Adam Bouska

Adam Bouska born 31 October 1983

Adam Bouska is an American fashion photographer who runs a photography studio based out of West Hollywood, California. He is known for pictures of male models in particular, and is considered a rising 'superstar photographer' in the gay community.

His work has been printed in DNA Magazine and reFRESH and has already been featured at major websites, and a good few minor ones! Bouska's most recent (super)model, Ryan Barry, is noted as being the boyfriend of Reichen Lehmkuhl. He is also noted for his work with America's Next Top Models; Bre Scullark, Amanda Babin, and Michelle Babin.

Bouska is openly gay. He lives in West Hollywood, California.

Adam Bouska
Some examples of Adam Bouska's work

Russell Cheney

Russell Cheney born 1881 (d. 1945)

Russell Cheney was an accomplished American painter. He graduated from Yale, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society.

Cheney studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and was its acting president in 1909-10. He held his first New York exhibition in Babcock Galleries 1922. His portrait of Professor Candle hung in the Paris Salon in 1909 and his work has been represented in many museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Cheney illustrated F O Matthiessen's book Sarah Orne Jewett (1929), on the writer of the same name. A catalogue of Cheney's paintings was published in 1922. Cheney was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and San Francisco Art Society.

He was the long time partner and lover of author F O Matthiessen, who was also a Yale graduate and became a member of Skull & Bones in 1923. Matthiessen was twenty years Russell's junior.

Russell's death in 1945 was due to mesenteric thrombosis. He was buried in East Cemetery in Manchester, Connecticut. He was survived by Matthiessen, who, increasingly depressed after Cheney's death and threatened by the witch-hunts of the cold war, committed suicide in 1950, jumping from a tenth-floor hotel room window.

Russell Cheney

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon born 28 October 1909 (d. 1992)

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born figurative painter. His artwork is well known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery.

Francis Bacon is widely recognised as Britain's most important twentieth-century painter. Through beautifully composed works featuring screaming faces and beaten bodies, Bacon marked the violent trauma characterising Europe's past century. On this basis his painting was celebrated in Britain's post-World War II society.

An openly gay man who refused to censor his art, Bacon produced one of the few bodies of work characterised by radical sexuality, yet praised by a broad and largely conservative art public.

Bacon was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of a British horse breeder and trainer. He passed a relatively happy youth disturbed only by the outbreak of Ireland's civil war, a conflict in which Irish rebels perceived all English, including Bacon's family, as the enemy. He later claimed that this experience initiated his fascination with violence.

At the age of sixteen in 1927, Bacon was evicted from his family home for sleeping with his father's horse grooms. Bag in hand, he resolved to travel in Europe. After nearly two years in Paris and Berlin, Bacon eventually settled in London, where he realised his plans to become a furniture and interior designer. He quickly found success in 1930 with his widely published, Bauhaus-inspired interiors. Bacon's memory of Picasso's work in Paris, however, inspired him to become a painter.

In a patron-apprentice arrangement quite common at the time, Bacon moved in with an older established painter named Roy de Maistre and became the elder's student and lover. Bacon concentrated his efforts on semi-abstracted crucifixions through the 1930s, before finally arriving, in 1944, at his Three Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, the painting that initiated his brilliant career as an artist.

Soon thereafter he introduced the themes for which he is most noted: screaming Popes (e.g., Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X [1953]), bleeding figures surrounded by sides of beef (Painting 1946 [1946]), and bludgeoned men in blue business suits (Three Studies of the Human Head [1953]).

In 1953 he exposed the sexual desire behind these works with his Two Figures, a painting featuring photographer Eadweard Muybridge's famous wrestlers taken from the mat to the bed. The result was an unmistakable representation of one man raping another.

Remarkably, post-war Britain acclaimed this work and others as profound reflections on the century's trauma. Bacon's work was touted as England's enlightened alternative to American Abstract Expressionism.

Bacon continued to paint openly from his gay desire. He made his lover George Dyer his favourite subject throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, including most movingly Tryptich May-June 1973 (1973). In these paintings and others featuring friends, Bacon characteristically smudged his subjects' faces nearly beyond recognition, using his fine skill with paint both to represent and to deform his subjects.

Although the violence of this work bears a clear sexual significance, particularly when used to represent sex between men or to render portraits of Dyer, Bacon de-emphasised this linkage. Instead, he stressed the more abstract nature of his fascination with violence.

Bacon provocatively declared his need to paint from photographs rather than perform a deforming representation before sitting models. Similarly, he also exclaimed his ecstatic inspiration from slaughter houses and medical books on diseases without actually discussing the radical gay desire that inspired these works.

Critics also found it difficult to discuss the almost unspeakable same-sex violence of Bacon's painting, choosing instead to focus inordinate attention on his studio, where a fantastic mess seemed the more appropriate signifier for the artist's disturbing painted content.

Bacon was offered both a knighthood and the Order of Merit, but refused them. At the end of a long and productive life, Bacon died on April 28, 1992 in Madrid, in the arms of a Spanish banker with whom he had been having an affair.

Bacon's turbulent relationship with Dyer, which ended with the latter's suicide in 1971, is the subject of John Mayberry's film, Love Is the Devil (1998).

