Thank You

November 27

HAPPY THANKSGIVING in the UNITED STATES

1883 – the English Uranian poet EDMUND JOHN was born on this date (d: 1917). Poet John came of age in the decade after the trial of Oscar Wilde and illustrates the fact that far from disappearing off the face of the globe, homosexuality simply retreated a bit further underground. A letter to one of John's young friends provides us with a very good idea of the "tone" of Gay life among the pederasts of Edwardian England: "I have received your adorable illustrated letter this morning and loved it so much I immediately made an altar before it, lit by amber candles in copper candlsticks, burnt incense before it and kissed its extreme beautifulness. " Much of his work was condemned by critics for being overly decadent and unfashionable. He fought in the First World War, but was invalided out in 1916 and died at Taormina, in Sicily, a year later.

1967 - Craig Rodwell opens Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the world's first Gay and Lesbian bookstore, in Greenwich Village, New York City. The small bookstore still stands in the same place forty one years later.

1978 - on this date HARVEY MILK was assassinated. (22 May 1930 – 27 November 1978) was an American politician and Gay rights activist, and the first openly Gay city supervisor of San Francisco, California. He was, according to Time magazine, "the first openly Gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet."


Thanksgiving is a time to focus on the year's blessings. And those of us who are gay or gay-friendly have plenty to savor: