BDSM Education- Leather History Timeline

This page is in memory of Tony DeBlase, friend.  One of the memories of Tony that stands out for me was circa 1987-1992 at I think the RoundUp in San Francisco, CA.  It was an event that had many people doing demos or performances.  Tony was doing a performance/demo using a violet wand.  I was watching with interest since there were very few of us at that time doing electric play.  I could tell something was not going right so I moved around the people to get closer.  What no one knew was the violet wand was shorting out and it was giving Tony a jolt and not letting him let go.  Tony gave me a do something look, so with my foot I kicked the plug out of the unit.  To say the least Tony was very grateful and happy I had been watching  the demo (and not off with some hot woman!) and knew enough about electrical play to detect a problem and know how to resolve the problem without getting myself hurt.

I would like to thank the Leather Archives & Museum for giving me permission to put Tony's work on my web site and permission to add in things.  I have tried to make spelling corrections and any additions that I know about while trying to preserve it in Tony's style.

Anyone that knows of any missing information and/or corrections please let us know.

As a project of the Leather Archives & Museum, DeBlase created the Leather History Time Line. Four editions of the time line have been published so far, the first in 1993 and the most recent in 1999.

The last update of the Leather History Timeline was made in February of 1999. This project will continue and is in need of one very special individual to keep it alive. If you think you might be that person or know that person, please contact the LA&M Director, Rick Storer.

We have posted a text version of the Timeline which you may view. It is a very large page. We will be updating the Timeline exhibit to make it easier to peruse. This document was simply cut and pasted from the actual Timeline. We have not edited it and are aware that the act of cutting and pasting leaves behind some odd punctuation.

Ca. 5000 BC
Creation of rock drawings at Ti-n-Lalan, near Fezzan in Libya, showing an animal headed creature with a gigantic penis, and an animal/man hybrid, having sex.
Ca. 2500 BC
Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, in the Sumerian poem cycles that constitute one of the oldest known pieces of literature, meets Enkidu, the only man who rivals him for strength and bravery. They become lovers and particularly enjoy wrestling with each other.
2355 - 2261 BC
The reign of Egyptian King Pepy II Neferkare who, in what may be history's first homosexual short story, makes nocturnal visits to have sex with his general, Sisinne.
Ca. 1900 BC
Destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Too bad the bible is not more explicit about the reason. The interpretation hinges on the Hebrew word meaning "to know." The term is used 943 times in the Old Testament; only 15 of these times is it a euphemism for sexual activity. In the New Testament, the only reference to Sodom (Luke 10:10) identifies the sin as inhospitality. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah probably had nothing to do with sexuality. [AA]
1503-1354 BC
The reign of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut who adopted male dress and even wore a false beard.
Ca. 1250 BC
The Ani Papyrus shows the rite of the "animation of the phallus." It appears to be one of the earliest recorded examples of a blow job.
Ca. 1000 BC
The Israelite king Saul demands of David, as a bride-price for his daughter Michal, 100 Philistine foreskins.
Ca. 730 BC
"Krimon warms the heart of Simias" is one of several lines of homosexual graffiti that constitute one of the earliest know uses of the Greek alphabet. [AA]
7th Century BC
Ashurbanipal, the last Assyrian king, dresses in women's clothing most of the time. The cross-dressing is used to justify his eventual overthrow. [TOL]
600 BC
After this date it becomes customary for Greek hoplites, the upper class warriors who fight in the phalanx, each to take a boy of 12 as a lover to train until he is 18 and can hunt and fight. In Crete a ritual kidnapping consecrates the pairing.
580's BC
Sappho's famed girls? school flourishes on the isle of Lesbos. Her ezusite love poems to students are the earliest known lesbian writings. [AA]
Ca. 540 BC
The Etruscan Tomb of the Bulls at Tarquinia, with its fresco depicting one man anally penetrating another.
418 BC, Dec. 25
Birth of Epaminondas, one of the great military geniuses of the ancient world. Like other Greek warriors he loved boys, but for him delight in boys was complete, he never married or produced an heir. His two favorite boys fell in battle and, by his order, were buried with him in his tomb. [Greif 82]
382 BC, April 18
Birth of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. In 350 BC he leaves on a military expedition, taking with him 800 boys to be used for the pleasure of himself and his officers.
378 BC
The Sacred Band of Thebes is formed. This military unit consists entirely of 150 male couples and is based upon the belief that men fighting alongside their lovers would die rather than shame one another. [TOL]
356 BC, July 20
The birth of Alexander of Macedonia—known to history as Alexander the Great—king, general, world conqueror, and lover of men, particularly Hephaiston, whose death in 324 he mourns extravagantly, and the eunuch slave boy Bagoas, who had been a favorite of Persian king Darius.
338 BC
The Sacred Band of Thebes is annihilated by Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander at the Battle of Chaeronea. The 300 stood their ground and perished.
333 BC
Alexander of Macedonia begins his campaign to conquer the Persian Empire, and takes Egypt and much of Asia before turning back in central India.
324 BC
The death of Hephaiston, lover of Alexander the Great.[G30]
323 BC, June 10
Death of Alexander the Great.
300 BC
Addeaus of Macedon is quoted as saying, "When you meet a boy who pleases take action at once. Don't be polite, just grab him by the balls and strike while the iron is hot."
186 BC
The Roman Senate attempts to suppress the Bacchanalian rites in which, according to the historian Livy, there is more debauchery among the men with each other than with the women.
100 BC, July 13
Birth of Gaius Julius Caesar in Rome. "Wife to every man and husband to every woman." [Greif 82]
71 BC
Revolt of Roman slaves, led by Spartacus. The revolution is crushed by consuls Pompey and Crassus and the slaves are crucified along the Appian Way.
10 BC, Aug. 1
Birth of Claudius, Emperor of Rome. Robert Graves? novels, and Masterpiece Theatre's production of I Claudius enlightened us, but not about Emperor Claudius? contributions to the gladiatorial games or of his male lovers.
1 BC
Publication of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, the first self-help sex manual.


1 - 999AD

12 AD, Aug. 31: birth of the future Roman emperor, Caligula
26 AD: The Roman Emperor Tiberius (born Nov 16, 42 BC) retires to Capri, where he indulges in all forms of sexual exploration.
39 AD, Sept. 4: birth of the future Roman Emperor, Titus. He was not a Tiberius or Caligula or Nero, or even a Claudius. But he did complete the coliseum, the site of some of the bloodiest activities yet to come in Roman history.
41 AD, Jan 21: Roman Emperor Caligula killed by a guard who had been frequently forced to kiss the royal middle finger in public, and other things in private. (Birth Aug 31, 12 AD) [Greif 82]
45-68 AD: Reign of Nero (born Dec. 15, 37 BC), who as Emperor of Rome, would elevate torture to new heights as a spectator sport.
53 AD, Sept. 15: Birth of Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, who became the Roman Emperor Trajan, the first non-Italian emperor. His accomplishments were many, not only in battle, but in the construction of public works. All of the ancient sources discuss Trajan's homosexuality candidly, differing only in the stories used to illustrate his sexual preferences. [Greif 82]
69 AD, April 15: The Roman Emperor Otho (Marcus Salvius Otho), who literally rose to power on his knees before Nero, stabs himself in the heart.
76 AD, Jan. 24: Birth of Hadrian, who would become Emperor of Rome and lover of the beautiful Antinous (July 16 c.110) who drowned himself in the Nile at age 21, perhaps in as a self sacrifice to save the life of his lover and master.
79 AD, Aug 24: Vesuvius erupts, thereby preserving the homoerotic, and other sexually explicit, wall murals that would surely have been destroyed by later Christian "civilizations".
188 AD, April 4: Birth of the Roman Emperor Caracalla. Gay -- but not leather, he certainly set the standard for a bath house! [Greif 82]
3rd century AD: Sebastian, a handsome young Roman Centurion is beloved by the emperor Diocletian, who turned against him when he embraces Christianity. He was stripped and tied to a tree and shot full of arrows by his fellow centurions. But he survives only to die many years later in a second martyrdom when he is stoned to death. St. Sebastian has been called the patron saint of gays, and the patron saint of SM.
205, March 8: Birth of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who would become Heliogabalus, the boy Emperor of Rome. Blatantly homosexual he was married twice in one night choosing a well hung charioteer as his husband and a boy named Hierocles as his wife. He sent out his agents to round up the men with the largest penises in the Roman empire. Eventually his own guards shoved a sword up his ass and dumped him in a sewer. He was 17. [Greif 82]
342 AD: The emperors Constantius and Constans, having inherited much of the empire of their father Constantine, call for "exquisite punishment" for homosexuality. [AA]
390 AD: The Roman Emperor Theodosius sets the punishment for homosexuality as death by burning.
533 AD: Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, decrees that homosexuality and blasphemy are equally to blame for famines, earthquakes, and pestilence. He orders castration for offenders. [AA]
693 AD: The Council of Toledo declares that "sodomists" have infiltrated the Church and order that clerics who lay with men should be degraded, exiled, and damned.
809-813: Reign of Abbasid Caliph Al-Amin of Baghdad, whose mother becomes dismayed by his preference for male eunuchs and packs his court with girls disguised as boys. These "ghulamiyyat" then become a fashion in many Moslem courts.
955-964: Reign of Pope John XII who loves both boys and muscular young men, he dies at the age of 26 from a stroke while having sex with one of his beautiful young men.