Adam Mars-Jones

Adam Mars-Jones born 26 October 1954

Writer and critic Adam Mars-Jones was born in London. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he studied and then taught Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

He was film critic for The Independent between 1986 and 1997 and for The Times between 1998 and 2000. He is an occasional contributor to The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, and a regular reviewer for The Observer. He was selected by Granta as one of its 20 'Best of British Young Novelists' in both 1983 and 1993.

His fiction includes two collection of short stories: Lantern Lecture (1981), his first book, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and Monopolies of Loss (1992). The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (1987) was co-written with Edmund White. Adam Mars-Jones' first novel, The Waters of Thirst, was published in 1993. Much of his fiction writing concerns people living with - and sometimes dying from - HIV and Aids.

Blind Bitter Happiness (1997), a collection of essays, includes 'Venus Envy', originally published as a pamphlet in the CounterBlasts series in 1990.

Pilcrow (2008) is his long-awaited second novel.

Adam Mars-Jones lives in London.

Keith Strickland

Keith Strickland born 26 October 1953

Keith Strickland (born Julian Keith Strickland, in Athens, Georgia) is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and one of the founding members of the The B-52's.


Originally, Strickland was the band's drummer, but following the 1985 death of Ricky Wilson, the band's guitarist and another founding member, he moved from the drums to guitar. Strickland has also played keyboards on many of the B-52's recordings, and has sung backup vocals on a handful of songs.

Like both other male members of the B-52's - lead singer Fred Schneider and the late Ricky Wilson - Strickland is openly gay.

After a 16 year hiatus the B-52s released a new album in 2008.

Holly Woodlawn

Holly Woodlawn born 26 October 1946

Holly Woodlawn (born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl) is a transvestite and former Warhol superstar, who appeared in his movies Trash (1970) and Women in Revolt (1972).

Born in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico, she adopted the name Holly as an homage to the heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany's and in 1969 added the surname from a sign she saw on an episode of I Love Lucy.

She met Andy Warhol in the Factory at a screening of Flesh. Through him she met Jackie Curtis, who cast Woodlawn in her play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit in the autumn of 1969. In October she was assigned a bit role in Trash, but so impressed director Paul Morrissey that she was given a larger role.

In May 1971, Woodlawn replaced Candy Darling at the La Mama Theatre, New York in a production of Vain Victory written and directed by Jackie Curtis. She was arrested and briefly incarcerated in Puerto Rico after being caught shoplifting.

By 1976 the work had dried up, and Woodlawn moved to San Francisco. She returned to New York later in the year and had a brief revival after appearing on Geraldo Rivera's talk show before being jailed again in 1977 for not fulfilling a previous probation obligation. She was released on the appeal of politician Ethan Geto, who helped organise a benefit for her.

Woodlawn continued to make cameo appearances in plays and films such as Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss throughout the 1980s and 1990s. After Warhol's death, she was a frequently requested commentator on his life and influence. She currently resides in West Hollywood.

Woodlawn began performing in cabaret shows in sold-out New York and Los Angeles performances in the early 2000s.

Like so many of Warhol's Factory, she is mentioned in Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side: 'Holly came from Miami FLA, / hitch-hiked her way across the USA, / plucked her eyebrows on the way, / shaved her legs, and then he was a she...'

David Furnish

David Furnish born 25 October 1962

David Furnish is a Canadian film-maker who is the civil partner of British performer Sir Elton John. Furnish is a former advertising executive who is now a film director and producer most famous for his documentary Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras.

David Furnish was born in Toronto Ontario, Canada. He graduated in 1981 from the Sir John A Macdonald Collegiate Institute in the Scarborough Region of Toronto. He graduated from the business program at the University of Western Ontario in 1985, was recruited by the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, eventually transferred to the London office and was appointed to their Board.

A mutual friend of Furnish and Elton John left a message for Furnish inviting him to a dinner party at Elton John's house on October 30, 1993. Initially fearing that the dinner would be unpleasant, or that John would be boring, he instead found John to be interesting and engaging. Both were attracted to each other; John asked for his phone number and the two had a private dinner the following night.

Furnish resigned from his position in 1994 after finding it increasingly difficult to balance the position's demands with the demands of his new life with John.

With a keen interest in film, Furnish enrolled in courses at the British Film Institute. He is currently co-chief of Rocket Pictures along with John.

Furnish is a contributing editor for Tatler magazine and also is a regular columnist for Interview and GQ.

Furnish currently serves on the board of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, attending fundraisers and other events in support of that cause.

Elton John proposed to David Furnish in May 2005 at a dinner party with friends and family at their home in Old Windsor. John and Furnish entered into a civil partnership on December 21, 2005, the first day that civil partnerships could be performed in England, in the town of Old Windsor.

Moss Hart

Moss Hart born 24 October 1904 (d. 1961)

Moss Hart was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theatre.

After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once In A Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman. During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It With You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.

In 1940 Kaufman and Hart called it quits. Hart had decided it was time to move on.

Throughout the 1930s, Hart also worked, with and without Kaufman, on several musicals and revues, including As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin, Jubilee (1935), with songs by Cole Porter and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman however, he became best known during this period as a director.

By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956) with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over seven years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director.

Occasionally, Hart wrote screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) — for which he received an Oscar nomination — Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954).

The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening.

Hart died of heart failure on December 20, 1961. He was 57.

