A gay man who came out aged 90 has offered powerful words of advice to LGBT+ people who are still in the closet.
Kenneth Felts captured the hearts of queer people across the world in 2020 when he shared his story, proving that it’s never too late to come out.
Felts, who is from Colorado, knew he was gay when he was just 12 years old – but he pushed his feelings down and married a woman, not believing that living his truth was an option.
His coming out last year was ultimately a positive experience that allowed him to live his life openly and authentically.
Speaking directly to queer people who are still in the closet, Kenneth Felts told CBS New York: “You’ll be very surprised about the response.”
He continued: “The world is full of love, and you’re entitled to some of it, and people are going to give it to you if you take the chance, if you come out and say ‘here I am.’”
Kenneth Felts went on to reflect on his marriage to a woman, which he admitted “was not a good one”. He spent the entire marriage trying to appear as straight as he possibly could.
“It was just constant alertness,” Felt said. “I was being very careful and dressing very conservatively all the time because I never wanted people to know that I was gay. I didn’t want to be outed because I could lose custody of my daughter.”
It was ultimately a cancer diagnosis that spurred Felts on to start writing his memoirs, which helped Phillip swim back into focus.
He was Felts’ first love, and the pair had a vibrant, loving relationship before he left to marry a woman.
Tragically, he learned upon his coming out last year that Phillip had since died, meaning the men never got to reunite.
Despite the pain that came with that revelation, Kenneth Felts is still glad he came out when he did. Doing so has allowed him a greater freedom in his personal life.
“It was a huge experience of freedom. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder worried about who’s wondering if I’m gay or not,” he said.
Sadly, Felts decision to come out as gay during the coronavirus pandemic has meant that he can’t attend Pride marches and take a more active role in the LGBT+ community – however, he hasn’t let that stop him from celebrating his identity.
His Facebook page shows numerous images of him wearing a rainbow coloured hoodie, and he has raised funds for LGBT+ causes in the year since he came out.
Mumsnet users are encouraging teachers to out trans pupils to their parents, saying that children are being “harmed” by school staff who protect their privacy.
The Mumsnet discussion began with a 3 July post by “Libby55”, who says they work in a school: “Advice: schools socially transitioning children without parental knowledge or consent.” It’s had more than 400 responses.
In the post, Libby55 says pupils at the school they work in have changed their names and pronouns without telling their parents. Libby55 claims that teachers not telling parents this information is a “safeguarding issue” that is “harming children”.
“I’m looking for an organisation that specifically campaigns against schools harming children in this way,” Libby55 says. “I have to do something: I can see children being harmed.”
They then ask: “If any of you know of a teacher’s group that is lobbying against the practice of socially transitioning children without parents’ knowledge or consent, please let me know. I would like to get involved.”
In the hundreds of responses that follow, Mumsnet users says it is “outrageous” and “sinister” that schools would protect pupil’s privacy, and suggest “leaking” the information about trans pupils on social media.
Several suggested that Libby55 contact anti-trans groups Safe Schools Alliance (SSA) or Transgender Trend, while others commended them for “protecting children from the falsehood that they are the opposite sex”.
Confirming they would contact SSA, Libby55 thanked Mumsnet users for their help and claimed that “for the majority of children” using their chosen name and pronouns “brings about a steep downhill decline in their mental health”.
One study of young trans people found that a trans person who is regularly called their chosen name has “a 29 per cent decrease in suicidal ideation, and a 56 per cent decrease in suicidal behaviour”.
Some Mumsnet users disagreed with Libby55, and pointed out that outing trans pupils to their parents would be harmful and could put them at risk.
“Um, what does the child have to say about you doing this?” one Mumsnet user wrote. “You can’t just be giving this kind of information to their parents without their knowledge. That is the whole point of safe-guarding. You are putting this child in danger right now.”
Sabah Choudrey, joint head of youth work at national trans charity Gendered Intelligence, told PinkNews that sometimes “school is the safest place for a young person to explore who they are”.
“‘Outing’ trans youth to their parents against their will may put them at risk of harm and isolation from a supported environment and trusted people,” Choudrey said.
“There are many reasons why families wouldn’t understand in the first instance, but there is support available for families too. But not all families are supportive or understanding of young people having space to explore their identity, and a small minority will unfortunately never come to be supportive or understanding of their child’s identity or exploration.
“Schools have a duty to safeguard all youth, because every young person deserves the right to choose who they are and the right to safely express themselves.”
What is outing?
Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT+ person’s gender identity or sexual orientation without their consent, which can breach their privacy and put them at risk of violence or abuse.
Young trans people in the UK are particularly at risk, with research from LGBT+ charity Stonewall finding that more than four in five young trans people have been called names or verbally abused, while three in five have experienced threats or intimidation and more than a third have been physically assaulted.
A person’s trans status is private, regardless of their age. According toStonewall, schools should not share information that could reveal a pupil’s trans status to others, including their parents, except when there is a safeguarding risk or when the young person has given their permission for information to be shared.
Trans students’ right to privacy
In the US, it’s illegal for a teacher to share a student’s LGBT+ identity with their parents or other school staff, because it’s a violation of the student’s privacy and “can open an LGBT+ child to hostility, rejection, and even violence from their parents”, according to civil rights group ACLU.
Trans adults with legal recognition of their gender have similar protection in the UK, where officials who disclose someone’s trans status without consent would be breaking the law in most circumstances.