1000 - 1499

1032 - 1044: Reign of Pope Benedict IX, who has been called the Christian incarnation of Elagabalus.
1106, Sept. 28: Robert II, gay son of William the Conqueror is captured in battle and imprisoned for the rest of his life.
1073: All known copies of Sappho's lesbian love poems are burned by ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople and Rome. [AA]
1076: Archbishop Lanfranc in England orders a priest's benediction on a marriage, but for another 100 years poor people continue to marry without benefit of clergy.
1157, Sept. 8: Birth of Richard Plantagenet, Richard Lion Heart, Richard I, King of England and Duke of Aquitaine. His lover for many years was Philip, King of France. He was one of the era's most widely respected generals. But he produced no heirs and eventually his loathsome brother John ascended to the British throne. The result was the Magna Carta.
1210 - 1215: The Council of Paris declares sodomy to be a capital offense. This marked the start of a militant anti-sodomy campaign by the Catholic Church. [AA]
1252: St. Thomas Aquinas begins his theological teaching. He declares that God created sex organs exclusively for reproduction; homosexual acts were thus Aunnatural" and heretical. [AA]
ca. 1260: The Legal school of Orleans orders that women found guilty of lesbian acts have their clitoris removed for the first offense; that they be further mutilated for a second offense; and burned at the stake for a third.
1268, Oct. 29: Frederick of Baden, Duke of Austria, willingly joins his condemned lover, 16 year old Conradin of Sicily, the last legitimate Hohenstaufen (Born March 24, 1252), and they are buried alive together. [Greif 82]
1292: Europe's first known execution for sodomy takes place in Ghent. [AA]
1307, Oct. 13: Philip IV of France orders the arrest of all members of the Knights Templar. In the following years hundreds of Templars are imprisoned, tortured, and/or burned because of their supposed toleration as sinless of "acts against nature."
1310, Oct. 12: The Knights Templar are put on trial for heresy in France. Most recant the confessions made under torture, expecting pardon from and Pope Clement V, which is not granted. The French crown, and the church, thus gain control of the order's great wealth.
1323: In one of the earliest recorded trials for sodomy, Arnold of Verniolle is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a diet of bread and water. Despite stiff church prohibitions against sodomy, the trial record shows that Arnold had little trouble finding sex partners. [AA]
1326: Hugh le Despenser the younger, the second lover of Edward II of England, is hung, after his genitals have been cut off and burned before his eyes, upon the order of Edward's wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. [Greif 82]
1327: Edward II of England is murdered by the insertion of a red hot poker into his rectum. (birth April 25, 1284) [Greif 82]
1350: Welsh poet Daffyd ap Gwilym produces explicit ballads like "The Penis" and "Deer Copulating"
1373, Sept, 28: Birth of the painter Caravaggio, whose short, violent life encompassed drinking, brawling, murder & sodomy. [Greif 82]
1431, May 30: Birth of Joan of Arc, at Rouen, France. She led the French armies against the British invaders and won battle after battle. Then she was captured by the British in Normandy and condemned to be burned at the stake because she refused to stop wearing men's clothing. Abandoned by most of the French, her friend Gilles de Rais tried to rescue her but was too late.
1440, Oct. 26: Gilles de Rais, best friend of Joan of Arc, is executed in Nantes, France, for the torture and murder of hundreds of children. (born Jan. 10, 1404)
1450-1453: Pope Nicholas empowers the Spanish Inquisition to investigate and punish homosexuality. [AA]
1464: Pope Paul II elected to office. Like John XII he died while having sex, but the cause of his death was strangulation.
1469, May 3: Birth of Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian political philosopher. The Prince is a masterwork of mind control. [Greif 82]
1471-1484: Reign of Pope Sixtus IV. His reign is purchased by his lover Pietro Riario who runs the church, including the Spanish Inquisition, until his death in 1474. After that time Sixtus entertains himself by having muscular young men strip and fight to the death, the survivor becoming his bed partner. When Sixtus was ill his physicians prescribe mother's milk, the pope suggests that the juice of young men would suit him better.
1474: A Rooster is burned at the stake for "the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg".
1475, March 6: Birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti, (death 1564) Italian sculptor, painter and poet. Not a leatherman himself but certainly gay. And where would we be without his David to become, among other things, FeBe's logo, and his wrestlers in a 69 of testicle torture!
ca. 1480: Pico of Mirandola in "Against the Astrologists", describes a male acquaintance who is sexually excited by being whipped before sex. This is the first known case history of a masochist. [wd]
1494: Christopher Columbus's physician on his second voyage to the new world, wrote that the behavior of the natives was, "Detestable! Nauseating! Disgusting!" It was common practice among these Carib tribes to castrate boys captured from enemy villages and keep them as lovers until they were eighteen, then they were killed and eaten.


1500 - 1599

1500's: Elena de Cespedes, a Spanish woman who lived as a man and married a woman, is discovered and immolated.
1513: Balboa, while exploring what is now Panama described homosexual activities among the natives he witnessed as "Abominable". He threw 40 of the offenders to his dogs. [AA]
1520, June 30: Inca Emperor Montezuma II dies at Tenochtitlan, Mexico. He is know to have cannibalized the boys he sodomized. [Greif 82]
1526: A Spanish historian wrote that Carib men also had lovers that they did not intend to smother in butter and spices. These lovers were distinguished by wearing "naguas" or short skirts and jewelry their lovers had given them.
1530: In an Inca town in northern Peru, shortly after being conquered by the Spanish, there were fifteen women for every man, the men had been burned for suspected homosexual activities. By 1580 the area was still known for its gay activity.
1533: The "buggery" law is passed in England decreeing a penalty of death. This is the first time the offense is covered under civil, rather than church, law. [AA]
1541: The birth of the painter El Greco (death 1614) "His men are martyrs or conquerors; in their gaunt visages he traces the weariness and the final exhaustion of the body in surrendering to the mystical vision, or the savage meditation of those entrusted with the flagellation of Heretics."
1550 - 1555: Reign of Pope Julius III who, upon election as Pope, made his 17 year old lover a member of the College of Cardinals, and also appointed him Secretary of State. His orgies with teenage Cardinals were common knowledge. Most were horrified but the Archbishop of Benevento wrote a book, In Praise of Sodomy, dedicated to the pope.
1551, Sept. 19, Birth of Henri III, King of France. In the final years of his reign (he died at 37) he surrounded himself with handsome young men and abandoned himself to hedonistic joys. He took particular delight in flogging the backs of penitents marching in holy procession. [Greif 82]
1563: The Roman Catholic council of Trent concludes that sex is bad and denounces "paintings calculated to excite lust." Pope Paul IV has clothes painted onto the naked figures in Michelangelo's painting, Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel.
1564, Feb 26: Birth of English playwright Christopher Marlowe. "All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools." [Greif 82]
1570's: Rome: Montaigne reports that at the Church of St. John, Catholic priests perform same sex marriages. A contemporary historian reports that same sex couples married in St. John's are burned in the city square.
1576: Brazil: Spanish explorers report that some native women "give up all duties of women and imitate men...Each has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."
1580, April 1: The Netherlands: Civil Marriage is first established.
1583: The Third Provincial Council of Lima, in Peru, tells natives that "sodomy whether with another man, or with a boy , or a beast ...carries the death penalty, ...and the reason God has allowed that you should be so afflicted and vexed by other nations is because of this vice that your ancestors had and many of you still have." [AA]
1585: In one of the earliest recorded cases of masochism, Sister Mary Magdalene de Pazzi begs other nuns to tie her up and hurl hot wax at her. She also made a novice at the convent thrash her. [AA]
1590: In "Lectiones antique" Ludovicus Caelius Rhodiginus describes a man who needs to be whipped to have an erection. [wd]


1600-1699

1600, March 18: Fourteen year old Catalan de Erauso escapes from a Basque convent then goes on to serve in the Spanish army dressed as a man. In 1620 the Pope gives permission for her to continue to dress in men's clothing.
1602, July 6: birth of Jerome Duquesnoy in Brussels Belgium, The eminent sculptor was working on projects at the cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent when he was arrested for sodomy with two acolytes of the church who had served as his models. He was strangled and then burned at the stake. [Greif 82]
1610: The Virginia Colony passes the New World's first sodomy law, decreeing the penalty of death for offenders. [AA]
1611, July 27: Birth of Murad IV, Sultan of Turkey. His name was synonymous with cruelty, torture and unspeakable horror. His reign was bloody, and the armless, legless, tongue less victims of his tyranny numerous. [Greif 82]
1619: Virginia: The first slaves are brought to North America. Quaker John Woolman later notes that despite their not being allowed legal marriage, "Negroes marry after their own way."
1624: Richard Cornish of the Virginia Colony is tried and hanged for sodomy. He is the first person in America known to be convicted of this offense. [AA]
1624 - 1653: The rule of Nzinga as King of Angola, this female to male cross dresser fought and won many battles against the Portuguese army.
1625, Feb. 7: In Virginia Thomas Hatch is sentenced to a whipping, the loss of one ear, and seven years of servitude, for daring to speak against the execution of a man for the crime of buggery.
1631: Mervyn Touchet, the Earl of Castlehaven, is put on trial for sodomy. He is found guilty and beheaded. [AA]
1631: Rembrandt sells rude etchings, thought to be of his wife pissing.
1638: Massachusetts orders every town to "dispose of all single persons." In Connecticut, bachelors are taxed 20 shillings a week.
1639: The German doctor Johann Heinrich Meibom describes the sexual excitement of some men when whipped in De usu flagrorum. He reasons that this is because the sperm fluid in the kidneys is heated by whipping and then descends to the testicles. Variations on this theory will dominate the thinking on SM until the 19th century. [wd]
1641-42: The Massachusetts Bay Colony incorporates the language of Leviticus 20:13 into it's laws. Other New England colonies soon follow suit. [AA]
1649: Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon are charged with "lewd behavior each with other upon a bed" in Plymouth MA. Charges against Hammon are dropped, but Norman is convicted and has to make a public confession. She is the first woman in America know to be convicted of lesbian activity. [AA]
1644, April 10: Birth of John Wilmot, later Earl of Rochester, British writer. His poetry extols the joys of every possible type of human coupling.
1654: Execution of Jerome Duquesnoy (born 1602), court sculptor of Flanders. he is found guilty of sodomy with two church acolytes who had served as his models, strangled and burned at the stake. His brother, Francois, also a sculptor, created Brussels? famous Pissing Boy fountain.
1655: The colony of New Haven expands its definition of sodomy - a capital offense - to include sexual relations between women. [AA]
1659: In France, by Royal decree, secret marriages and abductions are summarily abolished.
1661: In New England, the first Colonial divorce. Massachusetts averages one a year until 1760.
1661 - 1750: All the Southern colonies, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania pass laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage.
1662-1723: The reign of Emperor Kang Xi, who first took steps to prohibit consensual homosexuality in China.
1677: Using the newly invented microscope, Dutch researchers Leeuwenhoek and Ham observe human sperm for the first time. [wd]
1681: The young Count de Vermandois, the son of Louis XIV of France by Louise de La Valliere, applies for admission to a secret fraternity of homosexuals active, but underground, in the French Court. Because the young count is so indiscreet in his activities, his father discovers his orientation, and the existence of the fraternity. Louis has his son whipped in his presence and then exiles him.
1694: First mention of the Cerne Abbas Giant, a huge chalk drawing on the side of a hill near Dorchester, England. The naked giant with club and erect phallus is supposedly prehistoric. But why was it not noticed until now? Some suspect a 17th Century hoax designed to annoy the Puritans.
1694, Nov 21; Birth of Francois Marie Arouet, better known as the French philosopher/writer Voltaire. He once ended a letter to a male friend, "I kiss your rod." Should we consider Candide a masochist?
1698, Kristian Franz Paullini confirms Meibom's theory in Flagellum salutis, but claims that blood is warmed by whipping, which then excites the sperms in the testicles. [wd]


