Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theater director. He is considered one of the most important Spanish poets of the 20th century. He was a member of the Generation of ‘27, which was a group of poets who brought modern European artistic movements into Spanish literature. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s he toured rural Spain and put on free theatrical shows of classical Spanish theatre before being arrested by Nationalist militias and assassinated.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Tryals of Thomas Vaughan and Thomas Davis
Glory holes. Arguably one of the most recognizable cultural artifacts of contemporary gay culture due to it's relationship to cruising and anonymous sex, something that marked the reality of the gay male experience in the Western world for centuries. When loving the person you want, either romantically or physically, is against the law and can land you in prison, an asylum, or worse, you find ways to satisfy your needs as safely and discreetly as possible.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood was an author, diarist, playwright, screenwriter, and autobiographer. He is best known for A Single Man, his semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin which inspired the musical Cabaret, and his memoir Christopher and His Kind which connected him with the ongoing gay liberation movement.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir
In 1750 Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir were arrested in Paris for what one magistrate called “committing crimes which propriety does not permit us to describe in writing”. They became the last people legally executed in France as punishment for homosexuality.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Flawless Sabrina
Mother Flawless Sabrina was a New York City-based American LGBT activist and drag queen. She was one of the first widely known drag queens in the United States, and was considered a pioneer for the transgender and drag communities.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Newport Sex Scandal
A forgotten bit of American queer history involves future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the YMCA, and a bunch of Navy men who liked to have sex with each other in the early 20th century. Often referred to as the Newport sex scandal, this episode in American queer and military history shone a light on the underground culture of men who had sex with men long before Stonewall. What began as one man’s moral crusade against homosexuality shortly after the end of World War I turned into a national moral panic that made it’s way all the way to the United States Senate.
Personal: Queer Druidry
I’m a native Floridian. I will always consider myself a Florida Boy and will always love my swamps. I also grew up in the time before same-sex marriage equality, under the shadow of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, when the only thing a closeted teen like myself knew about being gay was violence and disease and isolation - because those were the only stories being told. That’s why what is currently happening in Florida is so deeply personal and deeply troubling for me.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Matthew Shepard
This month’s Queer Ancestor Spotlight is deeply personal to me. The story and legacy of Matthew Shepard’s death functions almost as bookends to my coming out process and finding affirming queer community. I was just starting to realize I was not exactly like my other male friends when Matthew’s death became a national story. I traveled the inner journey of coming out to myself while his death rippled through the politics of the United States. I came out publicly shortly before the act bearing Matthew’s name codified sexual orientation and gender identity in federal hate crime law. And I found myself on the other side of the historic legalization of same-sex marriage as a married gay man, surrounded and supported by queer community in the Washington National Cathedral as we gathered to celebrate the life and legacy of Matthew as his ashes were finally laid to rest.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Chevalier d'Éon
Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, usually known as the Chevalier d'Éon, was born in October 1728 in Burgundy to a minor noble family. Due to their androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic they served as a French diplomat and spy in England and Russia. For the first 49 years of their life they appeared publicly as a man but after 1777 lived as a woman.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
This month we remember a short-lived micronation that was born as a political response to LGBTQ+ discrimination in Australia. This micronation was founded in 2004 and lasted until 2017. The territory was comprised of small and mostly uninhabited islands and reefs in the Coral Sea, northeast of Queensland, Australia.