While trans under 18’s do not have access to legal gender recognition, they are still protected from discrimination based on their social transition under the Equality Act 2010. This means teachers and school staff should use a pupils chosen name and pronouns – not to do so because they have changed gender could constitute direct gender reassignment discrimination, according to guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
And young trans people have a right to privacy under the Human Rights Act, just like all young people.
Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder, told PinkNewst: “We’ve had a careful look at the discussion. It’s clear that the person who started it is mindful of their confidentiality obligations and does not intend to ‘out’ any children. They clearly state, ‘I wouldn’t recommend telling the parents. Even if we believe that the school isn’t following safeguarding procedures, we still need to go through the proper channels.’
“This is a discussion in which a teacher is asking for signposts to further information, and does not in any way advocate breaching the confidence of children under their care.”
Gendered Intelligence runs support groups for young trans people and their families. You can find more information here.
Sometimes, Noel Arce has trouble remembering his dads.
Not his biological parents — he never met them: His birth mother gave him up as an infant, and he never knew who his birth father was.
But in 1988, he and his brother, Joey, were taken in by Louis Arce and Steven Koceja, a gay couple from Manhattan. Louis was a social worker, and Joey, 2, and Noel, about 10 months old, were in the foster care system.
The boys had been surrendered at New York City’s Metropolitan Hospital. “Our mother and dad were heroin addicts, and they couldn’t really care for us,” Noel said.
During the week, the brothers and Angel, an HIV-positive 3-year-old, lived with Louis and Steven in their Manhattan apartment, and on weekends, they went to the couple’s house in the scenic town of Rosendale, New York, about two hours north.
“It felt very normal, my childhood,” Noel said. “Like the world operated with moms and dads, and two dads and two moms.”
Noel was always free to be himself growing up — to play with Barbie dolls and dress up in frilly costumes. His dads loved to make home movies; in one, Joey and Angel are playing with Tonka trucks and Noel is picking flowers.
“I was very feminine. I’d always participate in girly things, and my dads embraced that in me,” he said. “That really helped me in my development as a child,”
As he got older, Noel realized that was a unique experience.
“I hear people’s stories of coming out and being rejected, being thrown out. That experience for most gay men is a very hard one,” he said. “I’m very blessed to not have had that.”
Louis Arce with his children Joey, Angel and Noel.Courtesy Noel Arce
The time they had together was special, but it was all too brief. Joey and Noel’s adoptions were finalized in 1993. On June 18, 1994, Steven, 32, died of AIDS-related complications. Five days later, Louis, 47, succumbed to the disease.
Noel was just 7 at the time.
Now 33, he says some of the memories of his time with Louis and Steven are fuzzy. He compares them to a train leaving the station, getting smaller and smaller as it pulls away.
Some moments, though, are crystal clear.
“When I look at some of the photos I have, I can remember the day the picture was taken,” he said. “When I see the bedroom, I can remember being there, I remember certain smells — what was cooking that day. And I remember all the Barbies I had.”
One memory in particular stands out: Noel had just turned 6, and, as usual, the family was making a video. “It was like a horror movie, but, you know, silly,” he said. “I dressed up as a witch, and my brother was, like, a devil. And my dad was videoing it, and we were all having so much fun.”
As an adult, he says, he’s better at holding onto the memories. “But I don’t remember the end. I don’t remember them being sick. I don’t remember visiting them in the hospital.”
When Louis and Steven knew their time was running out, they recorded special videos for the boys.
Steven J. Koceja.Courtesy Noel Arce
“There’s a video of them talking to us — explaining how much they loved us,” Noel said. “And there’s videos Louis made for each of us individually. In the video for me, he says, ‘Noel, I know you’re gay.’ And he gives me his thoughts and advice about facing life. I’m so lucky to have that.”
He watched that video for the first time a year after his dads died and, unsurprisingly, didn’t really understand it. About two years ago, he watched it again.
“It was the first time I had an emotional reaction — where I cried,” he said of watching the video.
After Louis and Steven died, Louis’ brother Robert and his wife, Tina, took in the three boys.
When Louis and Steven started to get sick, they had asked Robert and Tina to become the boys’ guardians and started transitioning care.
“Sometimes we’d come over for longer visits,” Tina said. “Other times it would just be the kids and us. We talked to them about what was going to happen, but how do you prepare a child for that?”
She and Louis had known each other since they were kids themselves. “He always, always wanted children,” she said. But, he was an HIV-positive man at a time when treatment options were minimal to nonexistent.
“I said to him, ‘Why would you do this to these kids — taking them in, knowing you have a death sentence, that you’ll disappear on them?” And he said, “Who would know better than me what they’ll face?”
Bringing the boys into the family “changed our whole dynamic forever,” she said. “I was done raising kids by that point, and then there I am, taking these” children in.
But she got much out of the experience, too, she’s quick to add, “maybe even more than the kids.”
“I became involved in AIDS care. I traveled. I met people I never thought I would. I fought for them,” she said. “The man upstairs knew what he was doing bringing us together. It was amazing how my life turned around. If it wasn’t for our family, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Noel, who lives with Robert and Tina in Suffolk County, New York, said he and Joey, who lives nearby, are still very close. Sadly, he doesn’t know what became of Angel, whom he said developed serious emotional problems in adolescence and had to be taken out of the family.
“I don’t know if he’s alive,” he said. “Back then, AIDS was a death sentence. But with the way medication is today, I hope he’s OK — and that he’s happy.”
Noel’s mother was HIV-positive when she was pregnant, and he tested positive for the virus at birth. Eventually, though, he developed his own antibodies and was determined to be HIV-negative.
