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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

October 5

c.500 – Today the Christian church honours the feast day of St Galla (d.550), a Roman nun of the turn of the 6th century. What makes her of particular interest to gay people today, is her intimate friendship and devoted attention to her colleague, the nun Benedicta. This devotion was so intense, that according to legend, in answer to prayer, they were permitted to die together, so as to avoid being separated even for a moment of eternity.

In his Dialogues, Pope Saint Gregory the Great speaks of a holy woman of Rome named Galla, who had been married for less than a year when her husband died. Refusing to remarry, the young widow resolved to devote the rest of her life to God. To protect her beauty againt men's attention, it is said she disguised herself as a man and God gave her a beard.

Joining with a community of women living near St. Peter's Basilica, caring for the poor and sick, this wealthy and pious woman founded a convent and a hospital. She is reputed to have once healed a young deaf and mute girl by blessing some water, and having the girl drink from it.

As she lay stricken with breast cancer, Galla kept two candles burning each night at the foot of her bed, for Gregory explains, "She hated darkness, being a friend of light, physical as well as spiritual light."

It was between these two candles that one night the Apostle Saint Peter appeared in a vision to Galla. The dying woman asked him: "Have my sins been forgiven?"

Smiling, Peter nodded yes and answered, "They are forgiven. Come."

But Saint Galla now requested, "I beg you to let Sister Benedicta come with me."

Peter told her, "Sister Benedicta will follow you in thirty days." Three days later, Galla died, and a month later, Benedicta.

Their story (or myth) is an important reminder that for all the modern Church's opposition to homosexuality, the record shows that same-sex couples and queer saints, nuns, priests, bishops, and popes have always been present, throughout Church history.

1513 – Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered what he claimed was a colony of cross-dressing males in present day Panama. It was reported that he massacred them.

1840 – John Addington Symonds (d.1893) was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible). A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs.

John Symonds was born at Bristol, England in 1840. Considered delicate, the younger Symonds did not take part in games after age 14 at Harrow School, and he showed no particular promise as a scholar.

In January 1858 Symonds received a letter from his friend Alfred Pretor, telling of Pretor's affair with their headmaster, Charles John Vaughan. Symonds was shocked and disgusted, feelings complicated by his growing awareness of his own homosexuality. He did not mention the incident for more than a year until, in 1859 and a student at Oxford University, he told the story to John Conington, the Latin professor. Conington encouraged Symonds to tell his father about his friend's affair, and the senior Symonds forced Vaughan to resign from Harrow. Pretor was angered by the younger man's part and never spoke to Symonds again.

In the fall of 1858, Symonds went to Balliol College, Oxford. In spring of that same year, he fell in love with Willie Dyer, a Bristol choirboy three years younger. They engaged in a chaste love affair that lasted a year, until broken up by the senior Symonds. The friendship continued for several years afterward, until at least 1864. Dyer became organist and choirmaster of St Nicholas' Church, Bristol.

In 1862, an accusation of misconduct caused a nervous breakdown and a rest trip to Switzerland where he met his wife to be, whom he married in 1864.

In 1868, Symonds met and fell in love with Norman Moor, a youth about to go up to Oxford, who became his pupil. Their affair, erotic and sensual but kept short of coitus, lasted four years. According to Symonds' diary of 28 January 1870, "I stripped him naked and fed sight, touch and mouth on these things." The relationship occupied a good part of his time. (On one occasion he left his family and travelled to Italy and Switzerland with Moor.) It also inspired his most productive period of writing poetry, published in 1880 as New and Old: A Volume of Verse.

While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from speaking openly about homosexuality, his works published for a general audience contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. For example, in "The Meeting of David and Jonathan", from 1878, Jonathan takes David "In his arms of strength / [and] in that kiss / Soul into soul was knit and bliss to bliss".

The same year, his translations of Michelangelo's sonnets to the painter's beloved Tommaso Cavalieri restore the male pronouns which had been made female by previous editors. By the end of his life, Symonds' homosexuality had become an open secret in Victorian literary and cultural circles.

Simultaneously to these widely available works, Symonds was writing, privately publishing and distributing more candid writings about homosexuality. As well as a large number of poems written throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Symonds wrote one of the first essays in defense of homosexuality in the English language, A Problem in Greek Ethics, in 1883. A follow-up essay from 1891, A Problem in Modern Ethics, includes proposals for reforming anti-homosexual legislation.

1924 – On this date the Chilean writer Jose Donoso was born (d.1996). He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent some years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and Spain. After 1973, he claimed his exile was a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Donoso was the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom and the foundation of the literary movement known as Magical Realism. His best known works include the novels Coronación, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality and psychology, and are often darkly humorous. He is also considered an innovative stylist.

After his death his personal papers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop revealed an active sex life and the fact of Donoso's homosexuality. It came as a shock to some in Latin America's intelligentsia that one of the great writers of the 20th century was in fact Gay.