Moody, irritable, and often depressed, Hart was married to Kitty Carlisle, but the well-dressed and longtime bachelor was regarded as homosexual by many of his friends and reportedly spent much time in therapy regarding his attraction to men. (Carlisle did ask him if he was gay before they married and he responded that he was not.) Among his reported affairs was the actor turned writer Gordon Merrick.

In his screenplay for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Hart wrote the following lines for bisexual actor Danny Kaye as the title character: 'You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache.'

Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs born 23 October 1965

Augusten Xon Burroughs (born Christopher Robison in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American writer, known for his New York Times best-selling memoir Running with Scissors (2002), which spawned a feature film of the same name.

Burroughs is the son of poet and writer Margaret Robison and the late John G Robison, head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His mother sent him to live with her psychiatrist's family in western Massachusetts.

Some of his childhood experiences were chronicled in Running with Scissors; the book spurred a June 2005 lawsuit in which the Turcotte family of Cambridge, Massachusetts claimed that various family members (particularly Dr Rodolph Turcotte, Burroughs' former legal guardian) were defamed by the book's portrayal of the eccentric Finch family. The family eventually settled with Burroughs and his publisher.

Burroughs dropped out of school. He claims to have worked his way up to a high-paying job in the advertising industry before leaving the field to become a writer. His written work blends the fantastic and the mundane, and is delivered in a matter-of-fact style. In addition to Scissors, Burroughs penned a second memoir, Dry (2003), about his experience during and after treatment for alcoholism. That was followed by two collections of short stories, Magical Thinking (2003) and Possible Side Effects (2006). His first book, the novel Sellevision (2000), is currently in production as a feature film.

His writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, House and Garden, Blackbook, New York Magazine, The Times, Attitude, and Out. Burroughs writes a monthly column for Details.

Burroughs lives in New York and Amherst, Massachusetts, with his partner of many years, Dennis Pilsits, and their French bulldogs Bentley, and The Cow.

In January 2007, Vanity Fair published an article ('Ruthless With Scissors') alleging that Burroughs had fabricated large parts of his memoirs.

Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem born 23 October 1923

Ned Rorem is a noted American composer and diarist. He is most well known and praised for his song settings, although his work has been varied and includes three symphonies.

He was born in Richmond, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the American Conservatory and then Northwestern University. Later, Rorem moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and finally the Juilliard School in New York City.

During the time he lived in Morocco and Paris (1949-57), his song texts came from several languages.

In 1969 he published his Paris Diary, which, with his later diaries, has brought him some degree of notoriety, as he is honest about his and others' sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, Noel Coward, Samuel Barber and Virgil Thomson, and outing at least a few people.

Ned Rorem's official website

Matthew Williamson

Matthew Williamson born 23 October 1971

Matthew Williamson is a British fashion designer.

Matthew Williamson was born in Chorlton, Manchester. He grew up and studied there until the age of 17, when he was offered a place on the degree course at Central St Martins. Matthew graduated in 1994 with a BA in Fashion Design and Printed Textiles.

His first job after graduating was a freelance design project with Marni. He was then employed by the British fashion company Monsoon & Accessorise. While at Monsoon, Matthew also worked on developing fabric swatches of his own designs containing detailed beading and embroidery.

Matthew Williamson Company was founded in February 1997 by designer, Matthew Williamson and CEO, Joseph Velosa.

In the Summer of 1997, a cold call to British Vogue led to a meeting Plum Sykes, the then fashion assistant at the magazine. Encouraged by her reaction to his ideas, Matthew created a small women’s wear collection which resulted in a September fashion show comprising a mere 11 outfits.

His achievements in the fashion industry have been recognised consistently: Matthew Williamson won Elle designer of the year 2004 was awarded the 2005 Moet & Chandon fashion tribute and has received numerous nominations. He has also been nominated three times as designer of the year at the British fashion awards.

Whilst continuing at the design helm of his namesake company, in 2005 Matthew took over as the Creative Director at Emilio Pucci, the luxury Italian fashion house owned by LVMH. Having always loved Emilio Pucci’s work from the 60s and 70s, this step was a dream come true for Williamson.

He counts celebrities such as Cat Deeley, Sienna Miller, Kelis, Jade Jagger and Plum Sykes amongst his friends, but has sometimes been criticised by others in the fashion industry for using them to promote his designs.

2007 marked the 10 year anniversary for Matthew Williamson, since the debut Electric Angels show back in September 1997. To celebrate this, Matthew Williamson curated an exhibition focusing on the design and process of his work at the Design Museum London.

Matthew Williamson

Bill Condon

Bill Condon born 22 October 1955

Bill Condon is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter and director.

William Condon was born October 22, 1955 into an Irish Catholic family in Queens, New York.

In his second year of high school Condon began his first serious romance, a two-year relationship with a young man in the class ahead of his. Condon's parents eventually learned of the love affair and spoke about it at first, but subsequently 'it was never talked about,' Condon recalled.

Condon earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Columbia University. Following his graduation in 1976 he moved to Los Angeles, planning to pursue film studies at UCLA.

In the interim Condon began freelancing as a writer. One of his articles in a movie periodical caught the eye of British producer/director Michael Laughlin, who hired him to write scripts for two horror films, Strange Behavior (1981) and Strange Invaders (1983).