In April, Noel shared a photo of Joey, Angel, Louis, Steven and himself on the AIDS Memorial Instagram, a page dedicated to sharing stories of those lost to the pandemic.
“We weren’t with Louis and Steven very long before they passed,” he wrote in the accompanying caption. “They never got a chance to see the men we are today but they cared for us very much and gave us a life that we wouldn’t have known otherwise. It’s incredible even now, after all these years, I can still feel what it felt like to be loved that much.”https://iframe.nbcnews.com/VhRU9be?app=1
The black and white image included in the Instagram post was from an early ‘90s photo shoot for “Living Proof: Courage in the Face of AIDS”, a collection of portraits published in 1996 by photographer Carolyn Jones of people from all walks of life living with HIV/AIDS.
“I remember the family well,” Jones said of the shoot. “There were not that many families photographed for “Living Proof,” so they are easy to remember. Those three little boys were priceless together. It felt as though they had all somehow miraculously found one another, and there was a lot of love wrapped up in that photo.”
Noel’s post has received hundreds of comments and more than 15,000 likes.
He doesn’t remember how he first came across the AIDS Memorial Instagram account, which NBC News reported on in December for World AIDS Day.
“I think a friend of mine followed that account, and it got recommended to me,” he said. “But when I saw it, I was like, ‘Wow, all these people are telling their stories.’ And I just kind of felt compelled to tell my story, too.”
The response was tremendous, Noel said, adding that it has been particularly meaningful to see comments from people who hadn’t been directly affected by the AIDS devastation of the 1980s and ‘90s.
“I guess I thought that AIDS was a conversation people weren’t having anymore. That no one cared,” he said. “With young people today, they think, ‘Oh, we have medications, we have Truvada, and [HIV] isn’t something to really worry about, right?’ My fear is that it’ll completely be forgotten. But the page keeps it alive. It makes people remember our history and the people who fought for what we have now … And who even died in the process.”
Noel doesn’t know much about how Louis and Steven were able to take in HIV-positive boys in the late ‘80s. “I do know that they fought for us quite a bit,” he said. “I can only imagine how hard it was at that time.”
He has shared other family photos of his dads, his brothers and himself on social media. It’s comforting, he said, but it also churns up immense feelings of loss.
“God really handed me the courage to look at those pictures again,” Noel said. “It had been years — there’s a lot of pain attached to them. But it was a great childhood, it was. I look back now, and I’m like, ‘Wow, I was so lucky.’”
For the past 13 years, Noel has worked in drag, as Violet Storm, playing clubs in Manhattan and out on Long Island. The pandemic put a pause on gigs, but more recently he’s been able to perform again.
Noel Arce during a drag performance as Violet Storm.Courtesy Noel Arce
Knowing his dads were gay, Noel often wonders what they would think of his drag. “Not whether they’d approve of it, because of course they would,” he said. “But, would they think I’m funny? That I’m pretty? Would they like my show?”
He has a lot of questions about his dads that can’t really be answered.
“Like, how did they meet? I want to know the whole love story — I want to hear about those crazy feelings you have when you first meet someone,” he said. “What bars did they go to? Did they have a favorite drag queen? What kind of homophobia did they face back then?”
Tina has been a fount of information about his dads, “but this isn’t really stuff she can tell me.”
He recalled doing a show at the historic Stonewall Inn and wondering if Louis and Steven had gone there back in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
“Every time I do a show, I think, ‘Were my dads here? Did they like this bar? Who did they see perform?’ Sometimes I cry when I think about it,” Noel said. “But they give me a lot of courage, too. Before I go on, I get really, really nervous. And there’s a moment where I have to go on, and I think, ‘I’m just going to back out. I’ll leave. I just can’t do this.’ My heart is racing, I’m so nervous, and then I think of my dads, and I’m like, ‘Just do it. Just let it happen.’”
Noel Arce.Courtesy Noel Arce
While Noel still has a lot of unanswered questions about his dads, he has learned a bit more because of the AIDS Memorial Instagram: Writer and artist Timothy Dean Lee, who follows the page and frequently comments on posts, knew Louis and Steven back in the day.
“When I read Noel’s tribute it was overwhelming,” Lee told NBC News via email. “It gave me answers to what had happened to Louis and Steven — and to the boys. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Lee had met Louis in the 1980s as a graduate student at New York University, where he was studying art therapy and child psychology. He’d often find himself in New York Family Court, where Louis was working as a social worker.
He’d also see Louis at meetings of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, and protests — and, on occasion, bump into Steven and Louis at the Paradise Garage “dancing the night away.”
“I remember when Louis told me that they were going through the process of adopting the boys,” Lee said. “I knew that adopting for a straight couple was challenging enough, but for a gay couple the challenges were all-consuming. But that certainly didn’t stop Louis and Steven.”
Being a social worker, Lee said, Louis knew the “ins and outs” of the system.
“He was driven. He knew the three boys needed a stable home and love, and he and Steven were more than willing to embrace them as part of their family.”
The last time Lee remembered seeing Louis was about 1990 on the street in the West Village.
“I asked him if he and Steven ever were able to adopt the boys,” he said. “He explained they were still officially foster parents, but they were determined to adopt all three.”
“Louis pulled out his wallet and showed a picture of the kids, saying ‘Yep, Tim, that’s my family.’”
From the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to address homosexuality to the first bisexual “Bachelorette,” here are 10 historic LGBTQ milestones from around the world.
Kathy Kozachenko
First out gay person elected to office in the U.S.
