Sept. 1-7
1997
U.S.: Radio therapist Dr. Laura Schlessinger tells her listeners: “You’d actually consider having sex with someone HIV-positive? … HIV-positive people should not have any kind of sex with anyone!” * San Diego County, Calif., prosecutors win convictions of first-degree murder and robbery against 26-year-old prize-winning kickboxer Paul Cain for beating and strangling to death 73-year-old closeted gay Stanley Keith Runcorn. * Cardinal Roger M. Mahony celebrates Mass in Long Beach at the 4th convention of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries.
1992
U.S.: Actor Anthony Perkins dies of AIDS at age 60. * In a poll conducted by The Salt Lake Tribune, 64.5 percent of Utah residents support legal protection for gays in employment and housing. * Conservative columnist William F. Buckley surprises his readers by supporting gays in the military. * Walgreens and Wal-Mart join K Mart, in refusing to stock Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s book What Can You Do To Avoid AIDS, because it violates their ‘clean magazine’ policy. * Peru: Employees of the Lima Homosexual Movement run from their offices, after receiving a bomb threat from the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). “We are the MRTA and we don’t like gays,” the caller says, “You have only 20 minutes to leave the premises, before the machine gunning and bombing starts.” The attack does not occur. * Hungary: Three hundred people attend the country’s first Gay Pride Day. * Spain: Gay activists in Madrid keep a 24-hour guard on Centro Asociativo Gai de Madrid, the gay center, in order to prevent police from implementing a municipal order to evict them and shut the center down.
1987
U.S.: Tom Scholtz, lead singer with rock band Boston, donates $155,000 to the Hospices of America, saying: “They’re (the hospices) getting loaded down by all the AIDS patients … . And with the government dragging its feet on both state and national level, somebody’s got to do something. It was time to stand up and say, ‘Hey, there’s people dying, and they need help.'” * Eddie Murphy comments on his ‘past’ homophobia in Interview Magazine: “I don’t have anything against faggots … oops! I know gays, and I’ve made some jokes, but I wasn’t trying to be vicious or mean.” * 1,500 softball players converge on San Francisco for World Series II, the gay softball playoffs. * Quote Of The Week: Vito Russo: “What disturbs me is how gay men all over this country can sit around with their friends dying, their lovers dying, their lives threatened, and not get off their asses and be activists again. Do they have a death wish? What’s the matter with them?”
1982:
U.S.: In LA, the Academy Restaurant and Bar, a popular gay establishment, is gutted by fire after a bomb explodes. * The California Highway Patrol includes sexual orientation on its non-discrimination list. * A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White is in bookstores. * France: Querelle, the final movie by gay German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, premieres in Paris. Starring Brad Davis, the film is an adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle Of Brest. * Pakistan: Military leader, General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq orders that homosexuals be stoned to death, as part of the Islamic war on corruption and crime.