Condon continued in the horror genre, revising the script of a screenplay originally titled The Louisiana Swamp Murders into a movie called Sister, Sister that he directed in 1987. The film flopped, putting Condon into what he described as 'film director's jail' - making movies for cable television, some of which he produced as well as wrote and directed.

After several such efforts he returned to the big screen with the 1994 film Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, which was based on a short story by Clive Barker, whom he met during the shooting of the movie in New Orleans.

Making Candyman was a turning point in Condon's career. He learned about financing independent films, and the contacts that he made helped him secure the movie rights to Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein about gay director James Whale. Barker agreed to serve as executive producer of the film, which was released as Gods and Monsters in 1998.

Bringing the project to fruition was a considerable challenge. Condon was disappointed that although the distinguished actor Sir Ian McKellen was slated to play Whale, even production companies that had previously backed films with gay themes showed little interest in funding Gods and Monsters. Eventually a small company, Lion's Gate, provided a three-million-dollar budget - modest by Hollywood standards - and the film was shot in a mere four weeks. The demanding schedule was necessary because of McKellen's pending commitment to appear at the National Theatre in London.

Gods and Monsters opened to enthusiastic critical response, winning numerous awards at film festivals. When the Academy Awards for the year were given out, McKellen's extraordinary performance was overlooked, but Condon's script earned him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

Condon received a second Academy Award nomination for the script that translated the cynical Kander and Ebb musical hit Chicago from the stage to the screen. Rob Marshall directed the movie version in 2002.

Acclaimed as the best movie musical in years, Chicago is actually the product of the collaboration of several out gay men, including - in addition to Condon and Marshall - executive producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan. Winner of an Academy Award as Best Motion Picture of the year, it may have done more than any other recent film to resurrect the musical as a viable film genre.

Condon's next major project was Kinsey (2004), a film biography of the legendary sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, which he both wrote and directed.

In 2006 Condon wrote and directed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls.

Condon lives in Los Angeles with his life partner, who is a screenwriter and director. The couple has been together since the mid-1990s.

In addition to writing and directing, Condon is on the board of IFP/Los Angeles, an association for independent filmmakers, and is also a founding member of the Independent Writers Steering Committee of the Writers Guild of America.

Since he has made films about Whale and Kinsey, Condon has found himself described as a 'homosexual activist', a designation with which he is not entirely comfortable. 'I'm proud to wear those stripes,' he says, adding, 'I just haven't done enough to earn them.'

Lord Alfred Douglas

Lord Alfred Douglas born 22 October 1870 (d. 1945)

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas was a poet, a translator and a prose writer, best known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde. Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde's influence and his own role as a Uranian poet.

Douglas, universally known as Bosie, was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry. His oldest brother, Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig, was also reported to have been homosexual

After a boyhood during which his parents separated, Douglas went up from Winchester to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1889. He met Oscar Wilde through a mutual friend, critic Lionel Johnson, in early summer, 1891, and they became lovers the following spring. Douglas' beauty was 'like a narcissus - white and gold', as Wilde told Robert Ross.

Most of Douglas' homoerotic poetry was written between 1893 and 1896 and appeared in undergraduate literary journals such as The Spirit Lamp, which he edited, and The Chameleon, or in small-circulation magazines like The Artist. Poems like 'Hymn to Physical Beauty' (with a nod to Shelley), the sonnet 'In an Aegean Port', and most famously 'Two Loves', one of whom concludes the poem by sighing 'I am the Love that dare not speak its name' are typical in their wistful tone.

Some of these poems appeared in a French edition of Douglas' verse in 1896, but most were not republished until the Sonnets and Lyrics of 1935, and then, at least in the sonnet mentioned, with the homosexual content revised out.

In 1895, Douglas' father accused Oscar Wilde of 'posing as a sodomite', whereupon Wilde (at Bosie's urging) sued him for libel. At the trial, Queensberry was found not guilty and a warrant was promptly issued for Wilde's arrest. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, but at the second Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years' hard labour.

Although Douglas and Wilde remained close until the latter's death in 1900, the scandal generated a sheaf of spiteful documents. In prison, Wilde wrote a long and bitter epistle later titled De Profundis, accusing Douglas of betraying their friendship. When the full text of De Profundis was made public in 1913, Douglas responded with Oscar Wilde and Myself, repudiating Wilde and his works.

Soon after Wilde's death, Douglas renounced his homosexuality; he married Olive Custance in 1902, and they had a son, Raymond. Douglas converted to Roman Catholicism in 1911, and he and his wife separated two years later. By his own account, Douglas remained celibate thereafter.

From 1907 to 1910, Douglas edited the journal The Academy, assisted by the 'obnoxious' T W H Crosland, who in fact, ghost-wrote most of Oscar Wilde and Myself. Douglas revived The Academy in 1920 and 1921 as Plain English, and the journal had a mild commercial success. Editorially, however, it was non-literary and virulently anti-Semitic, simply a forum for Douglas' considerable collection of bigotries.

Douglas' intemperate expression of his views led to his arrest and conviction for writing and publishing a pamphlet libelling Winston Churchill. He spent six months in Wormwood Scrubs prison. There he turned again to poetry, but his prison writing, a sonnet sequence, was called In Excelsis.