Kathy Kozachenko holds a photo of her son and her partner at her home in Pittsburgh in 2015.Chris Goodney / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Three years before Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, out lesbian Kathy Kozachenko was voted onto the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan on April 2, 1974.
Kozachenko was just 21 and a student at the University of Michigan, a hotbed of anti-war protests and activism supporting racial justice, women’s rights and other causes.
Her sexual orientation didn’t seem to be an issue with voters, and “gay liberation was not a major issue in the campaign,” Kozachenko said in her victory speech, Bloomberg reported.
“This year we talked about rent control. We talked about the city’s budget. We talked about police priorities, and we had a record of action to run on,” she said at the time.
Kozachenko only served one two-year term and eventually moved to Pittsburgh, where she remained involved in gay activism and met her longtime partner, MaryAnn Geiger.
“I am so proud of all the activists that came after me,” Kozachenko told NBC News last year. “The people that pushed and pushed and pushed for gay marriage, the transgender people that have pushed for their rights … I’m grateful for the chance that I was able to play a small part in this.”
‘Wings’ (1927)
First male-male kiss in a Hollywood movie
Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen during the filming of “Wings” in 1927.Hulton Archive / Getty Images
William A. Wellman’s silent film “Wings,” the first movie to win the Academy Award for best picture, follows Jack (Charles Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) as they enlist in the Army Air Service during World War I and bond during basic training before being shipped off to France.
While they’re ostensibly romantic rivals for “it girl” Clara Bow, neither “shows as much love for her … as they do for each other,” queer writer Kevin Sessums wrote, according to the LGBT History Project blog.
In the pre-Hays Code film’s climax, Jack accidentally shoots down David, who has commandeered a German biplane. Running to his dying friend’s side, Jack takes David in his arms and begs forgiveness. As the camera zooms in, the two stroke each other’s hair tenderly and Jack declares, “You know there is nothing in the world that means so much to me as your friendship.”
The men share a lingering closed-lip kiss before Jack takes his final breath.
“While the relationship is referred to repeatedly as a friendship, the acting and directing of the film make it obvious that the men’s feelings were romantic,” wrote culture critic and curator Francesca Seravalle. “A swell of romantic string instruments plays in the background as Jack mourns over Dave’s still body. The directing choices made by Wellman humanized both characters and allowed the audience to experience the tragedy without exploiting the perceived exoticness of a relationship between two men.”
One, Inc. v. Olesen
First U.S. Supreme Court ruling to address homosexuality
Founded in 1952, ONE, Inc. was one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States and the first to have its own offices.
An accompanying magazine, One Magazine, started publication in 1953 — selling through subscriptions and at Los Angeles newsstands — and is considered the first mass-produced gay publication in America.
In October 1954, L.A. Postmaster Otto K. Olesen refused to deliver the magazine, declaring it “obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy.” ONE sued but lost the case and a subsequent appeal — a panel of federal judges declared “Sappho Remembered,” a lesbian love story that ran in one issue, “nothing more than cheap pornography calculated to promote lesbianism.”
Founding editors Dale Jennings and Don Slater appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which, surprisingly, agreed to hear their case.
On Jan. 13, 1958, without even hearing oral arguments, the justices issued a terse, one-line ruling reversing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision and affirming that the mere subject of homosexuality was not obscene.
In a Washington Post op-ed in 2014, Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch called One, Inc. v Olesen “the seminal gay rights case in America — the one that extended First Amendment protection to gay-related speech.”
Marcia Kadish & Tanya McCloskey
First same-sex couple legally married in the United States
Marcia Kadish, left, and Tanya McCloskey after being pronounced wife and wife at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004.Dina Rudick / Boston Globe via Getty Images
On Nov. 18, 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage when, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the state Supreme Court ruled it could not “deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.”
“Recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of the same sex will not diminish the validity or dignity of opposite-sex marriage,” wrote Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, “any more than recognizing the right of an individual to marry a person of a different race devalues the marriage of a person who marries someone of her own race.”
The first licenses were issued on May 17, 2004, and McCloskey and Kadish, who had already been together nearly 20 years at that point, picked theirs up a few minutes after midnight. With a waiver that allowed them to skip the traditional three-day waiting period, the women exchanged vows later that morning at Cambridge City Hall.
“We felt we were married already,” Kadish told NPR’s “Morning Edition” in 2019. “This was just making it legal.”
At least 78 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts that day — the same day President George W. Bush called for a congressional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
“The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges,” Bush said in a statement. “All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate.”
It wasn’t until 2015 that McCloskey and Kadish’s union was recognized federally, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively made same-sex marriage the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.
By that time, McCloskey had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The disease spread quickly, and she died on Jan. 6, 2016.
“We wanted to lead by example, not that we were leaders of anything,” Kadish told NPR. “We just wanted to make sure that the world saw the most positive side of being a gay couple.”
One day before the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York, the Windy City hosted the world’s first Pride march on June 27, 1970 — albeit a much smaller one than the Big Apple’s. The half-mile procession officially went from Washington Square Park to the Water Tower at the bustling intersection of Chicago and Michigan avenues, but many participants continued down to the Civic Center plaza (now Daley Plaza).
Once there, about 150 people listened to speeches at the plaza before doing a “chain dance around the Picasso statue as the marchers shouted, ‘Gay power to gay people,’” the Chicago Tribune reported.
Chicago Gay Liberation, which organized the event, chose the date because the Stonewall uprising had started on the last Saturday in June the year prior. The members also wanted to reach the biggest crowd of shoppers on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
Today, the Chicago Pride Parade takes place on the last Sunday of June, drawing more than 800,000 people to North Halsted Street, long known as “Boystown.”
