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| This Day in Gay History | |||
March 19
Born
 Richard Francis Burton
1821 -
RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON,
legendary British explorer, diplomat and author was born (d. 1890); an
English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist,
linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. If we left anything out
it’s hard to imagine what it might be.
Burton was "the
most interesting man alive" before there was such a thing. He was known
for his far-flung and exotic travels and explorations within Asia and
Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures.
According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African
languages.
His best-known
achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, making an
unexpurgated translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (the
collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English because of Andrew Lang's abridgment) and the Kama Sutra and
journeying with John Henning Speke as the first white men guided by the
redoubtable Sidi Mubarek Bombay to discover the Great Lakes of Africa
in search of the source of the Nile.
Allegations of
homosexuality followed Burton throughout most of his life, at a time
when it was a criminal offense in the United Kingdom. Biographers
disagree on whether or not Burton ever experienced Gay sex (he never
directly acknowledges it in his writing).
These allegations
began in his army days when General Sir Charles James Napier requested
that Burton go undercover to investigate a male brothel reputed to be
frequented by British soldiers. It has been suggested that Burton's
detailed report on the workings of the brothel may have led some to
believe he had been a customer.
Burton was a
party boy and a heavy drinker at various times in his life and also
admitted to taking both hemp and opium. Friends of the poet Algernon
Swinburne blamed Burton for leading him astray, holding Burton
responsible for Swinburne's alcoholism and interest in the works of the
Marquis de Sade.
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March 17
Born
 Bayard Rustin
1912 -
BAYARD RUSTIN
American civil rights activist, born (d: 1987) Largely behind the
scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and one of
the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it
was Bayard Rustin who counseled Martin Luther King Jr. on the
techniques of nonviolent resistance.
For much of his
career, Rustin lived in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, in the
union-funded Penn South complex, from 1978 with his partner Walter
Naegle. He became an advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian
causes in the latter part of his career; however, his sexuality was the
reason for attacks from within the civil rights movement as well as
from many governmental and other interest groups.
A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in
regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves Gay,
homosexual, or Lesbian."
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