1951 – Dave Pallone, born in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a former Major League Baseball umpire who worked in the National League from 1979 to 1988. During Pallone's career, he wore uniform number 26.

Pallone umped in the NL for ten years, and umpired in the 1983 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and the 1987 National League Championship Series. He was the home plate umpire for Nolan Ryan's 4,000th strikeout on July 11, 1985, and on September 25, 1986 he was the second base umpire when Mike Scott of the Houston Astros pitched a 2-0 no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants to clinch the NL West Division championship.

On April 30, 1988, Pallone was involved in a highly controversial confrontation with Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. Pallone was umpiring at first base in the ninth inning when he called New York Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson safe on a delayed call, with the delay giving Howard Johnson the time to score the eventual game-winning run. Rose immediately rushed to Pallone to argue both the call and how slowly it was made. With both tempers boiling over, Pallone was mocking Rose's gestures by pointing his finger at Rose, which lead Rose to (later) accuse Pallone of poking him in the face. Rose then shoved Pallone, causing Rose's immediate ejection, and proceeded to shove him again. Pallone denied touching Rose and Major League Baseball never determined that he did in fact touch Rose. However, the incident led to fans throwing garbage on the field, temporarily stopping the game and causing Pallone to be taken out of the game to ease tensions. The incident also resulted in Rose being suspended for 30 days with a $10,000 fine as well.

In September of that year, Pallone resigned amid rumors of his alleged involvement in a Saratoga Springs, New York teenage male sex ring; he was questioned by local authorities, but was cleared of any involvement. He was "outed" in a New York Post article later in the year. Pallone later wrote a book, Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball, about his experiences as a gay man working in baseball.

In Behind the Mask, Pallone describes the beginnings of his secret gay life. In one moving story, he describes how he sat alone, unacknowledged, in the back pew at the funeral for his lover, Scott. No one in Scott's family knew about their three-year relationship when Scott was killed by a drunk driver in 1982. But in the mid-80s, Dave Pallone came out to a few trusted colleagues, and eventually he even told his secret to then-president of the National League Bart Giamatti.

In 1988, however, Pallone was forced to come out from behind his mask in a much bigger way. The National League dismissed him for allegedly having sex with a minor, even though the charges against him had already been found groundless and the District Attorney in charge of the case had dropped the investigation. Pallone believes that the real issue was his sexual orientation. Referring to others in professional baseball who had been disciplined lightly, he asks in Behind the Mask, "How could they allow people who were guilty of breaking laws to continue their careers, but then turn around and force me out for being innocent?"

1956 – Ron Nyswaner is an American screenwriter and film director. Nyswaner was born in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. Nyswaner wrote his first screenplay for the Susan Seidelman film Smithereens. After two other notable screenplays for Swing Shift and Mrs. Soffel, he gave his directorial debut with The Prince of Pennsylvania in 1988, a film with Keanu Reeves and Fred Ward.

Nyswaner, who is openly gay and an activist for gay rights, has often worked on movies with the subjects homosexuality, homophobia, and AIDS. Examples are the documentary Celluloid Closet and the television drama Soldier's Girl, about the homicide of Private Barry Winchell. In 1993 he came to worldwide prominence for his screenplay to the Academy Award winning movie Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Demme. It earned him nominations for the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA.

After several years of working for television he wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film The Painted Veil which is based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham.

In 2004, he published Blue Days, Black Nights: A Memoir, which chronicles his relationship with alcohol, drugs, and hustlers.

1972 – Born: American anchor and reporter Thomas Roberts. He currently works as an anchor and correspondent for MSNBC News and filled in for Keith Olbermann when the host of "Countdown" was suspended over political contributions. Previously he worked as a correspondent for CBS, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider and as a news anchor for CNN Headline News.

He grew up in Towson, Maryland and attended a Catholic high school in nearby Baltimore. In 1994, he graduated from Western Maryland College with a major in Communication and a minor in Journalism.

Roberts publicly acknowledged that he is Gay while speaking at the annual convention of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in Miami, in 2006. His comments were picked up by major Gay media outlets Gay.com and the The Advocate.

Along with other local Gay anchors, Roberts was a member of a panel called "Off Camera: The Challenge of LGBT TV Anchors." He told the audience that the conference was the "biggest step" he had taken to really be out in public and that he had slowly been coming out at CNN over the past several years. Roberts was proud of his partner, who was apparently unnamed, and that staying in the closet was a difficult thing for a national news anchor. "When you hold something back, that's all everyone wants to know."

In a later interview Roberts stated that he actually came out to coworkers in 1999, when he was living in Norfolk, Virginia. "I was happy, I was in a relationship, and I was very proud. I had the support of family, and of my friends. It was ... about not wasting any more time. I'd wasted enough time." He further commented, on the subject of coming out, "Hopefully, everyone, Gay or straight, journalists or doctors or otherwise, can overcome that obstacle, because it stands in the way of you being the best you can be, with your job, with your family, with everything, and not have to be afraid anymore."