Douglas spent the remaining twenty-one years of his life quietly, living in Hove or Brighton on allowances provided by his mother and wife. He produced his Autobiography during this time, several versions of his collected poems, occasional verse, and in 1940, his most judicious account of his life's central experience, Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up.

He died on March 20, 1945, following a heart attack.

Sir Derek Jacobi

Sir Derek Jacobi born 22 October 1938

Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and director, knighted in 1994 for his services to the theatre.

An extremely successful film and theatre actor, he is probably best known for his performance in the ground-breaking BBC TV series I, Claudius (1976) and for his 13 episodes of Cadfael (1994-1998).

He also appeared as Alan Turing in the stage and film versions of Breaking The Code. His other appearances have been diverse and ranged from major Shakespearean roles and other theatre classics to Nanny McPhee, an appearance in Frasier and Gosford Park.

After 27 years together, he registered his civil partnership with long-term partner Richard Clifford in March 2006, four months after civil unions became legal in England and Wales.

DJ Keoki

DJ Keoki (Keoki Franconi) born 22 October 1966

DJ Keoki is a trance musician and DJ who was born in El Salvador, and raised in Maui. He credits himself with being the first superstar DJ.

Franconi grew up in Maui, Hawaii. As a young man he moved to New York City, where he met and began a romance with Michael Alig. Alig rose to international fame as the head of the Club Kids gang, a group of diverse party goers who would dress in costumes each night and form parties in New York and all over the United States. Franconi performed as a DJ during the parties. Club members also included celebutante author James St James - and Angel Melendez, who supplied the group with drugs.

Franconi and Alig both developed expensive drug habits and began to grow apart. Alig's drug use indebted him to Angel Melendez, whom Alig later murdered with the help of Robert 'Freeze' Riggs. Subsequently, Alig became a fugitive from the law, breaking all ties with Franconi.

Franconi went on to have a successful career during the 1990s and beyond as superstar DJ Keoki, releasing a number of CDs. He still performs to this day, dressing extravagantly, wearing make-up, and sporting a number of tattoos.

He was portrayed by Wilmer Valderrama in Party Monster, a biopic about Alig.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg born 22 October 1925 (d. 2008)

Robert Rauschenberg was a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist known for helping to redefine American art in the 1950s and '60s, providing an alternative to the then-dominant aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism.

Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called 'Neo-Dada', a label he shared with the painter Jasper Johns [pictured with Rauschenberg], with whom he had a long artistic and personal relationship.

Rauschenberg's oft-repeated quote that he wanted to work 'in the gap between art and life', suggested a questioning of the distinction between art objects and everyday objects reminiscent of the issues raised by the notorious 'Fountain' of Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp. At the same time, Johns' paintings of numerals, flags, and the like, were reprising Duchamp's message of the role of the observer in creating art's meaning.

By 1962, Rauschenberg's paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well - photographs transferred to the canvas by means of the silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that that implies. In this respect, his work is exactly contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art.

In addition to painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg's long career has also included significant contributions to printmaking and Performance Art. He also won a Grammy Award for his album design of the Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues.

Rauschenberg died in May 2008, he was 82.

Painting: Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp), 1960

Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson born 21 October 1953

Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC is a British Labour politician who is the serving Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, appointed on 3 October 2008. Mandelson is regarded as one of the main players, along with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, of the modern Labour Party and its rebranding as 'New Labour'. He is often referred to by the nickname 'Mandy' by much of the British news media.

Having helped Labour come to power in 1997, he was then forced twice to resign from Tony Blair's government while holding Cabinet positions. After his second resignation he served as the European Commissioner for Trade for almost four years, before being brought back into mainstream British politics by Gordon Brown.

Before Labour came to power, he was author (with Roger Liddle) of The Blair Revolution (1996). More recently, he contributed to the book The City in Europe and the World (2005). Mandelson served as Member of Parliament for Hartlepool for twelve years, a seat he vacated in order to become a European Commissioner.

During his few months in Tony Blair's government, he was the centre of a great deal of media attention when Matthew Parris (openly gay former MP and then Parliamentary sketch writer of The Times) mentioned during a live interview on BBC2's Newsnight, in the wake of the resignation of Ron Davies, that 'Peter Mandelson is certainly gay'. Mandelson's homosexuality had been well-known but not widely publicised except on the front pages of the Sunday People, and Mandelson had not wanted it discussed.

After Parris's remarks, the press felt free to discuss his personal life (in particular his relationship with the Brazilian Reinaldo Avila da Silva) to a much greater extent and much of the political criticism he received as a Cabinet minister was arguably tinged with homophobia, although he was generally the victim of his own creation - political spin.

His return to the Cabinet as a member of Gordon Brown's government has been an unexpected and surprising new twist in the career of this not so charming man.

Christopher Price

Christopher Price born 21 October 1967 (d. 2002)

Christopher Price was adopted shortly after his birth by a couple in Norfolk. After leaving school he studied Italian at Reading University. However, he left university with the desire to become a journalist and enrolled into the BBC reporter training scheme in 1991. Once completed, he pursued his desire and in 1993 he became a reporter on local radio. In March 1994 he joined BBC Radio 5 Live to eventually become a Senior Broadcast Journalist.

He joined BBC News 24 when it was launched in September 1997 and presented a mixture of news, fashion, and entertainment in a 10.30pm slot. However, after nine months he was called to the office of a senior colleague and told that he was too camp to read the news.