1700 - 1799

1700's: In the Prussian state of Uuerttemburg, cripples and blind persons are not permitted to marry.
1712, June 28: Birth of Jean Jacques Rousseau (death July 2, 1778). By his own reports, except for one relationship, the artist was a lifelong unfulfilled masochist, dating from a school spanking when he was 11. In one affair, he had a Mistress who dominated him thoroughly, but even she refused to re-enact his much desired spanking. [JWB]
1720: Anne Bonney and Mary Read, partners who dressed as men and sailed the seas are tried for Piracy.
1730, Sept. 17: Birth of Baron Freidrich von Steuben, aid to Frederick the Great, who was in charge of training the Prussian army until there were objections to "indecent liberties" with young men. He then offers his services to the Continental Army in America and joins Washington at Valley Forge. There he organizes and disciplines the men into a powerful striking force. When he retires he adopts two handsome young men to become his heirs, and he probably continues to train and discipline them. [Greif 82]
1730, Nov. 6: The future Frederick the Great of Prussia, 18, (born Jan. 24, 1712) is forced by his father to watch the torture and beheading of his lover, Lt. Hans Hermann von Katte, after the two of them were caught trying to run away together. Later as king, on learning that a particularly well-endowed soldier had been arrested for "bestiality with his horse," he is reputed to have replied, "Fool -- don't put him in irons; put him in the infantry."
1730-31: Authorities announce the discovery of an extensive homosexual network in Amsterdam. Three hundred prosecutions resulted and 70 people, including boys as young as 14, were executed. [AA]
1740, June 2: the Birth of the Marquis deSade. [Greif 82]
1740: China's first sodomy laws are enacted by Manchu Qing regime, which outlaws male homosexuality. [AA]
1749: Publication of Fanny Hill, by John Cleland. The novel about a London prostitute is immediately suppressed, but it has enjoyed enormous popularity for more than two centuries.
1749, Jan. 29: Birth of King Christian VII of Denmark, whose physician assigned him a sadistic male lover who beat him regularly. [Greif 82]
1753, Sept 20: Birth of Tippu Sahib, the last maharajah of Mysore, who spends his life resisting British designs on India. The "Tiger of Mysore" demonstrates his feelings for the British by personally supervising the gang rape of each captured soldier. [Greif 82]
1753, Oct. 18: Birth of Jean Jaczues Regis de Cambaceres in France. Under Napoleon he became the primary architect of the Napoleonic Code. He was discreet, but not secretive, about his homosexuality and it was through his influence that the Napoleonic Code, and many later laws based upon it, legalized private consenting homosexual acts between adults. (died: Mar. 8, 1824)
1754, Sept 9: Birth of William Bligh, later to become renowned as Captain of H.M.S. Bounty. He survived the mutiny and the long voyage in an open boat, while all of the mutineers perished on Pitcairn Island. And he certainly knew how to have a man flogged!
1755, Sept. 4: Birth of Hans Axel, Count von Fersen, in Stockholm Sweden. General, Statesmen, and lover of three different Swedish kings. The reason for his horrible death has never been satisfactorily explained. A savage mob tore him to pieces in the streets of Stockholm as police looked on and did nothing. He had been beaten with canes and umbrellas and then kicked to death. [Greif 82]
1758, May 6: Birth of Francois de Robespierre, a leader of the French revolution, he led in sending many of the nobility, and their supporters, to the torture chambers, and to the guillotine. He ended up there himself.
1763, Oct. 29: By order of the King of France, the Marquis de Sade is committed to Vincennes fortress for excesses committed in a brothel which he has been frequenting for a month.
1768, Apr. 3: On Easter Sunday, at about nine o'clock in the morning The Marquis de Sade accosts Rose Keller, she accompanies Sade in a cab to Arcueil. There, in his rented cottage, he orders her to undress, threatens her with a knife, and flogs her.
1772, Sept. 3: Verdict: The Marquis de Sade, and his man servant Latour, are found guilty. The former of crimes of poisoning and sodomy, and the latter of the crime of sodomy, and are condemned to expiate their crimes at the cathedral porch before being taken to the Place Saint-Louis "for the said Sade to be decapitated.. and the said Latour to be hanged by the neck and strangled... then the body of the said Sade and that of the said Latour to be burned and their ashes strewn to the wind." On Sept 12 Sade and Latour are executed in effigy on the Place des Precheurs, in Aix.
1775, July 9: Birth of Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis in London. A master at writing the silly, overripe 18th Century Gothic romance novels that are still fun to read. In his Ambrosio, or the Monk (1795) Ambrosio is seduced by a woman driven to blind nymphomania by demons, who enters the monastery and Ambrosios's bed disguised as a boy. His sins are found out and he is tortured by the Inquisition, sentenced to death, and bargains with the Devil, who destroys him. [Greif 82]
1776, Jan. 17: M. Trillet comes to La Coste to claim his daughter, who is known in the chateau as Justine. During an argument with the Marquis de Sade, Trillet fires a pistol shot at him almost point blank, but misses. He runs off to the La Coste township where he babbles about what has happened. Later Catherine (aka Justine) sends someone to find her father, who returns to the chateau. Here she tries to calm him but Trillet, who has brought four other men back with him, flies into another rage and fires a second shot into a courthared where he thinks Sade to be. All five men then flee.
1776, Feb. 13: The Marquis de Sade is arrested by inspector Marais at the Hotel de Danemark, on the rue Jacob and taken to Vincennes fortress where, at 9:30 that night, he is formally entered as a prisoner.
1776, April 18: In a letter from the Marquis de Sade to his wife: I am in a tower closed in by nineteen iron doors, with light reaching me only through two little windows, each with a score of iron bars.  He complains that in over the two months he has been in prison he has been allowed only five walks of one hour each, "in a sort of tomb about fourty feet square surrounded by walls more than fifty feet high."
1776, Sept. 7: After winning a trial, and escaping from authorities, the Marquis de Sade is again incarcerated at Vincennes prison.
1778, March 10: Lt. F. G. Enslin is drummed out of the Continental Army for "attempting to commit sodomy with J. Monhart, a soldier."
1780's In the United States, colonial laws become state constitutions. Bigamy is prohibited, the marriage of a lunatic is void, and age requirements are set. Marriages can be annulled for impotence and blood relations.
1782, July 12: The Marquis de Sade completes the manuscript of his "Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man".
1784, Feb. 29: The Marquis de Sade is transferred from the Vincennes prison to the Bastille.
1785: The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue includes the phrase "gentlemen of the back door" as a slang term for gay men.
1785, Oct. 22: The Marquis de Sade begins the final revision of his draft of a major work: The 120 Days of Sodom or The School for Libertines.
1788: The French doctor Francois Amedee Doppet confirms Meibom and Paullini's theory. He expands it by pointing out that women always have warm vaginas after whipping. At the end of his article Das Beisseln und sein Auswirkunauf den Geschlechtstrieb he gives safety tips for flagellants. This is the first known SM safety text! [wd]
1788, Mar. 1: The Marquis de Sade begins work on his short novel Eugenie de Franval, which he completes in six days.
1789, July 2: The Bastille logbook notes that "The Count de Sade shouted several times from the window of the Bastille that the prisoners were being slaughtered and that the poeple should come to liberate them."
1789, July 4: At 1:00 AM, as a result of a report made to Lord de Villedeuil on the Marquis de Sade's conduct on July 2, he is transferred to Charenton Asylum by Inspector Quidor.
1789, July 14: The Bastille is stormed and the Marquis de Sade's cell is sacked. His furniture, his suites, linen, his library and most important, his manuscripts are "burned, pillaged, torn up and carried off."
1790, Apr. 2: de Sade is released from Charenton Asylum.
1791: Justine by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1841) is first published in France.
1791, Oct. 22: First performance at the Theatre Moliere of Sade's Le Comte Oxtiern ou les effets du libertinage. A second performance occurs two weeks later which gives rise to a disturbance and causes Sade to suspend further performances.
1792: Civil marriage is established after the revolution in France.
1794: Prussia becomes the first German state to abolish the death penalty for homosexuality (which had been in effect since 1532), and replace it with flogging and imprisonment.


1800 - 1849

1800's: in Washington DC, We'wha, a two-spirit leader and representative for the Native American Zuni tribe, is married to a man.
1801, March 6: Sade and his publisher, Nicolas Masse, are arrested. Police searches find manuscripts and printed works, including Juliette and La Nouvelle Justine and a tapestry depicting "the most obscene subjects, most of which were drawn from the infamous novel Justine."
1801, April 2: The Minister of Police decides that a "trial would cause too much of a scandal which an exemplary punishment would still not make worthwile" So de Sade is "placed" in Sainte-Pelagie prison as "administrative punishment" for being the author of "that infamous novel Justine" and of that "still more terrible work Juliette."
1805: Publication of Ein Jahr in Arkadien (A Year in Arcadia), by Herzog August von Sachsen Gotha, the first homoerotic book in the German Language. [AA]
1809: New York: In Genton vs Reed, the state Supreme Court recognizes common-law marriage, which won't be declared void until 1901.
1809, Mar. 31: Birth of Edward Fitzgerald, English writer who cruised the Suffolk docks "looking for some fellow to accost me and fill a very vacant place in my heart." [Greif 82]
1809, Dec. 29: Birth of William Gladsone (death May 19, 1898) The four time Prime Minister of England was dedicated to self flagellation both to punish himself for impure thoughts and to achieve a pleasure from the act, which he then repented. [JWB]
1810: The Napoleonic Code is instituted in France. It eliminates all laws forbidding homosexuality. [AA]
1810: The mother of a schoolgirl accuses Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, mistresses at a boarding school for girls, of "imporper and criminal conduct" with each other, The British courts debate whether a sexual relationship between women was even possible. Lillian Hellman used his plot 120 years later as the basis for her play The Children's Hour. [AA]
1813, April 28: Prince Mikhail Kutuzov, who lead the defense of Moscow against Napoleon, dies of a heart attack while having sex with a soldier.
1814, Sept 13: On this day Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner." This deserves a healthy "so what?" from most readers of this list. But Key set his flag waving poem to music originally titled "Anacreon In Heaven". The Anacreonitics, who delighted in copying the Greek poet's style, seemed to miss the subject, which was largely about boys he diddled. OK, whatever the etymology the anthem is unsingable.
1814, Dec. 2: Death, at Charenton Asylum of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, the Marquis.
1820, May 12: Birth of Florence Nightingale, who is alleged to have said, "I have lived and slept in the same bed with English Countesses and Prussian farm women...No woman has excited passion among women more than I have."
1821, Nov. 11: Birth of Feodor Dostoeovski (death Feb. 9, 1881). The writer's letters to his beloved Anna are peppered with direct references to his fetish for her feet. His contemporary, Turgenev, called him "the Russian Marquis de Sade," perhaps suggesting more than the Anna letters reveal.
1824, Nov. 6: In France the Marquis Astolphe de Custine is sadistically gang-raped by a group of soldiers with whom he had made an assignation.
1825, Aug. 28: Birth of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, German sexologist and activist [Greif 82]
1826: Karl Ernst von Baer discovers the human ovum. [wd]
1828: The English Parliament closes a loophole in its definition of the capital crime of buggery. It would no longer be necessary to demonstrate "The actual Emission of Seed" to convict someone of buggery or rape. [AA]
1828: First publication, in Leipzig, Germany, of the Memoirs of Casanova.
1830: Publication in France of the two volume work La Marquise de Gange, of which de Sade is the anonymous author.
1833, Jan 28: The birth of Charles George "Chinese" Gordon, military hero of Imperial Britain and martyr at Khartoum. He was fond of picking up street urchins, bathing them, feeding them and mending their clothes with his very own needle and thread." [Greif 82]
1834 - 36: Heinrich Hoessli, a Swiss milliner, publishes his two volume set Eros: On the Love of Men, in German. It collected all the examples he could find of homosexual love in ages past -- Greek, Roman, and Persian love poems and manuscripts - and was one of the first books in modern times to give a positive view of homosexuality. [AA]
1835, June 15: Birth of Adah Isaacs Menken (death Aug. 25 1868). This most famed sexpot of the Victorian age was the star of "Mazeppa." She flashed apparent nudity in the face of Emperor Franz Josef -- he like it. She was also the lover in reality, or publicly held fantasy, of many famous men including numerous crowned heads and chiefs of government. She was once paid by Dante Gabriel Rosetti to spend the night with poet Charles Swinburne, giving him the flogging he wanted, possibly in an attempt on Rosetti's part to convince the poet that women were desirable sex partners. [JWB]
1836: Death of Threse Berkeley who supervised a flagellant brothel at 28 Charlotte St, London. Ms Berkeley is the inventor of the Berkley bench/horse, a specialized piece of furniture for flogging and bondage. [R]
1836: The last execution for homosexuality takes place in Britain, although the death penalty for homosexuals will remain on the books until 1861. [AA]
1836, Jan 27: Birth of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs. The man who put the "M" in SM.
1837, April 5: Birth of British poet Charles Algernon Swinburne who wrote many lines in praise of switches on asses.
1840, Aug. 14: Birth of German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Mannheim, Germany [wd]
1843: Massachusetts repeals its 138 year old antimiscegenation law.
1843: Hungarian physician Heinrich Kaan publishes his report named Psychopathias sexualis, reinterpreting sins of the flesh as psychological disorders. The theological terms "deviation", "aberration", and "perversion" are introduced into medicine. [wd]
1844: In The Queen vs. Millis, common law marriages are declared illegal in England.
1844, March 30: Birth of Paul Verlaine, poet and lover of poet Arthur Rimbaud (born Oct 20, 1854). He was imprisoned for two years after shooting his lover. He wrote Sonnet to an Asshole which begins "Dark and wrinkled like a deep pink, / It breathes, humbly nestled among the moss / Still wet with love..." [Greif 82]
1844, July 25: Birth of Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia. The great American artist specialized in painting muscular, nude male models, nude male athletes and nude male bathers. [Greif 82]
1844, Aug. 29: Birth of Edward Carpenter, the great English "sexual emancipator." Believing the effeminacy of "Uranians" a myth, he affected a form of macho dress, as did his working-class lover George Merrill, that make them both look, almost a century later, awfully contemporary. [Greif 82]
1844, Oct. 15: The birth of Friedrich Nietzche. (death Aug. 25 1900). The philosopher was not an ardent of SM, but listed among the four women in his life one married woman whom he flogged during sex and who, dressed as a man, beat him senseless before another sexual encounter. Also, a photo of Nietzche shows him as one of two gentlemen horses "pulling" a cart on which Lou Andreas-Salome (not "the" married woman) crouches with a knotted whip raised. [JWB]
1846, Feb. 20: New York City policeman Edward McCosker is dismissed for "indecently feeling the privates" of a male passerby while on duty.


