Written by Adriaan van den Berg. Published to support Exit Newspaper (see http://www.exit.co.za)
Intro: A Segregated South African LGBTQ Nation
There are things in South Africa, in its society and amongst its people which are glaringly obvious yet which remain largely and sometimes completely unacknowledged and unspoken. This being the case, we are all complicit in maintaining this silence and in practicing a form of censorship amongst and of ourselves. And there are such things amongst the country’s LGBTQ people, things neglected and nearly never remarked on and discussed. In this month’s companion Introductory Column to the LGBTQ Calendar for June 2024, I am going to point out one such a matter and just briefly consider and remark on it. I do so because of serious concern about it and because I don’t want this issue to serve as an indictment of South African LGBTQ people. So, you ask, what’s the matter, Adriaan? What disturbs and upsets you so?
There is no other way and no time and space here for but answering you directly and for anything but the raw truth: It is that despite the majority of our LGBTQ people having a profound aversion of racism and never having made themselves complicit and guilty of it and being vigorously opposed to racial discrimination in all its expressions and forms, there nevertheless is a certain alienation and division amongst a large number of them which occurs either along the traditional racial lines drawn by apartheid or along ethnic and cultural community lines.
And let me be absolutely clear that it is almost entirely not attributable to any willful, conscious and deliberate decision or chosen attitude by our people to impose and maintain this segregation and this kind of cultural social distancing between themselves and other LGBTQ people who don’t share their skin color or who don’t hail from their communities and cultural and language population groups. What is rather responsible for this social distancing and alienation from one another is the inherited historical legacy of poor social relations amongst virtually all our people in this country dating back to and which even preceded it but which was particularly entrenched during apartheid.
LGBTQ people should be one of the leading communities in our country when it comes to social acceptance and integration amongst whose members race, culture, language and background don’t deter social relationships and interaction. Let us fight the inclinations to avoid each other which our past might have imprinted upon us and which has been a factor which has unbeknownst to us has kept us apart.
And with that said, here is this month’s LGBTQ calendar…
LGBTQ History Calendar for June 2024
June 1st – We begin this month by remembering that Sweden had introduced revolutionary new laws that pertained to LGBTQ people earlier than all other countries. Thus, on this first day of June in 1972, it became the first country in the world to allow transsexual people by legislation to surgically change their genders and its state provided free hormone replacement therapy. Sweden also made the age of consent for same-sex partners 15 years of age, which made it the same as for heterosexual partners.
June 2nd – In 2006 on this day, the Danish parliament voted to allow lesbians access to artificial insemination and thus overturned a prohibition on such procedures for lesbians dating from 1997.
June 3rd – American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who had penned the poem Howl which had upset so many squares in the 1950s was born on this day in 1926 (d. April 5, 1997). Also on this day but in 1818, a British architect called George Ledwell Taylor discovered the stone Lion of Chaeronea near the village of Chaeronea, a famous ancient battlefield area in Greece. The Lion commemorated the Sacred Band of Thebes, a troop of elite homosexual male fighters who fought in couples in defense of the city of Thebes and who perhaps was the deadliest and most effective fighting force in close quarters combat in history (having decimated even the Spartans). Around the statue was the skeletons of the Sacred Band who were finally slayed by the much more numerous armies of Phillip of Macedon and his son Alexander who was said to have wept for the bravery of the Sacred Band as they were being slaughtered by his soldiers.
June 4th – Petty discrimination vindicated: On this day in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a baker who had refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious objection towards same-sex relationships. However, I believe the court should have ruled against the baker on the grounds that nobody should and can deny any professional or governmental/public service to anybody based on the latter’s sexual orientation or gender identity regardless of whatever the discriminating party’s religious beliefs or morals regarding sexual orientations or gender identities may be. He should have been made to bake that goddamn cake.
June 5th – Puerto Rico’s governor Wanda Vazquez signed a new civil code which eliminated LGBTQ rights and protections on this day in 2020 – and she did so without any public hearings first having been held which greatly angered the island’s LGBTQ community and many other members of the public.