He and the producer Chris Wilson put together a nightly entertainment news discussion programme called Zero30. After Stuart Murphy said that he enjoyed the programme he was persuaded to take it to digital television channel BBC Choice - now BBC3 - where it became Liquid News on May 30, 2000.

In early 2001 he hit the headlines when he signed a £280,000 two-year contract for presenting Liquid News - which many felt as slightly strange since his show attracted low numbers of viewers as it was shown on digital television or late at night. At the time, Christopher himself was quoted as jokingly saying that he didn't understand why people would want to watch a programme presented by a 'fat, balding, homosexual'.

Towards the end of April 2002 he was off work for a week with an acute ear infection. On April 22 he failed to turn up for work and his close friend, Liquid News reporter Robert Nisbet was sent to his flat in central London. Christopher Price was found dead. At first press reports stated that he had taken an overdose of barbiturates, and there was speculation about whether this was an accident or suicide. However, a forensic pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt, told the coroner's court on June 19 that Christopher Price had died of meningoencephalitis - a condition that probably spread from his ear infection.

Christopher Price was a hugely charismatic TV presenter with a fantastic natural warmth and humour. He made Liquid News essential viewing and one had the sense that there was a huge career ahead of him in mainstream television - people loved him, and his tragic and untimely death was a shock to his many fans and a loss to broadcasting.

Allan Horsfall

Allan Horsfall born 20 October 1927 (d. 2012)

Allan Horsfall was a pioneering British gay activist.

He was brought up in Burnley and Nelson. He spent three years in the Royal Air Force. When a member of the RAF Association, at the age of 21, he met Harold Pollard who was a teacher, and later became a headmaster. They became life-long partners.

In June 1958 Allan Horsfall offered support to A E Dyson who was in the process of founding the Homosexual Law Reform Society.

Allan Horsfall was a Labour Party councillor in Nelson from 1958 to 1961. During this time he introduced the local Labour Party to the idea of homosexual law reform. In 1959 he tabled a motion to back the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

From 1963 he lived in Bolton. In 1964 he co-founded the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee with Colin Harvey.

After the 1967 Sexual Reform Act, the committee became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. Allan Horsfall was successively its secretary, chair, and president.

Most of his working life was spent with the National Coal Board, in the estates department. For his last few years before retirement he worked for the Salford Education Department.

In the mid-1990s he became involved with the campaign around the case of the Bolton 7.

Harold Pollard, his partner for 48 years, died in 1996.

In March 2000 Allan Horsfall received The Pink Paper Award for his services to the gay community.

Allan Horsfall and other gay rights campaigners who lobbied for a change in the law for 40 years were honoured in a ceremony at Manchester Town Hall in October 2004.

Horsfall died from heart failure, aged 84, in August 2012. British gay and human rights activist Peter Tatchell acknowledged Horsfall's contribution to gay rights and obituaries credited him as 'arguably the grandfather of  the modern gay rights movement in the UK'.

Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu

Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu born 20 October 1926

Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu is a British Conservative politician known for founding the National Motor Museum.

Montagu was born in London, and inherited his Peerage in 1929 at the age of two, when his father John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was killed in an accident. He attended St Peter's Court School and Ridley College in Canada, Eton College and New College, Oxford. He served in the Grenadier Guards including in Palestine before the end of the British Mandate.

On coming of age Montagu immediately took his seat in the House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject of Palestine. His interest in historic cars led him to open the National Motor Museum on his estate at Beaulieu, Hampshire in 1952.

Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was bisexual, and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview Lord Montagu stated, 'My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed.'

In 1954 Montagu was imprisoned for twelve months for consensual homosexual offences along with Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood.

On the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1953 Edward Montagu and film director Kenneth Hume took two boy scouts to a beach hut at Beaulieu for a bathe. Edward Montagu had reported the loss of a camera to the police and the purpose of the visit to the beach hut had originally been to look for the camera. When the police arrived they took more interest in what had been happening and the boy scouts said that they had been indecently assaulted in the beach hut.

Edward Montagu was charged with an unnatural offence and an indecent assault and his trial took place at Winchester Assizes in December 1953. Edward Montagu was acquitted on the more serious charge of committing an unnatural offence but the jury disagreed on the lesser charge of indecent assault. The Director of Public Prosecutions decided that Edward Montagu and Kenneth Hume should be tried again on the charge of indecent assault.

Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood were arrested three weeks after the end of the first Montagu/Hume trial. Their premises were searched without a warrant. They were charged with several specific indecency charges with two RAF men, Edward McNally and John Reynolds, at the beach hut near Beaulieu and also at the Pitt-Rivers estate in Dorset. They were also accused of conspiring with Edward Montagu to commit these offences. This would prejudice the chances of Edward Montagu's aquittal at his re-trial. Unlike other defendants in the trial Montagu continued to protest his innocence.

Fifty years on, in an interview with the Mail on Sunday Lord Montagu acknowledged his bisexuality, but maintains that his guilt was mainly by association [with Peter Wildeblood], and that the police were seeking a high-profile prosecution as part of their government sponsored crackdown on homosexuals.

The trial was a consequence of concern in the early 1950s about the increasing 'incidence' of homosexuality but caused a backlash which led to the Wolfenden Report which recommended legalisation.

