On January 29, 1977, the disco-infused “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by upcoming Motown artist Thelma Houston began its 17-week Top 40 run on the Billboard charts.
The song throughout the 1980s and 1990s, became an unofficial theme song for the AIDS epidemic in gay male communities. American artist Nayland Blake created a work for the American Foundation of Aids Research about the epidemic that referenced the song and its significance in the community. An art exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia entitled “Don’t Leave Me This Way – Art in the age of AIDS” opened in 1994 containing various works about the epidemic. A 246-page publication of the exhibition also followed.
Zachary Levi has been busted endorsing antivax opinions on social media, and recently appreared on Joe Rogan’s show admiring a transphobe Jordan Peterson & didn’t say a word when Rogan misgendered Elliot Page. This coming just mere weeks before his superhero sequel to Shazam comes to theaters
— Drangelice But He RE: Versing Some Bitches (@Drangelice) January 29, 2023
While everyone is dragging Zachary Levi for this, don’t forget he was just one Rogan’s show admiring a transphobe & didn’t say a word when Rogan misgendered Elliot Page. He’s scum.pic.twitter.com/656kJbkVMahttps://t.co/JTslUEnHyC
RIP Zachary Levi. Between this the clips of him fawning over Jordan Peterson it really tells you the kind of person that he is. pic.twitter.com/GFIK2NhiGY
In an interview with the anti-lgbt “Christian”website Faithwire, he said: “I was so enveloped in the darkness that it was pretty much the first time in my life I could say that I maybe stopped believing there was a God,” he said. “I have always leaned into God and into my faith and trust and followed.
are people just now finding out that zachary levi is an evangelical christian who actively works to convert people on his film sets bc personally i feel like i never stop talking about it
¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? is America’s first bilingual situation comedy, which ran from 1977-1980 and the first sitcom to be produced for PBS.. The program explored the trials and tribulations faced by the Peñas, a Cuban-American family living in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, as they struggled to cope with a new country. Along the way the sitcom tackled pressing social issues such as homophobia, addiction, women’s liberation, and sexual freedom.
The “Is Joe Gay?” episode was filmed in 1980 and is as relevant today as it was then.
WARNING: You might want to scrub yourself with a wire brush, lye soap, and holy water after reading this.
Washington State Pastor Busted With Pounds Of Meth, Fentanyl, Coke: A Skagit County pastor who “admitted he leads a double life” was arrested in January with nearly three pounds of methamphetamine, 2,000 counterfeit pills, fentanyl, and cocaine and bragged that he was a good drug dealer, according to court documents.
Arkansas Sober Living Facility Pastor Charged With Sex Assault: A Gravette sober living facility pastor was arrested for sexual assault after he allegedly used his position of authority to take advantage of a resident. Thomas Hartman, 53, was arrested on January 20 and booked into the Benton County jail on a $150,000 bond. Hartman told police that he “never pushed [the man] to do anything” and that he felt like the sexual relationship was “a slip-up on his part” because “he was trying not to live that gay lifestyle anymore and devote his life to the ministry.”
Priest Gets 18 Years For Sex Assault Of Man With 47 IQ: Richard E. Jacklin, a Catholic priest, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Kankakee County court Thursday after being convicted of sexually assaulting a Shapiro Developmental Center resident in 2017. Jacklin’s defense was that the victim forced him to perform oral sex. Court records indicate the victim has an IQ of 47, has been a resident at Shapiro since 2010 and suffers from partial paralysis.
Texas Gospel Singer Arrested On Child Sex Charges A Boerne-area music school owner and member of a local church band has been arrested on child sex crime charges. Gareth Goode was taken into custody on Friday on charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child, indecency with a child and harassment.
Florida Megachurch Orders Members To Sign Anti-LGBTQ Vow; Congregants of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville have been ordered to sign a statement vowing to oppose LGBTQ+ freedoms if they want to remain members. Senior Pastor Heath Lambert has said such freedoms and the sexual revolution are a threat to First Baptist and he’s giving members until March 23 to sign the statement.
“And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love Yeah they’ll know we are Christians by our love“
The Doodler, is an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for up to 16 murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, between January 1974 and September 1975.[ The nickname was given due to the perpetrator’s habit of sketching his victims prior to their sexual encounters and slayings by stabbing.[2] The perpetrator met his victims at gay nightclubs, bars and restaurants.[
Now some 45+ years later San Francisco police on Tuesday announced the identification of the sixth suspected victim of a serial killer
““As a result of a new investigation, it is believed that Warren Andrews may be the sixth victim of the ‘Doodler,’” the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement released yesterday. “On April 27, 1975, Andrews was a victim of an assault at Land’s End. Andrews was found unconscious and never regained consciousness, dying several weeks later. All six (6) victims are believed to be Gay Caucasian males.””
Police reportedly have a suspect who was interviewed at the time of the killings and may still be alive today, but need further help from witnesses to make an arrest.
At the time, activist Harvey Milk publicly expressed empathy for the victims who refused to speak with police stating, “I understand their position. I respect the pressure society has put on them.” Milk elaborated that the surviving victims likely feared damaging relationships with family and in the workforce.
Police also increased the reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the the “Doodler” from $200,000 to $250,000.
The German parliament for the first time on Friday focused its annual Holocaust memorial commemorations on people persecuted and killed over their sexual or gender identity during World War II.