1850 - 1899

1854, Feb. 16: birth of English writer Horatio Forbes Brown. When he died in 1926 his executors burned most of his unpublished works, attempting to hide his taste for sailors, footmen and other strapping members of the lower orders. One of his surviving poems depicts a boring society musicale in which every stanza ends with the line, "But I liked their footman John the best." [Greif 82]
1856, May 6: Birth of Sigmund Freud in Freiberg, Austria. [wd]
1857: French physician B. A. Borel champions the concept of physical and mental "degeneration" that is also used to explain "incorrect sexual behavior". The concept will dominate psychiatric thinking until Freud. [wd]
1857, Feb. 22: The birth, in London, of Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, army officer, and homosexual.
1858, June 12: Birth of Henry Scott Tuke, British painter and grand master of romantic boy painting. He was an athlete who took great pride in his splendid body and was obsessed with painting nude boys and experimented, and succeeded , in developing a special technique for capturing on canvas the effect of sunlight on naked skin. [Greif 82]
1861: England eliminates the death penalty for male homosexual acts; offenders are now subject to imprisonment for ten years to life. [AA]
1862, Aug. 6: Birth of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, professor of classics at Cambridge where the students were only too happy to satisfy his tastes as a boot-fetishist. He wrote of one young man, "I liked him to stand upon me when we met." [Greif 82]
1864, Sept. 1: Birth of Roger Casement in Ireland. In the course of British consular service, he exposed the atrocious conditions imposed on gatherers of wild rubber in the Congo and similar conditions in South America. He was knighted for his services. But, though an Ulster protestant, he became an ardent Irish nationalist. He was arrested and tried for treason. What sealed his doom was the admission as evidence of his diaries which recorded all of his sexual encounters, itemizing both the amount of the transaction (if the stud was for hire) and the size of his equipment. It made for sensational evidence in 1916: "Stanley Weeks, 20, stripped, huge one, circumcised; swelled and hung quite." "Enormous 19 about 7" and 4 thick; into me." Casement was hanged on Aug. 6, 1916, a martyr for more than Ireland.
1865, July 15: Death of James Miranda Barry (1795-1865) a Major General and Surgeon in the British Army with a highly distinguished career and a reputation as a rake who was known to flirt openly with the best looking women in the room. When a charwoman was preparing the body for burial it was discovered that the Major General was female. [Greif 82]
1866: Superstition & Force by Henry Charles Lea published in Britain. Edited and republished as The Ordeal by Edward Peters in 1973.
1867, Aug. 29: While speaking to a conference of jurists in Munich, Karl Ulrichs becomes the first known person in modern times to publicly declare himself a homosexual (though not using that word) and to speak out in favor of gay rights (obviously, not using those words). [AA]
1869: Karl Maria Kertbeny, writing anonymously, uses the term "Homosexual" in a pamphlet calling for repeal of Prussia's sodomy laws. This is the earliest know use of this term. It began appearing in US medical journals in the 1890's and in general usage during the 1920's.
1869, Dec. 8: In Austria Leopold von Sacher-Masoch begins correspondence with Fanny Pistor, aka Baroness Bogdonoff, aka Mistress Wanda, his Venus in Furs.
1870: The first American novel to touch on gay themes, Joseph and His Friend, by Bayard Taylor, is published. But the homosexual emements are so subtle that a nongay reader could easily miss them. [AA]
1872, Aug. 21: Birth of artist Aubrey Beardsley, who drew many men with gigantic phalluses and many asses being caned. Beardsley's professional affiliation with Oscar Wilde ruined him and he died from tuberculosis less than three years after Wilde's famous trial. It is believed that Beardsley was not himself gay and that his ruin was largely a case of "guilt by association". [Greif 82]
1872: The newly formed German empire adopts a penal code that includes the infamous Paragraph 175, outlawing male homosexuality. The new law becomes a catalyst for the nascent German homophile movement. [AA]
1873, Jan. 28: In France the birth of writer Sidomie-Gabrielle Colette (d. 1954), who wore a bracelet engraved "I belong to Missy."
1874: For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke published in Australia. US edition in 1973.
1875, March 7: Birth of Maurice Ravel, French composer. Gay but no record of his being into leather. However, his Bolero is among the best dungeon music possible, talk about slow build up to an exciting crescendo!
1875, April 15: Baloonists Sivel and Croche-Spinelli die in a fall over India. Burried together in Pere-Lachaise Cemetary in Paris, their monument depicts them lying together, naked, hand in hand, partially covered by a sheet. [TOL]
1877, April 30: birth of Alice B. Toklas. "Throughout most of her life, this selfless woman's major occupation was the care and maintenance of Gertrude Stein." [Greif 82]
1879, Jan. 1: The birth of E. M. Forester, British novelist, who had as his lover for half a century a virile, handsome, married, London policeman who granted his most elemental wish: "to love a strong young man of the lower classes and be loved by him and even hurt by him." [Greif 82]
1879, July: The first erotic magazine, "The Pearl, a Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading", consisting of stories with flagellation themes and attributed to Algernon Charles Swinburne, is distributed among high society. It last for 18 issues until Dec. 1880. [wd]
1882: In Pace vs. Alabama, the USA Supreme Court upholds a law that makes interracial adultery more serious than intraracial adultery, arguing that interracial couples would produce genetically inferior offspring.
1882, Feb. 2: Birth of James Joyce, avant -garde novelist who made his lover, Nora Barnacle, into a dominant of whom he begged beatings and floggings "in earnest." We don't know if she said yes or no. [JWB]
1885: The British Parliament at first tables the Criminal Law Amendment Act which made all acts of "gross indecency" between males, whether in public or private, an offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment. However a rally that the Purity Campaign organizes in Hyde Park attracts a crowd of thousands and on this wave of hysteria the law is rushed through parliament. It became known as "The Blackmailer's Charter" and was the law under which Oscar Wilde was later tried and convicted.
1885, Sept. 11: The Birth of D. H. Lawrence, a man who has come to be seen as the high-priest of heterosexual love. But it is know that at one time Lawrence had become so friendly with a handsome farm boy named William Henry that his wife Feieda adamantly refused ever to allow the young man to enter the Lawrence's house. Whatever his sexual proclivities were, his writing was the major concern of censorship in the US, and when the likes of Lady Chatterley's Lover were finally cleared by customs, the DAMN had really broken.
1886, Feb. 22: The Birth of William Seaabrook (death Sept 20, 1945). This top-rated writer about exotic places (from personal experience) was equally famous among the literate for his elaborate, long-term bondage of beautiful, young women. [JWB]
1886: The Austrian police physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing publishes the first edition of his Psychopathia sexualis with 110 pages and 45 case histories. He creates the diagnosis of "paedophilia" and adopts "sadism" from earlier French usage. Masochism" is not introduced until the sixth edition. [wd]
1887: The state of Pennsylvania raises its age of consent from 10 to 16, after a campaign by the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the White Cross Society.
1888, Aug 15: The birth of Thomas Edward Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, who was captured, caned and raped by Turkish soldiers, and who loved it so madly he hired Robert Bruce to flog him regularly after he returned to England. [Greif 82]
1888, Aug 16: The birth of Edgar Montillion Wolley, better known as the American actor Monty Woolley. His taste was for black men, generally supplied by an assortment of New York pimps. He fell in love with one and they lived together for years as lovers. [Greif 82]
1889: A male brothel is discovered at 19 Cleveland St. in London's West End. The Scandal becomes the talk of society and many important figures, including Prince Albert Victor, second in line to the throne, are rumored to be implicated. [AA]
1889, July 5: Birth of Jean Cocteau, French artist, writer and filmmaker. One of the many customs regarding polite Parisian pissour manners was known as the "privilege du cape." This allowed a Frenchman who could not find a convenient pissoir to approach a gendarme and ask him to extend his cape so that he could take a leak behind it. One of Cocteau's favorite amusements was to choose a handsome young cop and pretend that he was drunk. With luck he could get his trouser buttons undone by the helpful gendarme -- and possibly more. Uncooperative victims wound up with wet shoes. [Greif 82]
1890's: The "gay '90's" were the time Florenz Ziegfeld started the modern commercial exploitation of muscular males in vaudeville exhibitions of strength. He made the German strongman Eugen Sandow a household name as Sandow the Magnificent. Sandow often appeared wearing only a large fig leaf. [Hooven 95]
1891: Publication of A Problem in Modern Ethics by John Addington Symonds, it provides a systematic review of scholarly literature on homosexuality. [AA]
1892 The New York Times becomes the first US newspaper to use the word "lesbian" in a news story: "Lesbian Love and Murder" about a suicide pact made by two young women after their parents forbid them to see each other. [TOL]
1892, June 5; Birth of Ivy Compton-Burnett, British novelist whose work has been called "morality plays for the tough-minded," and who lived most of her life in total subservience to Margaret Jourdain, a scholar and expert in 18th Century furniture. [Greif 82]
1893: Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing first uses the term "homosexual" and attributes it to an indelible personality trait, rather than to a sexual activity. [Hooven 95]
1893, Feb. 20: Birth of Bill Tilden, first American to win at Wimbledon (d. 1953). He was considered one of the greatest athletes of the 20th Century, but was snubbed by the tennis world when his homosexuality became known.
1893, Oct. 30, Birth of bodybuilder Charles Atlas, who, though not gay, made a major contribution to the beauty of men.
1894: One of the earliest known gay organizations is formed by George Cecil Ives. The Order of Chaeronea took its name from the Greek battle of 338 BC at which the Sacred Band of Thebes was annihilated. [AA]
1894, Feb. 18: John Sholto Douglas, the 18th Marquis of Queensberry leaves a card at the Albermarle Club in London addressed "to Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite" (sic) triggering the incident that was to bring about Wilde's downfall. The Marquis is better know among other circles as the compiler of the governing rules of the sport of boxing.
1894, June 7: The Blackmailers, a play by John Gray and his lover Andre Raffalovich, receives its one and only performance at the Prince of Whales Theatre.
1895: Bom-Crioulo, The Black Man and The Cabin Boy by Adolfo Caninha published in Brazil.
1895, Jan. 1: birth of J. Edgar Hoover, for many years head of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. He maintained secret survelence files on individuals and organizations, including gay and other sexually identified ones. He was a homosexual and homophobe. (died: May 2, 1972)
1895: Oscar Wilde is convicted of committing "indecent acts" with young lower-class men and is condemned to two years of hard labor. [AA]
1895, Mar. 9: Official date of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's death from heart failure as given by his family. This incorrect date is still found in a large number of texts. Actual date of death:1905, see below. [wd]
1895, May 6: Birth of Rudolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filbert Guglielmi di Balentina d'Antonguolla in Castellaneta, Italy. Better known as Rudolph Valentino, there is little argument that he enjoyed male to male sex, was dominated by his lesbian wife, and died because his macho image demanded that he fight in a boxing arena. But we love him best for the image of the captured Sheik hanging from up stretched arms to that barred window, his chest bared, his body ready for whatever we desire.
1896: The English researcher Havelock Ellis starts work on his monumental book, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. [wd]
1897: Archaeologists working in Egypt find some of the lost poetry of Sappho on papyrus scrolls used to line ancient coffins and to stuff the carcasses of mummified animals. [TOL]
1897, May 15: Magnus Hirschfeld and five friends found the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Charlottenburg, then a suburb of Berlin. Their goal was to abolish the antihomosexual Paragraph 175 in German law. The committee dissolved on June 8, 1933 to avoid being banned by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 was still in force.
1897, May 19: Oscar Wilde is released from Prison in England.
1897, Nov.: Publication of the first English edition of Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), the first book in English to treat homosexuality as neither a disease nor a crime. (Born Feb 2, 1859)
1898, June 5: The birth of Federico Garcia Lorca, gay Spanish playwright who has the vicious Bernarda Alba, in the play with her name, shout out to the mob dragging away the adulteress, "Hot coals in the place where she sinned!"
1898, Sept 21: The birth in Moscow of artist Pavel Tchelitchew. His cubistic painting, Figures, depicts a rape with three male nudes. [Greif 82]
1898: Der Eigene (The Exceptional) becomes the first gay publication destined to a long existence, until 1931! Edited by Berlin writer Adolf Brand who in 1903 founded the Community of the Exceptional, after Hirschfeld's, the second gay organization in Berlin.
1899: The Torture Garden, a novel by Octave Mirbeau published in France. First English edition in 1931. ReSearch edition 1989.
1899: Magnus Hirschfeld publishes the first issue of the Jahrbuch der sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Journal of Sexual Intermediates). [AA]
1899: Publication of A Marriage Below Zero, by Alfred J. Cohen, considered the first American novel in which homosexuality is a central theme. Naturally the homosexual character commits suicide. [TOL]