Following the trial and his imprisonment, Montagu quietly returned to his life and went on to marry twice, declining, generally, to speak publicly about the issue.

Montagu founded The Veteran And Vintage Magazine in 1956 and continued to develop the museum, making a name for himself in tourism. He was Chairman of the Historic Houses Association from 1973 to 1978 and Chairman of English Heritage from 1984 to 1992.

Lord Montagu on the court case which ended the legal persecution of homosexuals - this interview with the Mail on Sunday on 15 July 2007 is the first time Lord Montagu has spoken of the events that led to his conviction fifty years before.

The story of Lord Montagu's trial and unwitting role in the history of decriminalisation in England was told in a 2007 Channel 4 drama-documentary, A Very British Sex Scandal.

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud born 20 October 1854 (d. 1891)

Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet, born in Charleville.

Arthur Rimbaud was born into the provincial middle class of Charleville in the Ardennes in north-eastern France. As a boy he was a restless but brilliant student. By the age of fifteen he had won many prizes and composed original verses and dialogues in Latin.

In 1870 his teacher Georges Izambard became Rimbaud's first literary mentor and his original verses in French began to improve rapidly. He frequently ran away from home and may have briefly joined the Paris Commune of 1871. At 19, he ran away from the literary world for a stint abroad as coffee merchant and part-time gun-runner. He may have been raped by drunken Communard soldiers (his poem Le cœur supplicié [The Tortured Heart] suggests so). By then he had become an anarchist, started drinking and amused himself by shocking the local bourgeoisie with his shabby dress and long hair. At the same time he wrote to Izambard and Paul Démeny about his method for attaining poetical transcendence or visionary power through a 'long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses'.

He returned to Paris in late September 1871 at the invitation of the eminent Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (after Rimbaud had sent him a letter containing several samples of his work) and resided briefly in Verlaine's home. Verlaine, who was married, promptly fell in love with the sullen, blue-eyed, light-brown-haired young man. They became lovers and led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish. They scandalised the Parisian literary coterie on account of the outrageous behaviour of Rimbaud, the archetypical enfant terrible, who throughout this period continued to write strikingly visionary verse.

Rimbaud's and Verlaine's stormy love affair took them to London in 1872, Verlaine abandoning his wife and infant son (both of whom he had abused in his alcoholic rages.)

In July 1873, Rimbaud committed himself to journey to Paris with or without Verlaine. In a drunken rage, Verlaine shot at him, one of the two shots striking the 19-year-old in the left wrist. Rimbaud considered the wound superficial and at first did not have Verlaine charged. After this, Verlaine and his mother accompanied Rimbaud to a Brussels train station where Verlaine 'behaved as if he were insane'. This made Rimbaud 'fear that he might give himself over to new excesses', so he turned and ran away. In his words, 'it was then I (Rimbaud) asked a police officer to arrest him [Verlaine].' Verlaine was arrested and subjected to a humiliating medico-legal examination, including his intimate correspondence with his lover and the accusations of Verlaine's wife about the nature of their relationship.

Rimbaud eventually withdrew the complaint, but the judge sentenced Verlaine to two years in prison. Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) in prose, widely regarded as one of the pioneering instances of modern Symbolist writing and a description of that 'drôle de ménage' (odd partnership) life with Verlaine, his 'pitoyable frère' (pitiful brother) and 'vierge folle' ('mad virgin') to whom he was 'l'époux infernal' (the infernal husband). In 1874 he returned to London with the poet Germain Nouveau and put together his pathbreaking Les illuminations, including the first-ever two French poems in free verse.

Rimbaud and Verlaine met for the last time in March 1875, in Stuttgart, Germany, after Verlaine's release from prison and his conversion to Catholicism. By then Rimbaud had given up writing and decided on a steady, working life; some speculate he was fed up with his former wild living, while others suggest he sought to become rich and independent to afford living one day as a carefree poet and man of letters. He continued to travel extensively in Europe, mostly on foot. In the summer of 1876 he enlisted as a soldier in the Dutch Army to travel free of charge to Java (Indonesia) where he promptly deserted, returning to France by ship.

He travelled to Cyprus and in 1880 finally settled in Aden. He had several native women as lovers and for a while he lived with an Ethiopian mistress. Whether he had other types of love-interests has not, apparently, come down to us. In 1884 he quit his job and became a merchant on his own in Harare, Ethiopia. He made a small fortune as a gun-runner. Rimbaud developed right knee synovitis which degenerated into a carcinoma and the state of his health forced him to return to France on May 9, 1891, where his leg was amputated on May 27. Rimbaud died in Marseilles on November 10, 1891, at age 37.

His influence in modern literature, music and art has been pervasive.

Patrick Cowley

Patrick Cowley born 19 October 1950 (d. 1982)

Patrick Joseph Cowley was a Disco and Hi-NRG dance music composer and recording artist. He recorded in a similar style to Giorgio Moroder, and is often credited with pioneering electronic dance music.

Born in Buffalo, Cowley moved to San Francisco in 1971, beginning an intensive study of the synthesiser. Working at the City Disco as a light technician, he met Sylvester (originally of the Cockettes, a gay theatre group), who was there performing. They began to collaborate, and Cowley's aggressive synthesiser style became associated with Sylvester. Their club-dancing fan base responded enthusiastically to hits like You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), Dance (Disco Heat), and their most successful single, Do You Wanna Funk.

