Who's That Queer

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Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the Romantic era whose music has made an indelible impression on the world, yet many things seemed to have been stacked against him. The importance of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and its consequences on the personal expression in his compositions cannot be underestimated. Tchaikovsky's gayness in itself has been known to the West for at least 75 years, gathered from the composer's own writings as well as those of his brother Modest, who was also gay. More debatable is how well he accepted his sexuality or was comfortable with it.


His mother died from Cholera when Tchaikovsky was only 14 years old and this great loss affected the boy deeply. As a boy and also in later life, he suffered from various neuroses and experienced periods of deep depression. Although he learned the piano as a boy, Tchaikovsky was initially to study law and his first profession was as a clerk performing administrative functions. It was only at the age of 23 that he made a career change and decided to study composition at the new St Petersburg Conservatory.

Undoubtedly a major contributor to the composer's bouts of depression was his homosexuality. This is not surprising since at that time in Russia, the state considered certain acts to be crimes carrying the death penalty. At one stage Tchaikovsky married a female admirer, perhaps to conceal his true nature, but the marriage was a disaster. It broke up within a short period of time, and Tchaikovsky suffered a breakdown and attempted suicide.

Tchaikovsky has left us a wealth of great music including Symphonies and Concertos, some Operas and many shorter works. He is particularly remembered for his story-telling music, including Romeo and Juliet and the evocative free-flowing ballet music for Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty.


Source: Gay for Today

Who's that Queer?

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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was a playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the Victorian Era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his works remain popular today, especially The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men.

While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, blue china and other objets d'art. Legends persist that his behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms (which still survive as student accommodation at his old college) trashed.

Though married with children, Wilde is considered by most historians to be bisexual or homosexual. He had significant sexual relationships with Frank Miles, Robert Baldwin Ross, and Lord Alfred Douglas (known as "Bosie"). Wilde also had numerous sexual encounters with working-class male youths, who were often male prostitutes.

Wilde and Douglas in 1893

In 1895, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals, or as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery." The verbal accusations led Wilde to a file a lawsuit for libel, but ended with Wilde being sent to prison for gross indeceny with other men.

Source: wikipedia

Who's that Queer?

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Harris Glenn Milstead was an American singer and actor known by his drag persona Divine and his appearance in several of John Waters' films. The New York Times said of Milstead's films in the 1980s, "Those who could get past the unremitting weirdness of Divine's performance discovered that the actor/actress had genuine talent, including a natural sense of comic timing and an uncanny gift for slapstick."

Born in Baltimore on October 19, 1945, Milstead was raised as an only child. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Lutherville, a Baltimore suburb, where Milstead attended Towson High School and became acquainted with John Waters, who lived in his neighborhood.

In the 1970s, Milstead starred as Divine in a number of New York City theater pieces, including the classic camp women's prison drama, Women Benhind Bars, which was a major off-Broadway hit in 1976, playing the lead role of the evil matron, Pauline. Divine returned to the stage in another play, The Neon Woman, where he played the role of Flash Storm, the owner of a sleazy strip club plagued by a series of murders.

Milstead is most notably remembered for his numerous starring roles in film, for which he was a part of the regular cast known as the Dreamlanders. The Dreamlanders appeared in many of John Waters' earlier works such as Pink Flamingos (in 1972), Female Trouble, Polyester and Hairspray.

In the mid 1980’s, Milstead visited Bergen, Norway. At that time, Polyester had been a great success at the local cinema and he was treated as a real superstar by the press and by his live-show audience. In an interview with Bergen Gay Radio, Milstead mentioned that it was one of only a few times when he had experienced such immense appreciation. Usually he felt he was just some kind of industrial entertainer.

On the evening of March 7, a week after Hairspray was released, he was in Los Angeles staying in the Regency Hotel. The next day, he was due to audition for a part in the Fox network's television series Married... with Children. Known for his punctuality when working, people became concerned when he did not appear on the set the next morning. His manager, Bernard Jay, went to the hotel at noon to check on him. The autopsy found he had died in his sleep of heart failure, or an enlarged heart brought on by sleep apnea. He was 42 years old.

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There have been few vocalists in the history of heavy metal whose singing style has been as influential and instantly recognizable as the “Metal God”, much less those of the gay variety. Rob Halford, the English singer-songwriter, and lead vocalist for the heavy metal band Judas Priest, has a voice that could give Mariah Carey a run for her money.

Halford has a nearly four octave vocal range, having recorded notes from D2 to B5, though it is rumored that he has reached notes as high as G#6 on at least one occasion during a performance in 1975. This queer is one of the most respected singers of heavy metal and rock music with a quasi-operatic vocal style and high-pitched screams. Halford is also remembered for his motorcyclist look.

In 1998, during an interview with MTV Halford revealed that he is gayl. His sexual orientation was known to Judas Priest band members, and was somewhat of an open secret among fans and the heavy metal press. Halford called the response from the heavy metal community "tremendous". This event was the subject of the song "Hats off to Halford" from the band Atom and His Package. Halford returned to his metal roots in 2000 with his band Halford and the widely acclaimed album Resurrection (2000). A live album in 2001 was followed up by 2002's Crucible.

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Who's that Queer?

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Tennessee Williams was an American playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and The Night of the Iguana (1961) received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play.

Williams' homosexual relationship with Frank Merlo, a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, lasted from 1947 until Merlo's death from cancer in 1963. With that stability, Williams created his most enduring works. Merlo provided balance to many of Williams' frequent bouts with depression and the fear that, like his schizophrenic sister Rose, he would go insane.

He gave American theatergoers unforgettable characters, an incredible vision of life in the South, and a series of powerful portraits of the human condition. He was deeply interested in something he called "poetic realism," namely the use of everyday objects which, seen repeatedly and in the right contexts, become imbued with symbolic meaning. His plays also seemed preoccupied with the extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior: madness, rape, incest, nymphomania, as well as violent and fantastic deaths. Williams himself often commented on the violence in his own work, which to him seemed part of the human condition; he was conscious, also, of the violence in his plays being expressed in a particularly American setting. As with the work of Edward Albee, critics who attacked the "excesses" of Williams' work often were making thinly veiled attacked on his sexuality. Homosexuality was not discussed openly at that time, but in Williams' plays the themes of desire and isolation reveal, among other things, the influence of having grown up gay in a homophobic world.