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir
First out LGBTQ prime minister
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir speaks with the media after winning the elections on April 25, 2009 in Reykjavik. Olivier Morin / AFP via Getty Images
While gay finance minister Per-Kristian Foss was briefly in charge of Norway in 2002 when both the prime minister and foreign minister were traveling abroad, Iceland’s Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is the world’s first openly LGBTQ elected head of state.
A former flight attendant, Jóhanna was first elected to the Althingi (Iceland’s parliament) in 1978 as part of the Social Democratic Party. Throughout her career, she has also served as deputy speaker of the Althingi, vice chair of the SDP and minister of social affairs.
On Feb. 1, 2009, Jóhanna was formally sworn in as Iceland’s first female prime minister and the first out LGBTQ world leader in modern history. She served from 2009 to 2013, steering the country’s economy “back on solid footing” after the massive financial crisis, according to Britannica, with the country’s GDP growing 3 percent in both 2011 and 2012.
She and girlfriend Jónína Leósdóttir entered into a civil union in 2002. In 2010, when Iceland recognized same-sex marriage midway through Jóhanna’s tenure, the pair became one the first same-sex married couples in the country.
Society for Human Rights
First officially recognized gay rights group in the U.S.
German immigrant Henry Gerber launched the Society for Human Rights out of his Chicago home in 1924 and received an official charter from the state of Illinois, making it the first incorporated group devoted to gay rights in the U.S.
Stationed in his former homeland during World War I, Gerber witnessed Berlin’s thriving gay subculture and was influenced by the work of pioneering sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld.
Returning to the States, he took a job with the post office and founded the society out of his apartment at 1710 N. Crilly Court in Chicago’s Old Town Triangle neighborhood.
But the organization lasted less than a year, disbanding in 1925 after police raids on both a member’s home and Gerber’s apartment. Gerber was fired from the post office and eventually moved to New York, where he continued advocating for gay rights until his death in 1972.
In 2015, Gerber’s Chicago home was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.
Renée Richards
First transgender tennis player to compete in the U.S. Open
Dr. Renée Richards reaches for a backhanded return during a match with Australia’s Lesley Hunt in the $100,000 Women’s Professional Tennis Tournament at Walter Brown Arena.Bettmann / Bettmann Archive
Renée Richards was set to play in the 1976 U.S. Open until officials learned she was assigned male at birth and attempted to ban her from competing.
Richards had been a tennis prodigy from a young age, playing in the men’s Open several times and even making the semifinals in 1972. A successful ophthalmologist, she medically transitioned in 1975 and began living as Renée Richards (the name Renée meaning “reborn”).
She kept a fairly low profile — entering a 1976 competition as Renée Clark — but her transition was “outed” in a local news report by San Diego reporter Dick Carlson, father of Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson. Fans rooted against her, with shirts reading “Go away, Renee,” and late-night talk show hosts made crude jokes.
When Richards entered the Tennis Week Open in 1976, 25 of the 32 women in the competition withdrew.
To keep Richards off the court, the United States Tennis Association started demanding a chromosome test for all female players. She challenged that policy in a case that went before the New York Supreme Court.
Mirroring arguments made by groups seeking to ban transgender athletes today, the USTA argued it was trying to maintain “fairness” in the face of “as many as 10,000 transsexuals in the United States and many more female impersonators or imposters” who would be eager to snatch “millions of dollars of prize money.”
Billie Jean King, who had played doubles with Richards, testified that she “does not enjoy physical superiority or strength so as to have an advantage over women competitors in the sport of tennis.”
In a landmark victory, the court ruled in Richards’ favor.
“When an individual such as plaintiff, a successful physician, a husband and father, finds it necessary for [her] own mental sanity to undergo a sex reassignment, the unfounded fears and misconceptions of defendants must give way to the overwhelming medical evidence that this person is now female,” Judge Alfred Ascione wrote in the majority opinion.
Two weeks later, Richards played in the 1977 U.S. Open, where she lost to Wimbledon champ Virginia Wade in the first round. She did reach the doubles finals with Betty Ann Stuart, but the pair lost to Betty Stöve and a fiery new upstart named Martina Navratilova.
Four years later, Renée Richards retired from professional tennis at age 47. She continued her thriving ophthalmology practice and even coached Navratilova to two wins at Wimbledon.
Karl M. Baer
First person to surgically transition
Born in 1885 to a Jewish family in Arolsen, Germany, Baer was assigned female at birth, though the midwife told his father the baby’s body had “such strange” characteristics it was impossible to determine the gender.
In his 1907 autobiography, “Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years,” published under the pseudonym N.O. Body, Baer wrote about being ostracized at school and feeling ill at ease in his assigned sex.
While he is often referred to as transgender, today Baer would more accurately be considered intersex.
“I was born as a boy and raised as a girl,” he wrote. “One may raise a healthy boy in as womanish manner as one wishes and a female creature in as mannish; never will this cause their senses to remain forever reversed.”
In 1904, Baer moved to Hamburg to work as a social worker with the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. It was there that he began living as a man.
“I introduced myself as a man, never as a woman,” Baer wrote. “What am I really? Am I a man? Oh God, no. It would be an indescribable delight if I were. But miracles don’t happen anymore these days.”
Two years later, Baer was in a trolley accident in Berlin. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors realized his ID listed him as female despite his presenting as male. They connected him with Magnus Hirschfeld, who diagnosed him as “a man who was mistakenly identified as a woman.”