Cowley's own hits included Menergy in 1981, a frank celebration of the gay club sex scene, and Megatron Man. In 1982, Patrick Cowley became the DJ at the 'Menergy' parties at The EndUp in San Francisco. He also wrote and produced the dance single Right on Target for San Francisco artist Paul Parker, which reached #1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. Cowley also did a 15+ minute long remix of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, which is now a collector's item.

His final album, Mind Warp, was composed as he felt the increasing effects of HIV infection - although at that time the disease was newly emerging, barely identified and doctors had no real idea why he and so many others were becoming so ill - and its songs reflect his increasing detachment from conventional reality as the disease progressed. He finished the album from a wheelchair between hospital stays.

Cowley only released three solo albums, but groups including the Pet Shop Boys and New Order cite Cowley's style as a major influence.

Patrick Cowley died from complications of AIDS on November 12, 1982.

Divine

Divine born 19 October 1945 (d. 1988)

Harris Glenn Milstead was best known for his drag persona, Divine.

Born in Towson, Maryland, at the age of 12 the family moved to Lutherville, a suburb of Baltimore. John Waters was a childhood friend who lived six houses down the street. It was to be a fateful friendship.

Milstead starred in a number of films and was part of the regular cast known as the Dreamlanders. The Dreamlanders appeared in many of John Waters's earlier works such as Pink Flamingos, which contained an unforgettable final scene in which he ate dog shit, Female Trouble, Polyester, and Hairspray. Repeating their successful pairing in Polyester, in 1985 Divine appeared opposite Tab Hunter in their bigger hit Lust in the Dust.

In the 1980s, Divine's high energy records were hits through America, Europe, and Australia. The early records were composed, created, performed and produced by unsung electronic dance music pioneer Bobby Orlando. His club appearances - I was privileged to see him perform twice and even met him once - were outrageous, filthy, hilarious and hugely entertaining. In Britain, his Stock, Aitken and Waterman record You Think You're A Man was his most successful hit, reaching No 16 and resulting in an unforgettable appearance on Top of the Pops.

Late in his career, Divine also played in non-drag roles in his last three films: Trouble in Mind, Hairspray, and Out of the Dark. In Hairspray he played two roles, one male and one female (which he had first done in the earlier Female Trouble).

In 1988, Divine was chosen to portray the dual character of Peggy Bundy's Mother and her Uncle Otto on the hit comedy series Married With Children. Quite unexpectedly, he died at age 42 from sleep apnea in Los Angeles, California. The cause was attributed to his obesity. The producers of Married With Children sent flowers to the funeral, along with a humorous card that read, "If you didn't want to do the show, you could have just SAID something!"

His funeral in Towson, Maryland was preceded by a funeral procession attended by thousands.

Glenn was born before civil rights, gay rights, or women's rights... God doesn't want people created out of a Xerox machine... The tragedy is that Glenn was cut off right at the point of becoming who he really was, and the world will never see how that flower could have unfolded.

Reverend Leland Higginbotham at Divine's eulogy; Baltimore, Maryland, March, 1988

Robert Reed

Robert Reed born 19 October 1932 (d. 1992)

Robert Reed was an Emmy Award-nominated American stage and television actor.

Born John Robert Rietz, Jr. in Highland Park, Illinois, Reed spent much of his childhood in Oklahoma and later studied Shakespeare in college.

He first gained fame in the early 1960s starring in the television drama series The Defenders from 1961 to 1965 and later on the sitcom The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974. After winning the role of Mike Brady, he later became unhappy with his part, feeling that acting in the often silly sitcom was beneath his serious Shakespearean training. Despite his discontent with the show as a whole, by most accounts he genuinely liked and was beloved as a father figure by his fellow cast members on The Brady Bunch. As a result of his unhappiness with the Brady Bunch’s content, Reed constantly argued with the show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz. One such argument even resulted in his being completely written out of the show's final episode. Reed was happy when the show ended, but he did return for the Brady Bunch Variety Hour and the made-for-TV movies and series that reunited the Brady cast in the years to come.

During the run of The Brady Bunch, Reed also had a recurring role as Lt Adam Tobias on the television drama Mannix from 1967 to 1975 for most of its run.

After the end of The Brady Bunch in 1974, Reed acted on the stage and made many guest star appearances on other television shows and television movies. He won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a doctor who wants to undergo a sex-change operation in a two-part episode of Medical Center in 1975. Reed also appeared in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976) and Roots (1977). He also guest starred on Wonder Woman (1976), playing the Falcon. Other notable guest appearances include: Hawaii 5-0 (1979), Charlie's Angels (1980), Vega$ (1981), and Murder, She Wrote for at least three appearances. He appeared in a number of daytime soaps during the 1980s.

Like many actors of the time, Reed was secretive about his being gay. Reed was briefly married to Marilyn Rosenberg (1957-1959). The union produced one daughter, Caroline Reed, who was born 1958. Caroline had a small role in an episode of The Brady Bunch.

Accounts have suggested that he spent most of his life alone, cruising gay bars around Pasadena but having no real romantic relationships after his marriage ended in 1959.

Robert Reed contracted AIDS and died in 1992 at age 59 in Pasadena, California, from colorectal cancer. He is buried in Skokie, Illinois.