1900 - 1909

1901: The death in New York of Mary Anderson, who had lived as Murray Hall and had married two women.
1902: Richard von Krafft-Ebing dies in Graz, Austria at age 62 of multiple strokes. [wd]
1903, Sept 10: Birth of Ciril Connolly, English writer who was considered one of the "bright young men" of the 1920's. Chubby chasers should note that he wrote: "Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out." OH YES!! [Greif 82]
1903: The British physician Havelock Ellis publishes "Studies in the Psychology of Sex." [wd]
1904, Dec. 17: The birth, in New York City, of artist Paul Cadmus, who wonderfully portrayed lusty sailors, and had a painting destroyed by the Navy as being "inappropriate".
1905: The Memoirs of a Voluptuary, the Secret Life of an English Boarding School by Anonymous published in Britain. US edition in 1971.
1905: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch dies in an insane asylum in Mannheim, Germany. [wd]
1906: Maximilian Harden, publisher of Berlin's Die Zukunft, prints an editorial warning of the danger presented by the homosexual conspiracy. [AA]
1906: In Austria the first publication of Young Torless by Robert Musil (Eng. ed 1955) a novel depicting a sexually explosive hazing in an Austrian military school.
1905: The Austrian physician Sigmund Freud publishes his "Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie". Sadism and masochism are described as illnesses resulting from incomplete or faulty development of a child's personality. Psychoanalysis, a form of speculative philosophy with no empirical basis, becomes the dominating theory in psychiatry for the next 60 years. [wd]
1905, Mar. 2: Birth of Marc Blitzstein, American composer. He was murdered by a hustler in Fort-de-France, Martinique in 1968.
1907: A crowd of 2000 shows up for a debate about Germany's sodomy law, the notorious Paragraph 175, sponsored by the Scientific Humanitarian Committee. [AA]
1907: Release of film Love Microbe, the first in which sex is central to the plot. A scientist isolates the "germ" that causes people to get the hots for each other.
1907, Feb. 21: birth of W. H. Auden, English poet. His poem "The Platonic Blow" was published in Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts in 1965 without his permission. The poem was then issued in a Trade edition of 300 copies and a "Rough Trade" edition of 5 numbered copies each with "beautiful slurp drawings." The first two lines of the poem are, "It was a Spring day, a day for a lay, when the air / Smelled like a locker-room, a day to blow or get blown." [Greif 82]
1907, Sept. 23: Birth of Anne Declos, aka Dominique Aury, aka Pauline Reage, the author of Historie d'O. (death: April 26 1998) [wd]
1908: Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (born March 19, 1872; died 1929) meets Vaslav Nijinsky (born March 12, 1890). In their five years together Diaghilev totally dominates Nijinsky's life as he shapes him into one of the finest dancers the world has ever seen and creates a relationship (slave and Master?) that eventually results in Nijinsky's madness.
1908: Publication of The Intermediate Sex by Edward Carpenter in England. [AA]
1908: First publication of Physical Culture magazine, the first magazine to focus on the male physique with lots of articles about sex and photos of scantily clad men. (Hooven 1995)
1908, Aug. 18: Birth of Sir Frances Rose, the last of Gertrude Stein's many artist protégés. In 1952 Alice B. Toklas reported that Rose was in trouble because of a Spanish gypsy boy he had found and hired as both valet and bed mate. After an incident involving a stolen bicycle Rose examined the boy's papers and discovered that he was his illegitimate son. [Greif 82]
1909: Two black men are accused of oral sex with one another in Kentucky. They are not convicted because the judge couldn't find any law on the books under which to find them guilty. He urged that lawmakers remedy this problem, and soon many states had outlawed oral sex. [AA]
1909, April 23: In Woodside, OH, the birth of writer Samuel M. Steward, aka Phil Andros. As sex researcher Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey's major contact with the world of homosexual male SM he arranged and participated in scenes staged for Kinsey's cameras.


1910 - 1919

1910: Among the Klementi tribe in Albania, if a virgin swore to twelve witnesses that she refused to ever marry, she would be allowed to live as a man carrying weapons and herding livestock. [TOL]
1910: Magnus Hirschfeld creates the term "transvestite" and is the first to separate them from homosexuals. [wd]
1910: The Chicago Vice Commission reports the presence of whole "colonies" of sexual perversion, including a homosexual street gang, known as the Bluebirds, that frequented Grant Park.
1910, May 14: Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein begin living together in Paris. [TOL]
1910, Dec. 19: birth in Paris of Jean Genet, his gay and SM themed works include The Balcony, Querelle du Brest, and Our Lady of the Flowers. (Death in 1986)
1911: A law is passed in the Netherlands prohibiting sexual contact between members of the same sex under the age of 21. The law sparked Dutch nobleman Jacob Schorer to form Nederlandsch Wetenschappelijk Humanitair Komitee, modeled after Hirschfeld's Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Germany. The NWHK provided support to homosexuals until 1940 when Schorer destroyed its records to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Nazis. [AA]
1912: The Scientific Humanitarian Committee polls candidates for the forthcoming Reichstag election to learn their view on gay issues. Ninety one out of the 96 who respond say that they favor gay rights! [AA]
1913: Alfred Redl, head of Austrian Intelligence, is exposed as a double agent working for the Russians. He commits suicide the next morning. Authorities who search his rooms find abundant indications that Redl had been a homosexual. The widely publicized case gives prominence to the idea that homosexuals are security risks, and 37 years later, US Senator Joseph McCarthy used the Redl case to raise similar fears. [AA]
1914: Publication of Dictionary of Criminal Slang which includes the first known printed definition of the word "faggot" as a term for "a male homosexual'. [TOL]
1914: Magnus Hirschfeld publishes his 1067 page study on homosexuality. [wd]
1915, May 25: Foreseeing a wartime shortage, Amy Lowell hoards 10,000 of her favorite Havana cigars in her home in Brookline, MA. (born Feb 9, 1874)
1916, Nov. 29: Birth of artist Neel Bate, as "Blade" one of the pioneers of gay erotica. His most famous work, an underground classic in pre-Stonewall days is The Barn, which he wrote and illustrated.
1916, Dec. 30: On this date Grigori Rasputin is murdered. The Russian monk, who was a famous sexual adventurer, spent some years initiating women into the reportedly Christian cult of flagellants before he settled into the court o Nicholas and Alexandria. There is no evidence that his position in the Russian court stopped or impeded his involvement with the female flagellants cult. [JWB]
1917: The new revolutionary government of the Soviet Union abolishes the sodomy laws of the tsarist regime. [AA]
1917: The Bolshevik government in Russia says it will recognize only civil marriages.
1917, Nov. 20: T. E. Lawrence "of Arabia" (1888-1935) being held captive by the Turks at Deraa is caned and (probably) raped by Turkish army officers, an incident described in his 1926 book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His taste for the cane continued through life.
1918: Publication of Life is Movement, the autobiography and manual of Hungarian born Eugen Sandow, who thrilled audiences in New York and London throughout the 1890's. Billed as "The world's strongest man" he often appeared wearing only a metal fig leaf, held in place by a spring metal strap that was hidden in the cleft of his ass.
1919: Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Institute for Sexology in Berlin. The Institute combines the world's first sex counseling center, a museum, a library and an ongoing series of educational events. [AA]
1919, Jan. 7: Birth of Robert Duncan, a leading poet of the San Francisco renaissance. The first poet to use the word "cocksucker" in print and the first to strip to the buff during poetry readings. [Greif 82]
1919, May 24: release of Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), one of the earliest films to offer viewers a gay-positive perspective. It costarred Konrad Veidt and Magnus Hirschfeld. [AA]