With a permit from the Prussian Interior Ministry, Baer underwent a multistage gender confirmation procedure, Haaretz reported, though the exact details of the surgery are unknown. He was released from the hospital in December 1906 with a medical certificate identifying him as male. The following year, court clerks in Arolsen issued him a new birth certificate.
Others had transitioned socially before, but Baer “was unusual in that he used medical technology and surgical means to change his gender,” transgender historian Iris Rachamimov told Haaretz.
Brooke Blurton
First bisexual “Bachelorette”
Brooke Blurton on June 19, 2019 in Perth, Australia.Faith Moran / GC Images
Since “The Bachelor” debuted on ABC in 2002, the marital-minded franchise has spawned multiple spinoff series and over 30 international editions. But it wasn’t until the upcoming season seven of “The Bachelorette Australia” that producers tapped an out member of the LGBTQ community to headline the show: 26-year-old Brooke Blurton, who is bisexual.
For the first time in the franchise’s history, the star will choose among both men and women during the rose ceremony.
“I am not too sure if Australia is ready for it,” Blurton, who previously appeared on the Down Under versions of “The Bachelor” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” told The Daily Telegraph. “I certainly am. If it makes people feel uncomfortable in any way, I really challenge them to think about why it does.”
Blurton, a Noongar Yamatji woman from Western Australia, will also be the first Indigenous woman on the show.
“We are a nation of people from so many different backgrounds, so many different cultures and so many different experiences, yet we all have one thing in common — we all want to be loved in a way that is meaningful to us,” “Bachelorette” host Osher Günsberg said in a statement. “I can’t wait to get started on helping our Bachelorette Brooke find that kind of love.”
Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth will welcome an artwork featuring casts of the faces of 850 trans people.
For the artwork, 850 Improntas (850 Imprints), Mexican artist Teresa Margolles will cast the faces of 850 trans people in London and beyond.
The proposed sculpture would highlight people whose “lives are often overlooked”, many of them sex workers, forming one of the world’s highest-profile public art commissions.
The casts will be arranged around the fourth plinth to create a Tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilisations used to display the remains of war captives or sacrifice victims.
Due to London’s weather, Margolles expects the casts to wear away and eventually disintegrate, leaving behind “a kind of anti-monument”, she told the Guardian.
The current artwork featured at Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth is Heather Phillipson’s The End – a giant replica of whipped cream topped with a cherry, a fly and a drone – which will be on display until September 2022.
Following that will be a sculpture by Samson Kambalu, which is inspired by a 1914 photo of African independence hero and preacher John Chilembwe with English coloniser John Chorley. The sculpture will highlight Chilembwe, making him larger-than-life while Chorley remains life-size, who is wearing a hat in an act of defiance of a colonial rule that forbade Africans from wearing hats in front of white people.
Kambalu and Margolles’ artworks were chosen by the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group after a public vote of nearly 17,500 people.
Ekow Eshun, the chair of the group, said it received more public votes than ever.
A gay dad has emphatically shut down homophobes who think queer people shouldn’t be parents after his son qualified for the Olympics.
Jerry Windle is the proud father of Jordan Windle, a 22-year-old diver who recently qualified for the men’s diving team for the Tokyo Olympics.
Tragically, both of Jordan’s biological parents died when he was just a baby. Jerry later adopted him in Cambodia and nursed him back to health after he had suffered from malnutrition, scabies and intestinal parasites.
Jordan later started diving at the age of seven – and he is now set to achieve a lifelong dream of representing the United States at the Olympics.
“Although there have been some people who didn’t think a gay person could raise a well-balanced, mentally healthy child or should be allowed to raise children; our story is definitive proof that that assumption is purely wrong and is a fallacy,” Jerry told Queerty.
“Jordan is a humble, kind, generous, and nurturing human being who knows and believes all humans are created equal and every human being deserves to be happy, to love and be loved unconditionally – PERIOD.
For the most part, the diving community has been incredibly supportive of our family. In fact, I’ve had many of Jordan’s friends tell him that he had the best dad in the world – and I suppose I’m one of the ‘cool dads’!” he added.
Gay dad Jerry Windle reflected on the sacrifices his son made to achieve his dream
Elsewhere in the interview, Jerry reflected on the personal sacrifices Jordan has made to get to where he is today.
“He has worked tirelessly for 15 years chasing his dream; he has given up high school dances, prom, football games, homecoming, etc, to achieve his goal.
“I have never pushed Jordan in his sport. This has been his journey, and I am so proud to have been able to give him the opportunity, and to be there to support him.
“I never wanted Jordan to feel pressure from me as many athletes do. I’ve always supported his decisions as it relates to his journey chasing the Olympic Dream.”
Efforts to erase LGBTQ sex education topics from public school curriculum are growing in GOP-led state legislatures and sweeping moves are tightening in Arizona, Tennessee, Idaho, and Missouri. These policymakers would rather punish LGBTQ people for being who they are than provide them with information and educational resources to live healthy, successful lives. In what has become our nation’s latest culture war, it’s disheartening to know that LGBTQ youth stand to lose the most.
Already, there’s no national mandate for sexual education, and for the few states that do offer it, LGBTQ topics are disregarded or degraded. Non-profit organization Sex Ed For Social Change, states, “nine states require educators to portray homosexuality in a negative manner or do not allow them to speak about LGBTQ individuals.” This points to the dismal state of LGBTQ sexual education as-is. Additional efforts to hide this information will only further disempower queer youth.
One of the ways I can resist these recent efforts is by sharing my story of what I didn’t learn in sex ed. This article is a continuation of the first.
