaviour.

But on Monday, April 15th, Gallant stopped blaming the media, and responded to national outrage in the House of Commons. She admitted that her comment was "inappropriate" and she expressed "regret".

"If anyone was offended by the remark, I offer my sincere apologies," she said. However, her web site's feature, Cheryl In The News, which had noted, until her offense, Cheryl's monthly appearences in the news, failed to include her latest appearances, and eventually the plug was pulled on her website. Like John Reynolds told the press, it didn't happen.

See what I mean? Everybody's dancing around the subject, even though it's an open secret. Everybody's waiting for Bill Graham to say something, but he doesn't. So what do I do?

Well, so far, I've just left it. Not enough good documentation, as far as I am concerned. Maybe I should include him; some people would consider the mention in eye to be enough, or this quote from the same-sex marriage site to be enough.

This is one of the things that make this hobby so compelling. It shines a spotlight on the whole issue of whose business someone's sexual orientation is. People have made impassioned arguments for both sides, and I can see the merits in each. So in the hazy areas, I judge on a case-by-case basis, based on whatever documentation I have, and its quality and reputability. And, if politely asked by the person involved, I do (and already have) removed names from the Rainbow Lives list.

Whew, long post. But I've wanted to get this out for a long time, and the blog seems the best place to do it.

2003-09-27T19:24:00.000-05:00

Over at my friend Jeff's, I got my chance to see my first episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I'm an instant convert! What a great idea for a TV show. Anyways, I'd better get on it and enter the names of the "Fab 5" into my Rainbow Lives list. Right now, I'm watching Philadelphia; Jeff is appalled that I've never seen it before :-)

2003-09-26T22:41:00.000-05:00

From the Alyson Almanac, 1994-95 Edition: The Fact Book of the Lesbian and Gay Community, I was able to add entries for American evangelist John Wesley Fletcher and Chinese emperor Pu Yi to Rainbow Lives. I was also able to add quotes to the profiles on Roman theologian St. Augustine and English composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (Mikado, etc.). All in all, a good evening's work :-)

2003-09-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

A great read I found via Gawker: Queen for a Day? is one man's experiences and insider perspective, being part of the original five men selected for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy--and then being cut just before the show made it to air.

*sigh*...and, no, I haven't had time to add the QEFTSG five to my Rainbow Lives list yet...there's just been such an explosion of gay TV that I'm finding it hard to keep up. Nice change, if you ask me. Four years ago when I started compiling Rainbow Lives, I was having trouble finding enough names to get past the 2,000 mark.

Now I don't even have to look...they usually land in my lap. (Well, O.K., I do look a little...um, er, uh....a lot.)

2003-09-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

MemeFirst reports that Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, has come out to avoid being outed by Entertainment Weekly magazine:

"So Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, went and audio-blogged a very angry message, talking about the EW writer's suicide attempt and generally coming out because he felt he had no choice in the wake of the publication of the article. (I can't seem to access that message any more: maybe Palahniuk is trying to crawl back into the closet.)

Palahniuk then received a lot of supportive messages – if you consider death threats against the EW writer to be supportive. I guess at this point he went back and actually read the article again, and realised that nowhere was his partner mentioned, and that the closest it came to outing him was to say "he is not married". So he audioblogged a retraction of sorts, in which he urged everybody to calm down and "not kill anybody".

In the world of print media, none of this would have happened. Palahniuk would have been angry upon reading the article, but would have slept on it, and would have realised that if he did nothing, then no one would be any the wiser. Instead, in a fit of passion, he pulls out his cellphone and announces his homosexual partnership of 11 years to the world at large – something which he'd thereunto successfully kept secret. Now the secret's out, and no amount of pulling messages is going to help."

I agree...for God's sake JUST COME OUT already and stop dancing around the subject.

2003-09-25T23:33:00.000-05:00

Another name for the list (and a Canadian one this time):Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, the "Dr. Peter" whose regular AIDS Diary on the CBC newscast educated Canadians about HIV/AIDS and put a human face to the disease.

2003-09-25T22:42:00.000-05:00

Got the archives working properly again (yay!)

2003-09-25T14:05:00.000-05:00

I also want to include Layne Johnson, whose blog is discussed in this article in Maclean's magazine, The Intimacy of Blogs (September 15, 2003). Damn! It's that article that got me re-started on my blogging investigations after a year and a half :-) but it's all good. Anyways, like Ernie (below), she definitely deserves an entry in Rainbow Lives.

2003-09-25T08:37:00.000-05:00

Ernie Hsiung is hilarious and he definitely deserves a spot on Rainbow Lives. The only trouble I am going to have is finding a suitable quote... In fact, I could probably come up with a list of 3,500 GLBT bloggers without breaking a sweat :-)

2003-09-24T02:41:00.000-05:00

ARGH!! I am having problems getting the archives feature working on this blog, so I temporarily disabled archives and posted a message to the Blogger FAQ blog. Thank God for people like Phil Ringnalda to help out us clueless newbies. Hopefully somebody will be able to help me out with this one.

2003-09-24T00:51:00.000-05:00

While on my road trip out west, I stopped off at the University of Saskatchewan Library and photocopied several pages from a book in their reference section: Out in All Directions: A Treasury of Gay and Lesbian America. Great book -- there's quite a few names which aren't on my list yet, and some great details on some other people who are already on my list (did you know that George and Ira Gershwin ran a gay bathhouse in New York City?). I'll be adding items from the book over the next few days.

2003-09-24T00:21:00.000-05:00

glbtq.com: the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Encyclopedia is a Web site launched earlier this year, and a marvelous endeavour. I check in regularly to see what's new and I participate in the discussion forums on this site.

2003-09-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

The purpose of this blog is to keep notes on various sources (books and Web sites) which I am consulting to add names and profiles to the Rainbow Lives Web site, as well as my thoughts and feelings about various topics related to queer biography and history. I have now spent over four years working on various versions of this list, and the page counter that I installed at the bottom of the main page indicates that somebody must be looking at it (that, and the fact, that I get email messages from people to suggest additions or corrections, and nominate other people and themselves).