1920 - 1929

1920, May 8: The birth in Finland of Touko Laaksonen, the erotic artist who would become known to leather men of the world as Tom of Finland. (Died 1992).
1921: The Theatre des Eros, the first theater devoted exclusively to gay plays, is founded in Berlin. [AA]
1921: Publication in France, of Sodome et Gomorrhe by Marcel Proust. [AA]
1921, March 29: The birth in London of actor Dirk Bogarde whose autobiography reveals an adolescent seduction by a man who first mummy wrapped him in bandages.
1921, Sept. 16: The First Congress for Sexual Reform opens at Berlin's Institute for Sexology. [AA]
1922: The Soviet Union re-introduces the concept of "crimes against nature" and begins the process (finalized by Stalin in 1933) of recriminalizing homosexual acts. [AA]
1922: "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein is published in Vanity Fair. This is regarded as the first published fiction using the word "gay" to refer to homosexuality. [TOL]
1922: The God of Vengance, a play by Sholom Asch featuring a lesbian relationship, is produced in Provincetown, MA. It is the first play on an American stage to depict gay or lesbian characters, and created an outcry the next year when it reached Broadway. [AA]
1922: A petition to abolish Paragraph 175, Germany's sodomy law, is presented to the Reichstag, but without success. The petition was largely the work of Magnus Hirschfeld and his Scientific Humanitarian Committee, and was signed by such prominent intellectuals as Albert Einstein, Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann, and Leo Tolstoy. [AA]
1922: Birth, in Hailey, Idaho, of Bob Mizer, creator of the Athletic Model Guild and Physique Pictorial. Died: May 19, 1992. [WES]
1924: The 17th edition of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis is published. It will be translated into seven languages. [wd]
1924: In Virginaia, "A bill to preserve the integrity of the white race" prohibits white marriage with any non-white. Richmond uses the law to segregate housing, prohibiting residence by any person who could not marry into a majority of families already on the block.
1924: Andre Gide, in If It Die, makes his homosexuality public. He is the first prominent individual in modern times to do so. [AA]
1924, Apr. 3: Birth in Omaha NB, of Marlon Brando, who's levis, tight t-shirt, and leather jacket created a look so many copied.
1924, Apr. 15: Birth of Dr. Howard Brown, American public health administrator.
1924: Oct. 24: The New York Times reviews Dr. Joseph Collins' book The Doctor Looks at Love and Life in which Collins concluded that "the majority of homosexuals... are not dengerates". The review is the first time the word "homosexual" has appeared in this newspaper. [AA]
1924, Dec. 10: The Society for Human Rights, founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber (1892-1972), probably the first "gay lib" organization in the US, is granted a charter by the Illinois legislature. It lasted only a few months but during that time Gerber brought out two issues of the country's first gay liberation magazine, Friendship and Freedom. [AA] No copies of these are known to still exist.
1925, Jan. 14: The birth of Yukio Mishima. His erotic drive was always advanced by his fantasies of SM-drawn blood. His suicide (Nov. 25, 1970) blended his erotic fantasies, his political theories and his flair for public drama. [JWB]
1925, May 21: The birth of Dr. Franklin Kameny, founder of the Mattachine Society and spiritual godfather of all contemporary activists for sexual freedoms.
1925, Aug. 2: Birth of Roy Dean, photographer of the American Male in the all together, and often in nature as well. He is also the power behind Colt Studios and, as an artist, is known as both Colt, and in the pre frontal nudity days, as Lugar.
1926: The German physician Albert Moll organizes the "1st International Conference on Sex Research" in Berlin. [wd]
1926, Feb. 15: Birth of British film director John Schlessinger, whose Midnight Cowboy (1969) was kicked to pieces by the critics for being too gay, and by militant gays for not being gay enough. [Greif 82]
1926, May 30: Birth of George Jorgensen, who went to Denmark for surgery and became Christine Jorgensen, the world's best known transsexual.
1926, June 3: Birth of Beat poet Allen Gunsberg who horrified W. H. Auden by kneeling and kissing the older poet's trouser cuff. [Greif 82]
1926, Oct. 15: Birth, in Poitiers, France, of philosopher and gay sadomasochist Paul-Michael Foucault. (d. 1984) [wd]
1928: D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chattrley's Lover is published in France. Banned in Britain, it is only in 1960 that a British court declares the book to be art not porn.
1928: Publication of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. Calling for the "mercifal toleration of inverts," it became the best known book in English with a lesbian theme. [AA]
1928, March 18: Birth of American playwright Edward Albee. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? may or may not really be about a male couple, but is it an SM scene?
1929: The French judge Rene Guyon starts work in Thailand on his Studies in Sexual Ethics, claiming that an individual has a right to free sexual expression as long as the rights of others are not harmed. [wd]
1929, Jan 12: The publishers of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness are served with a summons in an effort to censor the lesbian novel.
1929, Aug. 26: Birth in Chicago of Chuck Renslow, who with his partner Dom "Etienne" Orejudos, was to father Kris Studios, The Gold Coast, Man's Country, International Mr. Leather, and other enterprises. More Recently Chuck has been instrumental in founding The Leather Archives & Museum and the Chicago Eagle.
1929, Aug. 29: Birth of English born American poet Thom Gunn. [Greif 82]


1930 - 1939

1930's: Anthropologists report among the Nuer tribe in the Sudan there exist unions in which a woman marries another woman and counts as the father of her children.
1930: Denmark repeals its sodomy laws. It is the first European nation to respond to the early homophile movement. Poland, Switzerland, and Sweden all follow suit within fifteen years. [AA]
1930: Marlene Dietrich, in the film Morocco, makes the first of her many male impersonations.
1930: Publication of The Story of Punishment, Man's Inhumanity to Man by Harry Elmer Barnes. Revised edition 1972.
1931: The Chinese Nationalist Party forbids arranged marriages.
1931, Feb. 8: The birth, in Marion, Indiana, of James Dean. The mysterious masochist and cultural icon did nothing in his life to dispel the rumors of his masochism (preferring, it is said, to be burned with cigarettes and to be kicked and stepped on) and the rumors became legends after his death in a car crash on Sept. 30, 1955. [JWB]
1932: The Zenith of gay activity in Berlin which then had over 300 homosexual bars and cafes, of which a tenth were lesbian. Between 1933 and 1945 virtually all homosexual activity was driven underground by the Nazis.
1932: First publication in Zurich of Der Kreis one of the longest running European gay magazines, it ceased publication in 1967. Articles were in German, English and French. It frequently published material by American writers, artists, and photographers, including the first fiction from Phil Andros, and nude male studies by George Platt Lynes under the pseudonym Robert Rolf.
1932, Dec 28: Birth of Manuel Puig, Argentinian novelist whose work includes "The Kiss of the Spider Woman".
1933: Birth, in New South Wales, Australia, of artist Nigel Kent. When he started drawing and painting male SM imagery he signed his work "James D." but later began using his real name. He has lived in the Netherlands since 1973.
1933, Jan. 30: Hitler bans all gay publishing in Germany.
1933, May 6: In Berlin Nazis ransack Magnus Hierschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research and, on May 11, burn his library and museum collection which, Christopher Isherwood reported, included many SM implements.
1933: Noel Ersine's Dictionary of Underworld Slang lists "gay cat" as meaning "a homosexual boy", this is the earliest know PRINTED equation of the words "gay" and "homosexual".
1933: In Germany Hitler rises to power. Within two years a license of "genetic cleanliness" is necessary for marriage and a German cannot marry a Jew.
1933: Department II of the German Gestapo is created for the express purpose of hunting down and imprisoning homosexuals.
1933, July 1: Birth of Domingo "Dom" Orejudos, better known as the erotic artists Etienne and Stephen, and as partner with Chuck Renslow in operation of Kris Studio, the Publication of Mars and Rawhide magazines, the Gold Coast leather bar and Man's Country baths in Chicago, and the founding of the International Mr. Leather contest.
1934, March 7: Stalin restores criminal sanctions against homosexuality to the Soviet Union.
1934, March 10: The birth in El Paso, Texas, of author John Rechy, whose writing skirted the edges of leather sexuality, and about which he had strong opinions.
1934, June 30: Gay SS Chief Ernst Rohm, and many of his "Brown Shirts" were assassinated by rival Nazis with the approval of Hitler in the "Night of the Long Knives."
1934: Publication in England of The History of Torture in England by L. A. Parry.
1935, April 9: In a letter of this date Sigmund Freud wrote, "homosexuals must not be treated as sick people..."
1935, May 13: T. E. Lawrence "of Arabia" fatally injured in a mysterious motorcycle "accident" in England. Dies May 19, 1935. [JWB]
1936: The American housewife Dorothy Spencer publicizes a scheme to improve marriage by mutual domestic spanking. [wd]
1936: Leftist German director Gustav von Wangenheim (1895-1975) produces the film Bortsy (The Fighters) which depicts the Nazis as homosexuals. In reaction the Hitler regime enacts a new and more stringent version of the notorious Paragraph 175, and increase convictions for homosexual activity in Germany.
1936: The suicide of Robert Ervin Howard, creator of Connan the Barbarian. Exceptionally close to his mother as a boy, and bullied by older boys he turned to exercise and developed the body he admired in other men. When his mother lapsed into a coma he blew out his own brains with a borrowed pistol and Cross Plains, Texas, had a double funeral. He was 30 years old and had written 21 Connan stories in which images of muscular men suffering under the domination of others was prominent.
1938: The American zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey begins his studies on human sexual behavior, using empirical data from over 12,000 interviews. [wd]
1938: Fourteen US states introduce bills to impose restrictions on marriage to persons with syphilis and other venereal diseases in a "social hygiene" panic.
1938, March 17: Birth of Rudolf Nureyev, Russian, then American, Ballet dancer. Renowned for his love of rough trade a friend advised: "I once told Rudi, he can be as naughty as he likes, but if he isn't more careful, they're going to find him...some morning in an alley in Soho, his head laid open with a lorry driver's spanner." He died of AIDS in 1993.
1939: Albert Moll dies of natural causes in Berlin before the Nazis can transport him to a Death Camp. [wd]
1939: In the film Bringing up Baby, Cary Grant, appearing in a dress, exclaims that he has "gone gay". Historian John Boswell credits this as the first public use of the term in the US, outside of pornography and the homosexual community. But it isn't until the 1970's that "gay" is widely accepted as the standard, nonslang synonym for homosexual, and not until 1987 that it is accepted by the New York Times.
1939, Jan. 10: Birth of actor Sal Mineo. He wore the leather jacket in Rebel Without a Cause even though he was the obvious and willing bottom to James Dean's reluctant Top. His gristly 1976 murder has never been solved.
1939, Feb 24: Birth of American playwright Doric Wilson.
1939, Sept. 22: Sigmund Freud, suffering from cancer in an advanced stage, dies in London by morphium overdose through physician assisted suicide. [wd]