June 6th – The Netflix series “Tiger King” depicted the conflicts between a gay private zoo owner who styled himself as a cowboy specialist keeper of big cats called Joe and a woman called Carole Baskin who had a sanctuary for big cats rescued from private zoos like Joe’s. An ugly bitter struggle ensued which culminated in Joe losing his zoo to Carole and her husband and with Joe being jailed. Today, the 6th of June is Carole’s birthday (b. 1961) and we dedicate this entry to her since she had revealed that she was bisexual.
June 7th – Singer Anita Bryant and her “Save Our Children” campaign in the USA had done gay people a lot of damage in the 1970s. Anita’s campaign, you see, in particular was aimed at “saving” children from homosexuals and homosexual influences and at thwarting what Anita saw as a deliberate attempt by homosexuals and lesbians to make children gay. On this day in 1977, pressure from Anita, her husband and their campaign resulted in a Dade County in Florida repeal of a county ordinance which had prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It was the first use of “child molestation tactics” by anti-gay forces and was one of the great gay civil rights battles and defeats of the era.
June 8th – In 1908 on this day of June, the first documented same-sex marriage in post-Roman times is performed when Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sanchez Loriga, two teachers, were married by a parish priest in A Coruna (Galicia), with Elisa using the male identity “Mario Sanchez.” However, Galician and Madrid newspapers exposed the couple and they lost their jobs, were excommunicated and an arrest warrant was issued for them. Mario was examined by a medical doctor upon request of the parish priest and Mario tried to present himself as a hermaphrodite whose condition had been diagnosed in London. They moved to Portugal where they tried, imprisoned and released and it was said that they then fled to Argentina after the Spanish government had demanded their extradition from Portugal. Their fate after that remains unknown, but their marriage certificate back in Spain was never voided and remains valid till this day. Spain legalized same-sex marriages in 2005.
June 9th – Laverne Cox (b. May 29, 1984) became the first openly transgender person to be featured on the cover of Time magazine in the issue that appeared on this day in 2014 – the cover photograph was for the article appearing in this issue titled “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier” for which Laverne was interviewed.
June 10th – In what was deemed “the first ruling of its kind in the U.S.,” an Oregon circuit court ruled that a resident, Jamie Shupe, could legally change their gender to non-binary. However, Shupe has since become a critic of the concept of gender identity and was fired by Lamda Legal as a client for making “inappropriate media statements that are harming the transgender community.” Shupe is also a critic of transgender surgeries citing high complication rates and he opposed transgender people being allowed to serve in the military. And in January 2019, Shupe announced that he was returning to identifying as a male.
June 11th – June being LGBTQ Pride Month in the USA, today’s entry commemorates U.S. President Bill Clinton issuing the first Presidential Proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month on this day of June in 1999.
June 12th – On this day of June in 1730, in a major anti-gay purge in the Netherlands, five men were hanged and their bodies were thrown into the sea at Scheveningen for the crime of sodomy. English newspapers reported that many Dutch sodomites fled to England where they were afforded the same reception and status as refugees from religious persecution.
June 13th – Chicago police determined that a fire in a local public library which had destroyed more than 100 books mostly in the gay and lesbian collection on this day in 2006 was not a hate crime. They charged a 21-year-old homeless woman with one count of attempted aggravated arson.
June 14th – When the Australian government failed to recognize same-sex marriages, gay and lesbian activists declared the independence of a group of uninhabited Australian islands east of the Great Barrier Reef on this day of June 2004. They called it the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands and the rainbow flag was their official flag, the pink triangle was their coat of arms and “I am what I am” was their national anthem.
June 15th – Serbia is a notoriously conservative Balkan country. Yet, on this day in 2017, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic nominated the first woman and openly gay politician, Ana Brnabic as Prime Minister.