1. Pleasure can come in multiple forms.
For many people, sexual education de-emphasizes pleasure and emphasizes risk. Youth lose sight of the benefits that a healthy sex life can provide, and are unable to visualize the many ways they are able to please themselves and meet their needs for intimacy, play, and self-expression. There are also many ways that people can receive pleasure–polyamory, phone sex, adult toys, and more. Ethical Slut offers new ways of being in relationship with individuals. It’s the bible for non-traditional relationships. COVID-19 and our fear of physical touching taught us the power of phone sex, and these are learned lessons we can continue to carry with us. And with adult toys, there is a laundry list of do’s and don’ts. Do not, for example, use silicone lube on silicone toys, because the silicone of the lube can break down the toy’s material. Always use water-based lube on silicone toys.
2. How to give consent & How to say no
We may have at least been taught that consent is important, but we don’t learn the nuances of communication when we’re in the moment. As I’ve grown older, I realized that “I’m getting tired,” or “I have an early morning tomorrow” are indirect ways a potential sexual partner may revoke consent. It’s also important to understand that at any point, for any reason, a person can revoke consent. Even if we’ve begun ripping off each other’s clothes voraciously, any person can later decide that they no longer want to continue. It is vulnerable receive rejection, and it’s also extremely vulnerable to tell someone you’re no longer interested. It takes maturity to acknowledge that the best shared sexual experience comes from both partners being super, super, super excited about being together. Simply put, your experience won’t reach its full potential when your partner’s experience isn’t the most pleasurable. Sometimes it pays to wait for the right moment. And if just the thought of rejecting someone or hearing rejection scares you or angers you, please, please deeply consider choosing to not engage in sexual activity until you’re more comfortable navigating the level of communication needed to protect yourself and others. This video explains it succinctly:
The irony is that even if GOP politicians are unsuccessful in their attempts to further limit LGBTQ sexual health education, the mere discussion of the topic is enough to impact the sex lives of queer youth. Consider a 2020 Trevor report that found that “86% of LGBTQ youth said that recent politics have negatively impacted their well-being.” If we don’t feel safe, we’re not likely to fully realize our sexual potential. That’s because mental health is sexual health. No wonder so many drugs that impact our brain health also have sexual side effects. Mental health also determines if we believe we are worthy of sex and healthy sexual relationships.
4. You get to decide what sex means to you
I believe I lost my virginity the moment I had oral sex with my first partner. Because this person is still in my life as a friend, he once retorted, “We didn’t have sex.” To some people (e.g. Bill Clinton), I have realized that oral sex really isn’t sex, but to me it is. In fact, I don’t even think orgasming is necessary for sex to have happened. This happens to be my definition, and I believe it’s just as valid as the individuals who have more conservative interpretations of sex. Because I find sex to be such an intimate, personal experience I want to affirm young readers that they are allowed to determine what sex means to them–especially since as queer people the way we have sex is often explained within a heteronormative context which doesn’t work for everyone.
Trying to give readers a sex education in two 1,000-word personal essays is impossible. These thoughts are just my own experience, and it’s likely there are many other things you could add to this list as well. We can’t go back and time and give ourselves the sex education we needed, but we can continue forward remaining curious and doing all that we can to empower ourselves now. The topics in this two-part series only start the conversation. Continue following the links, questioning, and discovering your body.
The night of 9 September, 1982 started off like any other evening for Declan Flynn.
He went to Belton’s Pub in Donnycarney, Dublin with a friend – an establishment that was just a short walk from his home.
At 11.45pm that night, Flynn left the pub and set off on his walk home through Dublin’s Fairview Park, a well-known meeting spot for gay men. He stopped off at the Fairview Grill on his way home where he met with a male friend. Before continuing his journey, his friend kissed him on the cheek.
Shortly afterwards, he was violently beaten to within an inch of his life by a group of “vigilante” teenage boys who wanted to remove queer people from the park.
At around 1.45am, a badly-beaten Flynn was discovered in the park, with paramedics arriving on the scene just minutes later. He died shortly afterwards in Blanchardstown Hospital.
He was just 31-years-old.
Flynn’s death sent shockwaves through Ireland’s LGBT+ community – but anger reached a crescendo when the boys responsible for his death went before the courts.
One of the boys admitted that they went to the park as part of a “queer bashing” mission, boasting about having “battered about 20 steamers”.
“We used to grab them. If they hit back we gave it to them,” said Robert Alan Armstrong, then aged 18.
Despite this, all five boys walked free, with Mr Justice Seán Gannon telling them that Flynn’s killing “could never be regarded as murder”.
Gannon told the court: “One thing that has come to my mind is that there is no element of correction that is required. All of you come from good homes and experienced care and affection.”
Heartbreak in Ireland’s LGBT+ community quickly turned to fury – a rage that was compounded when the teenage killers held a “victory march” in Dublin after walking away with suspended sentences.
Flynn’s death galvanised the modern Pride movement in Ireland as LGBT+ people rose up and demanded that Irish society treat them with the respect they deserved. Between 400 and 800 queer people took to the streets shortly after the boys were given suspended sentences, marching from Liberty Hall through the city to Fairview Park in protest.
“When the judge let them off with suspended manslaughter sentences, essentially what it said to us was that a gay man’s life had no value,” Tonie Walsh, curator of the Irish Queer Archive, told drag queen Panti Bliss on her radio show Pantisocracy.
That march, Walsh said, was “the first large-scale massing of lesbians and gay men in Ireland”.
