1997
U.S.: About 75 people, some carrying signs that read “Choose Jesus over Mickey,” protest the Walt Disney Co.’s gay-friendly policies in Orlando. * Philip Bernham, leader of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, based in Texas, and two other men, Matthew Bowman of Wheeling, West Va., and Seth Marschke of Orland Park, Ill, are arrested during the Disney protest. * Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle, by Anthony Tommasini, is in bookstores. * Angelina Jolie’s starring role as lesbian supermodel Gia, who died of AIDS in the mid-’80s, airs on HBO.
1992
U.S.: As a protest against Amendment 2, New York’s Columbia University Press send complimentary copies of gay studies books to libraries in Colorado * The Advocate names David Geffen as Man of the Year, and Donna Red Wing as Woman of the Year * The Night Audrey’s Vibrator Spoke, a book of cartoons by Andrea Natalie, is in bookstores. * In the January issue of The Marine Corps Gazette, Sgt. Major S.H. Mellinger writes: “The Bible has a very clear and specific message towards homosexuals. ‘Those who practice such things are worthy of death.'” * Yemen: A journalist who outed a college student as a lesbian, is sentenced to one year in prison. The Yemeni Court also banned Abdulah Nasser al-Qasham, the editor of the weekly Sada al-Sha’ab, from ever working in the media again * Peru: President Alberto Fujimori fires a number of diplomats for flaunting their homosexuality. “I have nothing against the personal, private conduct of people, but if it is a case of a person displaying his homosexuality in a scandalous manner, it is not honorable for this gentleman to represent his country” * Britain: The London Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence distribute the world’s first safe-sex pamphlet that includes a quiche recipe.
1987
U.S.: In the Weekly World News, Countess Sophia Sabak, a “top psychic,” talks about Liberace’s afterlife: “He’s now totally anti-gay, and even snubs other deceased gays like Rock Hudson and playwright Noel Coward. Instead, he’s gone on a macho kick. He even challenged John Wayne to a fight over Natalie Wood.” * The Department of Defense says that in 1987 they purchased 13 million condoms for U.S military personnel. * Thirty-five members of Dignity line up to receive the sacrament at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Wearing T-shirts reading ‘Another Gay Catholic and Gays In Christ,’ they are protesting John Cardinal O’Connor ordering an end to the special mass they celebrated regularly in a lower Manhattan Catholic Church.
1987
Germany: A group of neo-Nazis in West Berlin mount a campaign to stop the city from being a “paradise for queers.” In a letter to Berlin’s Task Force Against Anti-Gay Discrimination, the group writes that gays are similar to pigs and that the “pack that isn’t worthy of life,” should be “gassed” and “rooted out.” The letter, handwritten and decorated with swastikas, cites “Our Führer” a number of times, and closes with “Heil Hitler!” * Thailand: After a Thai government spokesman answers a question about gays in Thailand, by saying that “homosexuality is not a problem of great importance,” reporters ask why Thailand’s Prime Minister, Gen. Prem Tinuslanonda, still hasn’t taken a wife. “Perhaps he doesn’t want one,” said the spokesman, “Or possibly he gets annoyed being with women.” Reporters then ask why the Prime Minister dresses “primly” and has a bedroom painted pink. Trying to end the questioning, the spokesman insists that sources close to Gen. Prem, “know that he is a masculine man.” To stress the point, the spokesman adds, “Sometimes, when someone says something improper, General Prem will shout at them.”