June 16th – New York is seen as a liberal and tolerant city, but the city has often seen anti-gay violence and assaults. On this day in 1990, Queer Nation held a Take Back the Night march in New York to protest hate crimes against gays with over 1000 people attending. Happy Youth Day in South Africa, the activists of 1976 will never be forgotten in history books. We salute you!
June 17th – In what has been one of the largest Gay Pride Parades ever in the world, almost 2.4 million people took to the streets in Sao Paulo in the city’s 10th annual Gay Pride Parade on this day in June, 2006.
June 18th – We encourage South African students to request founding of LGBTQ libraries and archives at their institutions of learning. But our public libraries should also present exhibitions on LGBTQ history. New York’s Public Library on this day of June 1994 opened the exhibition “Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall” which presented a history of New York’s lesbian and gay life. It featured unconventional objects and ways of presenting historical features and testimonies such as a blue neon “Stonewall” sign and banks of public telephones at which visitors could hear oral recollections of the Stonewall Inn where the famous riots by LGBTQ people in defiance of the police took place.
June 19th – Not all churches are hate-conventions such as the Southern Baptist Convention is the USA: In 2014 on this day of June, the Presbyterian Church voted to allow its pastors to marry same-sex couples.
June 20th – Exodus International was a notorious group which claimed that it could “cure” same-sex attraction through prayer and therapy, perhaps the best-known of all such groups in the USA. On this happy and glorious twentieth day of June 2013, the group closed its doors after having been at it for more than three decades. Its leader, John Paul admitted to his own “ongoing same-sex attractions” and apologized to gays saying “I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change.”
June 21st – Scotland’s Section 28 was a law which prohibited anything about homosexuality being taught in its schools and furthermore insisted that homosexual couples were not pretend families. On this day, a happy day in Scotland in 2000, this ugly law, Section 28, was repealed.
June 22nd – I had mentioned singer Anita Bryant’s anti-gay hate campaign in the USA during the 1970s under the entry for the 7th of June. Bryant was subject to a $5 million lawsuit for conducting a hate campaign by the parents of a gay young man who was attacked and killed by four young men outside a burger joint on this day in 1977. The killers screamed “Faggot, faggot” at the victim during their assault as well as “This one’s for Anita!” A cowardly excuse for a judge dismissed the case because he said he lacked jurisdiction since Bryant lived elsewhere in Florida while the murder took place in San Francisco, California.
June 23rd – One of the earliest gay societies, if not the first, called F-48, was founded on this day in 1948 in Denmark by Axel Axgil with Norwegian and Swedish chapters following soon after.
June 24th – One of the ugliest homophobic attacks in our history took place on this day in 1973 on the final day of New Orleans Pride Weekend when a gay bar, the UpStairs Lounge was set fire to in an arson attack and thirty-two people died in the blaze. It was the deadliest attack on a gay establishment until the 2016 attack on the Pulse nightclub.
June 25th – Actress Kathy Najimy thanked participants in the San Diego Pride event for “being here because your being here gives me the chance to help my daughter love whoever the f*ck she wants.”
June 26th – In 1964 on this day of June, Life magazine ran a twelve-page feature on gay men’s culture titled “Sordid World of Homosexuality in America.”
June 27th – In 2006 on this day, Iceland’s Parliament approved of parenting equality and in 2010, it legalized same-sex marriages.
June 28th – Today we commemorate the Stonewall Riots which occurred in New York when the LGBTQ patrons of the Stonewall Inn first fought the police in three days of rioting in response to harassment. The riots had profound implications for the quest for LGBTQ liberation and rights in the USA as well as elsewhere in the world where LGBTQ activists still take inspiration from it till this day.
June 29th – Ireland set the age of consent for all sexual activities at 17 and decriminalized same-sex acts and relations on this day in 1993.
June 30th – Russia’s President Putin signed the anti-gay federal law into effect “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values.” The State Duma also unanimously approved of the bill with only one abstention.
(Source: “This Day in LGBTQ History,” a four-volume chronology of LGBTQ history by LGBTQ historian and activist doctor Ronni Sanlo and available at her website ronnisanlo.com).
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KKG 