“We were angry and fearful at the same time. And the only good thing that came out of all that misery was we funnelled all that anger into Ireland’s first proper Pride parade three months later, when 150 of us walked down newly pedestrianised Grafton Street.”
On 25 June, 1983, protesters marched through the streets from Stephen’s Green to the General Post Office (GPO), where Cathal Ó Ciarragáin, Tonie Walsh and Joni Crone addressed the crowd.
In her speech, Crone delivered a satirical queer re-working of the 1916 proclamation of independence, written by Irish revolutionaries and read in the same spot many years before.
It was a moment of protest, anger and visibility — and it marked a radical shift in queer activism in Ireland.
In an interview with Una Mullally for her book In the Name of Love: The Movement for Marriage Equality in Ireland, LGBT+ rights campaigner Izzy Kamikaze said: “We were the people who organised the Fairview Park march after the killing, which is the thing that people say was ‘The Irish Stonewall’. It was.”
Ireland at the time was a staunchly Catholic country and it was a cold, unrelentingly cruel place for queer people to exist.
Since then, things have changed drastically. Gay sex was finally decriminalised in 1993. In 2015, marriage equality was legalised and the Gender Recognition Act was finally passed, giving some trans people legal recognition for the first time.
None of those changes would have happened without the tireless, painstaking work done by LGBT+ activists who spent years marching through the streets, demanding change.
When marriage equality finally became a reality in 2015, activists decorated a footbridge in Fairview Park in memory of Declan Flynn, showing that the legacy of his shocking death will never be forgotten.
Almost 40 years on, Flynn remains a vital figure in Ireland’s Pride movement – even if he never lived to see LGBT+ equality.
An already married couple are planning a beautiful “re-wedding” after one spouse came out as a trans woman.
Jae and Rayna Harvey, of Somerset, England, first got married in 2018 in Texas, where Jae is from, but shortly after the wedding Rayna came out as a trans woman.
Rayna told The Mirror that she had been suppressing her true self since she was 11 years old, and that she felt hugely “liberated” after coming out while on their honeymoon in Wiltshire.
The couple are now planning a “re-wedding” to celebrate their love now that Rayna is out, and Jae said: “There’s a bit of a disconnect when we think back to our first wedding as I feel, ‘Well, Ray wasn’t there?’ and I want her in my wedding.
“What I want more than anything is for her family to see her walk down the aisle and for her to have her day – I got to have mine with all my bells and whistles, so now it’s her turn.”
Rayna said that since coming out as trans, she has received “absolutely incredible support” from everyone in her life, including her 93-year-old nan, who buys her “granddaughter” cards on special occasions.
Jae added that at the “re-wedding”, set to take place in Somerset’s Quantock Hills next September, both brides will be “wearing beautiful black dresses” as part of “an all-black and white theme with white, pink and red roses” symbolising rebirth.
In a message to Jae recently shared on Instagram, Rayna said: “Wife, words will never be able to explain how much of a difference you’ve made to my life, I owe most of who I am to you and the time you invested to teach me and to help me get where I want to be.
“From doing my photoshoots, helping me with what goes together clothes wise, holding my hand and reassuring me, to just loving me and being my wife, you’ve got it all, and I’m so so lucky to be loved by you.
“Here’s to another lifetime of love, laughs and happiness.”
A single gay man who said he’s “always dreamed” of a big family has just adopted his sixth child with a disability.
Ben Carpenter, 37, from Huddersfield worked in the care sector before he adopted his first child when he was just 21 years old.
A single gay man who said he’s “always dreamed” of a big family has just adopted his sixth child with a disability.
Ben Carpenter, 37, from Huddersfield worked in the care sector before he adopted his first child when he was just 21 years old.
Adopting children who had disabilities and additional mental and physical needs was important to him, he said, because they “were the most vulnerable and the ones that were most in need of a loving and caring home”.
In 2015, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) estimatedthat while 25 per cent of all looked-after children have a disability, this number skyrockets to 40 per cent for children waiting on the adoption register.
His first child Jack, who is now 14, has autism, and soon Ben started his family he adopted Ruby, now 11, who has complex needs.
I had a lot to prove at such a young age,” he said.
“I needed to show that I was mature enough and could offer these kids what they needed.”
After adopting Ruby, Ben was asked by the adoption agency whether he would adopt his daughter’s biological sister Lily, who is deaf.
His fourth child was six-year-old Joseph, who has Down’s syndrome, and his fifth child was Teddy, who had Cornelia de Lange syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.
Tragically, Teddy passed away from sepsis in November, 2019, which was unrelated to his disability.
Ben said: “I was devastated and I felt guilty for a while because I kept wondering if there was something I could have done to fix it.
“Before Teddy passed away, I had been contacted to see if I would consider another child. It was a little boy with severe brain issues.
“I had said yes, but when Teddy passed I needed to put the process on hold to allow myself to grieve.”
Last year, although still grieving his son, Ben said: “I realised that this little boy also needed me.”
In April of that year, the gay dad adopted his sixth child, Louis, whose needs to use a wheelchair because of his disability.
He explained: “I had always dreamed about having a big family and I am so happy that my kids are a part of it and that they have so many siblings.
“I often sit and imagine them all at each other’s weddings.
“They are all so supportive of each other’s needs and I am so proud that I have created a happy, loving and stable environment for them to grow up in.
“As much as I have changed their life, they have also changed mine.”
Ben is currently raising money for a multi-sensory room, which “will help the children with sensory issues, developmental disabilities and learning difficulties”, via JustGiving.