1940 - 1949

1940: July 27: Birth of the Reverend Troy Perry, Minister, activist, leatherman, and. founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. He devised a wonderful way to use the Gideon bible found in every hotel room as a ball weight.
1941: The first appearance of the cartoon character, Wonder Woman, an Amazon with special powers, living on an all-woman island. Her magical lasso rendered powerless anyone she placed in bondage.
1942, March 14: MP's raid a gay brothel near Brooklyn Navy Yard, among the clientele they find the US Senator who chairs the Naval Affairs Committee.
1942, April 3: Birthdate of Anthony F. DeBlase, aka Fledermaus, leather/SM writer, editor, publisher, teacher, and creator of the Leather Pride Flag.
1943, July 22: Birth of Robert Wiley Kirk, the erotic artist "Cirby" (died Dec 21, 1991)
1943: Jim Kepner is hoodwinked by a pen pal into joining the Sons of Hamidy, a wholly imaginary group of political and military leaders fighting for gay rights. Kepner quickly discovers the ruse, but is so involved with the idea he begins a campaign to collect books, papers, and other artifacts that grow into the International Gay and Lesbian Archives, now housed at the University of Southern California.
1944, June 10: Christa Winsloe, author of Madchen in Uniform and vocal anti-Nazi is murdered in Vichi France.
1945: Justice Weekly begins publication in Toronto. This little magazine excerpts news items related to punishment but it's highly coded personal ads are to real attraction to SM people all over North America.
1945: Bob Mizer founds the Athletic Model Guild in Los Angeles. His original intent is to serve as a middle man between hunky young males and the artists and others seeking their modeling (legitimate!) services. This aspect fails dismally so he begins marketing the photos directly to the public. [WES]
1945: Formation of the Veterans' Benevolent Association, the first gay membership organization in the US, formed to try to get homosexual soldiers some of the respect they deserved for the hardships they had endured.
1945, May 31: Birth of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German film maker, author, director, & actor. His films often deal with same-sex relationships in which erotic desire becomes a function of the struggle for dominance of one partner over another. (died 1982)
1945: Aug. 7: Birth of Cynthia Ann-Slater, San Francisco Bay area SM activist and founder of The Society of Janus. [wd]
1945, Dec. 11: Birth of John Preston, author of Mr. Benson and many other notable volumes of leather fiction.
1946: A gay social club "The Shakespeare Club" is founded in Amsterdam. (Name change to Centre for Culture & Leisure, in 1949) Dance nights become extremely well attended and to accommodate the crowds, a large commercial dance hall, Der Oden Kring (DOK) is opened in 1955. From this basis Amsterdam has become the gay mecca of Europe.
1946: Bob Mizer takes his first photos for the Athletic Model Guild. The subject is 22 year old Howard Olson who had just been discharged from the US Marine Corps. Olson wears only a posing strap and is caught spread-eagled in the air in the middle of a jump. [Hooven 95]
1946, Sept. 26: Birth of Andrea Dworkin, American writer and feminist. And ardent crusader against pornography, SM and other sexual "evils".
1946, Dec. 29: Birth of William Carney, author of one of the earliest explicitly gay male SM novels, The Real Thing.
1947: Alfred C. Kinsey founds the "Institute for Sex Research" at Indiana University. [wd]
1947: California strikes down its antimiscegenation law.
1947, Mid: Bob Mizer is arrested and charged with disseminating obscene material. He refuses consul's advice and pleads "not guilty". He is convicted and serves six months in a California Prison. Upon release he resumes business exactly as before. In 1953 his appeal reaches the US Supreme Court, where his conviction is overturned because the judge errored in instructing the jury on the legal definition of "obscene." [WES]
1947, July 4 - 6: More than 4000 motorcycles converge on Hollister California and their riders unleash 40 hours of drunken terror on the town. 40 CHiPs threaten to use tear gas. Nearly 100 bikers are jailed.
1948: Axel and Eigil Axgil, a male couple, found the National Homosexual Association, the first gay rights Organization in Denmark. On Oct. 1, 1989 they are the first to marry under Denmark's same sex marriage registry.
1948: Alfred C. Kinsey publishes the first part of his study on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. [wd]
1948, March 3: Birth of Albert Andrew Kraus Jr. Later to be a founder of the Windy City Bondage Club, and a co-chair of NLA:I during a critical period of it's redevelopment,
1948, March 9: The Veteran's Benevolent Association, the first postwar American homosexual organization, is incorporated in New York state.
1948, March 20: Inspector Craig Ellis, head of the vice squad of Philadelphia Police Dept gives his men a list of books he considers obscene and orders that the city's bookstores be raided immediately and all titles on the list be confiscated. No search warrants or court orders of any kind are issued. 54 booksellers are raided and nearly 1200 books seized, including works by James Farrell, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Harold Robbins. The district attorney brings suit against five of the booksellers. But Judge Curtis Bok rules in favor of the booksellers and freedom of the press.
1949: Sam Steward and Steve Masters meet in Alfred Kinsey's garden. The two, who would each later be leather icons in their own right, perform SM scenes for Kinsey's research. [R]
1949: The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet is first published in France. English edition 1964.
1949: South Africa passes a law prohibiting interracial marriage.


1950 - 1959

1950's: Mississippi makes publication of "general information, arguments, or suggestions in favor of social equality or intermarriage between whites and Negros" a crime.
1950: After a year of revolution in China a marriage law sets age limits and allows widows to remarry. Prospective marriage partners must be checked for "correct" thinking with the party.
1950: Publication of The Invisible Glass by Loren Wahl
1950: Publication of Quatrefoil by James Barr
1950, June 15: Chuck Renslow and Dom Orejudos start Kris Studios to publish male physique photography. Orejudos begins sketching some of the models.
1950, Nov.: The first issue of AMG's Physique Pictorial is issued. Cover "Havasu Creek" by Quaintance. No copies of this issue are known to exist. [Hooven 95]
1950, Dec.: Mattachine Society founded in Los Angeles. [JR]

1951: (or by 53) Shaw's, New York City's first Leather Bar opens. [R]
1951: Rene Guyon criticizes the United Nations for not including sexual rights as a basic human right. [wd]
1951: Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach publish their study "Patterns of Sexual Behaviour", a comparison of the sexual preferences of 200 cultures. The study shows how relative Western sexual traditions are. [wd]
1951, April: Harry Hay (born Apr. 7, 1912), Rudi Gernreich, Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull and Dale Jennings start The Mattachine Society in Los Angeles.
1951, May 26: British Foreign Office officials Donald Mclean and his cruel "master" Guy Burgess defect to the USSR. [Greif 82]
1951, Nov.: The cover date of the oldest known extant copy of Physique Pictorial Vol.1, No. 2. Cover painting of a nude man riding a white horse through the surf: "Dashing" by Quaintance. [Hooven 95]

1952: (or by 54) The Lodge, New York City's second leather bar opens. [R]
1952: Jack's on the Waterfront opens at 111 Embarcadero in San Francisco. The bar particularly attracts longshoremen, motorcycle men other butch types. Gradually evolves from a straight bar with "homo space" to a gay bar with a maritime flavor. Closed in 1962 as part of the "gayola" scandals. [R]
1952: Joe Wieder, a championship competitive bodybuilder who had started a series of body building magazines converts his American Manhood to compete with the "informal" poses and slimmer "natural" physiques of magazines like Physique Pictorial and Vim. [Hooven 95]
1952: First publication of Tomorrow's Man. A tiny physique magazine Published by Irv Johnson in Chicago, which combined the look of Physique Pictorial with articles on body building and staying in shape. It quickly became the #1 physique publication. [Hooven 95]
1952: Alan Turing, mathematical genius, breaker of Nazi codes, acclaimed as "the man who saved England" reports the theft of his property by a hustler, when the police realize why the thief was there Turing himself is arrested and prosecuted. He is chemically castrated by the authorities and hounded by the press. He commits suicide in 1954. [Hooven 95]
1952, April: Dale Jennings, a member of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles is arrested by the police. Mattachine organizes The Committee to Outlaw Entrapment.
1952, May 27: Birth of Sasha Alyson, founder of Alyson Publications, a gay press that gave presence to a broad range of gay and lesbian works, including Coming to Power, the writings of John Preston, and many other leather/SM works considered "marginal" at the time, by other publishers.
1952, August: Cover date of Physique Pictorial issue bearing a cover painting by Quaintance, "Sacrifice," depicting a nearly naked man chained in spread-eagle suspension to a vertical sun disk. In the foreground two virtually naked warriors lie bleeding (dying) from arrows penetrating their backs. This cover resulted in censorship in Los Angeles county. No one objected to the bondage, blood, or violent theme. They wanted the lushly rounded asses of the dying warriors covered! [Hooven 95]
1952: College English professor Sam Steward begins a sideline business as Phil Sparrow, tattoo artist. [JR]

1953: Alfred C. Kinsey publishes the second part of his study on human sexual Behaviour, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female. [wd]
1953 The German physician Harry Benjamin coins the term "transsexuals" and is the first to distinguish them from transvestites. [wd]
1953, Apr. 23: US President Eisenhower issues orders prohibiting employment of gays in government agencies. [JR]
1953: Forbidden Colors, Yukio Mishima's novel with SM overtones is first published in Japan. First English edition in 1968.
1953, Aug.: Tomorrow's Man #8 contains the first published art by Dom Orejudos and the pseudonym Etienne is created.

1954: Satyrs MC founded in Los Angeles, the first gay motorcycle club.
1954: Historie d'O by Pauline Reage (real name, Anne Declos) first published in France. In 1955 it won the Deux-Magots prize, an important French literary award. In 1965 Grove Press publishes the first English language edition as The Story of O.
1954: Birth of Bob Flannigan, SM performance artist and "Supermasochist" [wd]
1954: The San Francisco police stage a crackdown on "Sex Deviates" hitting particularly the area of Market and Embarcadero streets.
1954: Joe Wiedner begins publication of Body Beautiful and Adonis, big budget, color cover, physique magazines which alternate publication in succeeding months. The rise of physique magazines threw the body building publishing world into a homophobic panic, except for Wiedner who jumped in and competed. [Hooven 95]
1954: On the urging of Jim Kepner and Ann Carrl Reid, Chuck Rowland starts the Church of ONE Brotherhood to minister to the religious needs of gays and lesbians. It prospers for about a year, then folds.
1954: The movie "The Wild One" Starring Marlon Brando as a leather jacketed motorcycle gang member is released, creating a sensation and giving seed to an image.
1954, Feb.: One magazine includes its first article about a women's issue. Lesbians continued to be included in the content, and on the staff, until 1959.
1954: June: Suicide of Alan Turing in England, after being outed as a homosexual when he reported the theft of some items by a young man he had invited into his home. Turning had been instrumental in breaking Nazi codes during the war, and is considered the father of the computer.

1955: Two by Eric Jourdan first published in France. This novel of male love with definite SM elements was published in English in 1963.
1955: Publication of Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce, the novel which inspired Paul Neuman's superb movie performance as a member of a southern prison camp chain gang.
1955, Sept. 21: The Daughters of Bilitis, the first Lesbian organization in America, is formed in San Francisco.
1955, Sept. 30: James Dean is killed in a car crash in California. The actor's smoldering sexuality and young death (at 24) elevated him to legendary status. The persistent rumors that he enjoyed being burned with cigarettes and kicked and trampled under men's feet provided hours of pleasant fantasy for many Tops.
1955, Nov. 1: An anti-homosexual witch hunt begins in Boise, ID, later documented by John Gerassi in The Boys of Boise.

1956: The last of the US laws making epilepsy a disqualification for marriage are removed.
1956: Publication of The Street of the Sun by Lance Horner, the most homoerotic and SM, of the Mandango family of novels.
1956: Publication of Sex Magick by Ian Young. Poetry from one of Canada's best known leathermen. (born Jan 5, 1945).
1956, Sept. Jim Kepner and Dorr started America's first gay studies classes. In Jan 1957 they started the first 36 week course in World History from the gay perspective. Kepner conceived and edited Americas first gay scholarly-style journal: ONE Institute Quarterly of Homophile Studies for three years.

1957: The German physician Hans Lehfeldt founds the "Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality" (SSSS) in New York. [wd]
1957: Amsterdam's first leather bar and hotel, The Argos, opens. It is still in business!
1957: The Spring issue of Physique Pictorial magazine includes the first published erotic art of Tom of Finland, and marks the first time that name is used.
1957: Erotic artist George Quaintance dies.
1957: Publication of Color of Darkness, a novel by James Purdy (born July 14, 1923).
1957: Publication of The Last Exit to Brooklyn, a novel by Hubert Selby Jr. (born July 23, 1928)
1957: In the Crittenden Report, the US Navy concludes that homosexuals serving in the military do not create a security risk. The Pentagon denies the existence of this report for twenty years.
1957, Sept. 4: In London the Wolfenden Report recommends decriminalization of "private homosexual acts between consenting adults".