Roberts has stated that he had been approached in 2005 by People magazine to be one of the publication's 50 Sexiest Bachelors, but he declined. "I'm not a bachelor. I thought it would be false advertising... [And] I didn't think it was the right venue to talk about it."

In 2005, after years of silence, Roberts came forward to testify against Jerome F. Toohey Jr., a former priest who had abused him when he was a student at Calvert Hall College High School. Fr. Toohey pled guilty to the sexual abuse charges and received a five year jail sentence with all but 18 months suspended in February 2006. Toohey served only ten months before his sentence was converted in December with the remaining eight months to be served in home detention. Roberts discussed his abuse in a special segment on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 called "Sins of the Father" on March 12, 2007.

Roberts and Abner tie the knot.

Roberts has been in a relationship with his partner, Patrick Abner, since at least 1999. On September 29, 2012, they were officially married.

1984 – Odin Biron is an American actor living in Moscow and Minneapolis. While not well-known in the United States, he is best-known in Russia for playing the character Dr Phil Richards in the popular medical sitcom, Interns.

Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Biron grew up nearby in rural Minnesota, moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his mother after his parents' divorce. While studying at the University of Michigan, he studied at the Moscow Art Theatre on student exchange and was, unusually, invited to stay and join the incoming Russian class. In one of his final student roles, he won an award for his portrayal of Hamlet in a production that toured to New York's Baryshnikov Arts Center.

Landing a role in Interns, a top-rated Russian medical sitcom, in 2006 raised Biron's profile substantially and he has spoken about being recognised in nightclubs and avoiding "celebrity events" as a result. In a country where a large majority of the population view the United States "badly" or "very badly", Biron is one of a few Americans in the public eye, yet the success of Interns has led to Biron being considered a heartthrob and very popular.

Biron came out to his parents as a teenager and made no big secret of his homosexuality, but Russia is very socially conservative on LGBT rights, with hostility towards legal recognition of same-sex marriage and support for laws discriminating against LGBT people. His character on Interns was raised by two gay fathers, though the treatment of the issue of sexuality on the show has been described as reinforcing the Soviet idea that homosexuality is a product of Western moral decay, rather than being used to promote more liberal values.

It is very common for LGBT performers in Russia to avoid coming out, with an unspoken don't ask, don't tell arrangement between the entertainment industry and the mainstream press. After the passage of 2013's Russian LGBT propaganda law, Biron's Interns co-star and former Orthodox priest Ivan Okhlobystin made international news with genocidally homophobic remarks made in a December 2013 talk in Novosibirsk, leading Biron to consider leaving the show and Russian TV altogether. As a result, he came out in an interview with New York magazine in early 2015, to mixed reactions, reported in the Russian press accompanied by mentions of Okhlobystin's remarks. After an initial reaction leaving Biron with "a sense of physical danger, political danger", he initially left Russia. He returned later without any apparent negative effect on his career, though his friendship with Okhlobystin had become untenable after the former priest's reaction describing him as a "pervert" and a "sodomite".

Biron lived in Moscow with his boyfriend, a Kazakh film director. In an interview with Minnesota's Star Tribune in May 2015, however, he mentioned that he was back in the United States permanently and, as well as acting, was pursuing a Le Cordon Bleu culinary degree.

1991 – Franklin Freeman Randall, known by his stage name Fly Young Red is an American rapper who gained notoriety due to his controversial song "Throw That Boy Pussy".

Red was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Southern California to a religious baptist family where he was an active Christian at that time.

After releasing some independent tracks online, as well as being a household name whilst performing in the gay clubs in the Houston and Atlanta areas, Red negotiated a deal with Las Vegas based music video production team Level Eight Studios to produce a music video from one of his notorious and provocative tracks that were released on his Twitter page titled "Throw That Boy Pussy". The video which was shot in the summer of 2013, and later released in the Spring of 2014 became viral and which ultimately led to Red being offered a record deal.

In April 2014 according to Black Entertainment Television with an interview with he Red he stated "That he wasn"t ready for a record deal", and that he wasn"t contracted by a music label.

Red self-identifies as gay. He decided to be more open about his sexuality due to the lack of homosexual male rappers in the hip hop industry.

1995 – Bryan Ruby is an American professional baseball player born on this date. He plays for a minor league team, the Salem-Kaiser Volcanoes. On September 2, 2021 he became the first active, professional baseball player to come out as a gay man.

Born in Pennsylvania, he is also a professional country music songwriter, having written two songs that reached the charts, writing hits for Hayden Joseph and Xavier Joseph, and countless ballads in his notebook.

He first realized he was different at age 14. But the baseballer, who also writes country music, says he saw no place for his sexual orientation in the worlds he inhabited. Ruby came out to his family about four years ago. Then he gradually told close friends. And just this summer he came out to his teammates.