“”Now you’re a gay pig and you’ve lost your balls.” That was how Otto Giering was taunted by a guard in August 1939 after his forced castration in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Even before his deportation to the concentration camp, the 22-year-old had been convicted twice for homosexual contact and sent to a labor camp
Campaigners in Germany have worked for decades to establish an official ceremony for gay victims of the Nazi regime (LGBTQ is not appropraite phrasing)
“Today’s hour of remembrances focuses on a group of victims which had to fight for a long time to achieve recognition: people who were persecuted by the National Socialists because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity,” Baerbel Bas, president of the Bundestag lower house, said while opening a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. More than half of these men were convicted, usually to serve long prison sentences or forced labor. In some cases, men were forced to undergo sterilization. Many were driven to suicide, Those who did not conform to National Socialist norms, lived in fear and mistrust. The hardest hit were the many thousands of men and women who were deported to concentration camps because of their sexuality – usually under a pretext. Many were abused for medical experiments, most perished after only a short time or they were murdered,” she added.
It has taken over 65 years for the gay and lesbians brutalized and murdered by the Nazis to be officialy recognized.
The commemoration was attended by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and two visiting members from Ukraine’s Jewish community.
The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of over six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
But also as a part of the Nazis’ attempt to purify German society and propagate an “Aryan master race,” they condemned homosexuals as “socially aberrant.” Soon after taking office on January 30, 1933, Hitler banned all gay and lesbian organizations. Brownshirted storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of homosexuals. While this subculture had flourished in the relative freedom of the 1920s, Nazi tactics greatly weakened it and drove it underground.
Later, a harsher revision of Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code went into effect, making a broad range of “lewd and lascivious” behavior between men illegal and punishable by imprisonment. The revision of Paragraph 175.
The Nazis believed that male homosexuals were weak, effeminate men who could not fight for the German nation. They saw homosexuals as unlikely to produce children and increase the German birthrate. The Nazis held that inferior races produced more children than “Aryans,” so anything that diminished Germany’s reproductive potential was considered a racial danger.
The police had powers to hold in protective custody or preventive arrest those deemed dangerous to Germany’s moral fiber, jailing indefinitely—without trial—anyone they chose. In addition, homosexual prisoners just released from jail were immediately re-arrested and sent to concentration camps if the police thought it likely that they would continue to engage in homosexual acts.
Via The Associated Press:Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will no longer be forced to abstain from sex to donate blood under federal guidelines to be proposed in coming days, ending a vestige of the earliest days of the AIDS crisis. The planned relaxation of restrictions by the Food and Drug Administration follows years of pressure by blood banks, the American Medical Association and LGBT rights organizations to abandon rules some experts say are outdated, homophobic and ineffective at keeping the nation’s blood supply safe.
The Red Cross samples all of its blood and perfoms various tests including test for AIDS and have been doing so for decades.
1886 – Serbian Nikola Tesla (July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was issued nearly 300 patents in the US for his ground-breaking career focusing on electricity. He was an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current(AC) electricity supply system. Likely asexual, Tesla never married, explaining that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities. Tesla chose to never pursue or engage in any known relationships, instead finding all the stimulation he needed in his work.
1958 — Comedian Ellen Degeneres (born January 26, 1958) is born. Degeneres is the first star of a television sitcom ever to come out — in 1997 — to the public, an act many see as having dramatically improved the climate for LGBT actors, though she almost instantly lost her show. Her current success in daytime talk television was unforeseeable at the time and she had no reason to think she would not have to go back to stand-up comedy clubs forever at the time she risked her television career. In 2008, she married her longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi (born 31 January 1973), Australian and American actress, model, and philanthropist.
1971 –Look Magazine includes a gay couple from Minnesota, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell, as part of that week’s cover article on “The American Family.” Baker and McConnell are also noteworthy as they are the first same-sex couple in the U.S. to be granted a marriage license.
Jack Baker and Mike McConnell were married by a young Methodist minister in Mankato, MN in 1971. Baker had legally changed his name to the gender-neutral Pat Lynne McConnell to get the marriage license. By the time the state of MN figured out that the bride was actually a male it was already too late. The two were officially married.
While Minnesota did try to null and void their marriage Baker and McConnell fought back furiously and predicted they would win eventually, but the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that their marriage was illegal. However, their license was never revoked
1996 – Rent opens off Broadway in the New York Theater Workshop for a six-week run. The creator, Jonathan Larson (February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996), died unexpectedly the morning of Rent‘s first preview performance Off Broadway. He suffered an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, in the early morning on January 25, 1996.
2011, Uganda – David Kato Kisule (c. 1964 – 26 January 2011), founding member of Sexual Minorities Uganda, is murdered. He was the founder and leader of the LGBT rights movement in Uganda where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death. He was a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rightsactivist, considered a father of Uganda’s gay rights movement[ and described as “Uganda’s first openly gay man”. He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Kato was murdered in 2011 allegedly by a male sex worker, shortly after winning a lawsuit against a magazine which had published his name and photograph identifying him as gay and calling for him to be executed.
Pope Francis addressed discrimination against the LGBT community, his own health and future plans, and the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, among other things, in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press published Wednesday.
We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are.” Francis reiterated, however, church teaching that engaging in homosexual activity is sinful.”It’s a sin,” Francis said, adding: “Let’s make the distinction first between sin and crime.” The pope also clarified that discriminating against others was also sinful, saying: “It’s also a sin to lack charity with one another.
Francis said the church “must” work to get unjust laws abolished around the world.
Same-sex sexual acts are considered crimes in some 67 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, according to the Human Dignity Trust organization. In 11 of those countries, punishment can include the death penalty.
The Catholic Church teaching says that gay people must be welcomed into the church and treated with respect and kindness, despite the fact that homosexual acts are considered “intrinsically disordered.”