1958: Both Federal and Chicago authorities charge Kris studios with censorship violations. Renslow fights back, surprising the prosecution. His defense uses the simple stand that nudity is not obscene. In support his attorney shows photos of nude male sculpture in the courthouse where the case is being held. Kris was found not guilty, prosecution appealed and eventually the same decision came from the US Supreme court. [Hooven 95]
1958: Confessions of a Mask, an autobiographical novel by Yukio Mishima first published in English.
1958: The Balcony, Jean Genet's play which accommodates every sexual desire, is published in French and English.
1958: The gay SM novel, Muscle Boy, by Bud Clifton is published [wd]
1958: Publication of The Question by Henri Alleg, an account of the French Algerian newspaper man's torture at the hands of French paratroopers.
1958: Publication of Those about to Die , a history of the Roman games and arena shows by Daniel P. Manix.
1958: Oedipus MC founded in Los Angeles, the second gay motorcycle club.
1958: May 12: The Homosexual Law Reform Society is founded in London.
1958, June: Chuck Renslow becomes manager of The Gold Coast in Chicago and creates the first Leather Bar. [JR]

1959: The Big Dollar at 34th & 3rd in New York City opens, A VERY leather bar. [R]
1959: The Spur Club a leather friendly bar at 126 Turk in San Francisco's tenderloin is raided and closed. [R]
1959: In the San Francisco mayoral election homosexuality becomes a political issue. The incumbent clamps down on "queers". [R]
1959: Publication of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. (born Feb. 5, 1914)
1959: US Supreme Court rules in favor of allowing distribution of D. H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. [Hooven 95]
1959: Kellers (bar) opens in New York City and becomes a gathering place for gay motorcycle riders.


1960 - 1969

1960, March 16: The Gold Coast, Chicago's first leather bar, (opened June 1958) is purchased by Chuck Renslow and Associates.
1960: The Why Not (518 Ellis St.) in the Tenderloin is San Francisco's first leather bar. The owners hire Tony Taverossi to create an atmosphere that will attract the leather crowd. The bar closes shortly after opening when Tony propositions a vice squad cop. [R]
1960: Spring: Owners of San Francisco gay bars revolt against police pay-offs and the "Gayola Scandals" result. Police retaliate with a vengeance and close most Gay bars in the city. [R]
1960: Publication of Christ and The Homosexual by Robert Wood, which includes a rather accurate description of one of the many SM parties hosted by Bob Milne at his home in NYC in the early 1950's.[R]
1960: A British court rules that D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, is art not porn.
1960: Warlocks MC, and California Motor Club formed in southern California and San Francisco respectively.
1960: DL Sterling, "The Leathermaker", makes his first pair of motorcycle chaps.

1961: Michael Foucault publishes Folie et deraison (Madness and Civilization). claiming that the role of psychiatry in modern society is to remove people who refuse to conform to it's norms. A shortened English version is published in 1965. [wd]
1961: The Hideaway, a leather friendly bar at 438 Eddy in San Francisco's tenderloin raided and closed. [R]
1961: The Tool Box at 339 4th St. at Harrison in San Francisco opened. It took what Tony Taverosi had created at the Why Not and developed it into what became the classic SF leather bar design. The bar featured the Chuck Arnette mural of masculine men, which was made famous by the June 1964 Life magazine. Closed in 1971.
1961: Moved by the Gayola scandals, Jose Sarria becomes the first openly gay man to run for San Francisco city supervisor. He does not get elected.
1961: Victim is the first film by a major British commercial studio to feature homosexuality as its theme. Dirk Bogarde plays a closeted barrister in a plot about gay blackmail and suicide.

1962: The German sex researcher Hans Giese publishes his book Psychopathologie der Sexualitat, with the intent of continuing Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis. In the medical text book, which dedicates the first 30 pages to the importance of Christianity in sex therapy, he quotes the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte's theories on SM as research, and links sadomasochism to the rise in abortions. Giese's school of thought continues to dominate sex research in Germany until today. In 1992, three of the four professors for sex research in Germany will be former students of Giese. [wd]
1962: Again, in response to the Gayola scandals and their aftermath San Francisco bar owners and employees form the Tavern Guild, to wield political influence.
1962: Fisting is "invented" in a San Francisco basement. [R]
1962: Satyr MC holds it's first Badger Flats Run. The annual event continues uninterrupted for 33 years, until 1994. Then resumes in 1998!
1962: Publication of King Rat by James Clavell. The novel explores dominance in men's relationships in a Japanese prison camp during WWII.
1962: Otto Preminger's film of Alan Drury's novel Advise and Consent, is the first movie explicitly showing a gay bar.
1962, Jan. 1: Effective this date Illinois repeals its sodomy laws and behavior between "consenting adults in private" is no longer subject to criminal prosecution.
1962, Nov.: "Birth" of Phil Andros as Sam Steward writing for eos and amigos magazines of Denmark, uses this pseudonym for the first time.

1963: Denmark becomes the first modern state to drop virtually all censorship. [Hooven 95]
1963: Publication of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, a novel that gives a look at sex, violence, and mind control in a future age.
1963: Publication of the first English edition of Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers.
1963: Publication of City of Night by John Rechy, a novel that takes a close look at the underbelly of gay life: hustling as it was.
1963: Publication of Pleasures of the Torture Chamber by Johnathon Swain.
1963: Publication of Flagellation - The Rod & The Whip by George Bishop.
1963: Publication of The Velvet Underground by Michael Leigh.
1963: Physique Pictorial begins to print a scribbled code of astrological symbols along with its photographs. The symbols give Bob Mizer's ideas about the personalities, and sexual proclivities, of the models. A code sheet to decipher them is sent to favored customers. In 1967 the symbols are used as part of the sexual pandering case against Mizer. He destroys all copies of the code's meanings. [Hooven 95] NOTE: LA&M would consider a copy of this code sheet a very valuable addition to the collection.
1963: Scott Studio, one of the best physique photography studios closes when Tom Nichol, the owner and photographer, moves from London to California. Nichol is noted for early (before 1950) photos of men in boots, leather, biker caps, etc. and for the infamous "Scott Shorts," thin white gym style shorts always at least two sizes too small for his models, who somehow squeezed into them. [Hooven 95]
1963, Feb.: Publication of the first (and only) issue of Young Adonis magazine, the first to have substantial full color. The cover trumpets "24 photos in color" and "More Color than any other magazine!" [Hooven 95]
1963, May: Mars magazine, a male physique publication with leather leanings, begins publication. It is designed and edited by Chuck Renslow and Dom Orejudos of Kris studios
1963, Sept. 15: Second City Motorcycle Club founded in Chicago.[ JOSEPH, SEE ALSO APR. 1965: CAN YOU CLEAR THIS UP?]

1964: The opening of the NYC World's Fair is preceded by a "cleanup" of gay bars, shutting down every one in city except Julius' in the village. [R]
1964: Publication of Rough Trade by Lou Rand.
1964: Publication of Stockade a novel by Jack Pearl which focuses on abuse in a military prison.
1964: Publication of A History of Torture by Daniel P. Manix.
1964: Publication of With Rod and Whip, A History of Flagellation Among Different Nations by Valhalla Books.
1964: Publication of the American edition of Flagellation Curiosa Pt. 1: Sublime of Flagellation, by H. T. Buckle, Pt. 2: Experiences in Flagellation, Compiled by an Ameteur [sic] Flagellant.
1964: US courts allow importation of Danish magazines showing full frontal male nudity if they are official publications of nudist organizations. International Nudist Sun is the most popular all male title, many others feature only women or both men and women. [Hooven 95]
1964, June 26: Life magazine features "Homosexuality in America," an article by Paul Welch that includes a two page spread on the Tool Box, San Francisco's premier leather bar, and sparks a migration of eager leathermen to "Baghdad by the Bay."
1964: The first appearance of Al "A. Jay" Shapiro's cartoon creation, "Harry Chess", in the Philadelphia based gay monthly Drum.
1964: Empire City MC founded in NYC and holds first Empire City Christmas Party and Toys for Tots.
1964: Recon MC founded in San Francisco.
1964: Society for Individual Rights (SIR) founded in San Francisco.

1965, Apr.: Second City MC founded in Chicago. The first such club in the Midwest. (RR) [JOSEPH SEE ALSO SEPT 1963 CAN YOU CLEAR THIS UP?]
1965: Grove Press issues the first English edition of Pauline Reage's The Story of O.
1965: In New York City, Steve Masters (real name Mike Miksche, a highly respected fashion artist) one of the most talented homoerotic, and leather oriented, artists, and publisher of the Physique Magazine, BIG, commits suicide. His wife finds the studio where he worked on his erotica, and had sm scenes with other men, and burns most of his art. Fortunately he had already donated much work to Kinsey, for whom he had performed SM scenes with Sam Steward.
1965: Publication of Quatrefoil by James Barr, a novel of sex among men in the US Navy.
1965: Publication in Japan of Madame deSade a play by Yukio Mishima. First English publication in 1967.
1965: Publication of The Lonely Sex - Mail Order Vice by Carlson Wade.
1965: Formation of Saddlemasters MC and Saddlebacks of Orange County both in California and of SixtyNine Club in London, England.
1965: On the Levee a bar at 987 Embarcadero in San Francisco becomes popular with the leather crowd. Closed in 1972. [R]
1965, Late: A new physique magazine, Butch, produces its first issue, filled with unidentified frontally nude male photos from Arts Unlimited. Virtually simultaneously Drum an activist gay magazine published in Philadelphia prints, in the copies of its January 1966 issue that goes to subscribers, but not to those sent to newsstands, the first full frontal male nudes that are not presented in the guise of anthropological study or nudist culture. [Hooven 95]

1966: CMC (California Motorcycle Club) rents Sefarer's International Union hall for their annual CMC Carnival, thanks primarily to Don Rotan who was a member of both CMC and the Sefarer's union. [R]
1966: Barbary Coasters MC formed in San Francisco.
1966: Jose Sarria, "The Widow Norton," becomes the first "Empress of San Francisco," and the gay Court System has begun. [R]
1966: Publication of Song of the Loon by Richard Amory, the first of a trilogy of erotic novels that took the American fascination with cowboys and Indians to a whole new level.
1966: Publication of Sadism by Andre Tarade.
1966: The American gynecologists William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson publish their study on the Human Sexual Response. [wd]
1966: The first complete male to female genital confirmation surgery in the US takes place at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. [TOL]
1966, Feb.: North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) meets in Kansas City. It quickly deteriorates into a vicious fight among organizations with differing objectives and strategies. All of the elements of today's PC wars were there, and doing battle.
1966, July 25: FeBe's opens on Folsom in San Francisco and quickly becomes one of the leading leather bars, particularly for members of motorcycle clubs. The bar's "leather David" logo (the original a plaster sculpture by Mike Caffee) becomes a leather icon. A Taste of Leather, upstairs at FeBe's, opens in 1967 as one of the first in-bar leather shops. FeBe's closes in 1986. [R]

1967, Jan. 1: Los Angeles Police raid the Black Cat, the incident "boosted the modest Pride Newsletter into The Advocate." [Kepner 95]
1967: The "Summer of Love" in San Francisco
1967: Publication of Eustace Chisholm and the Works a novel by James Purdy.
1967: Publication of Numbers by John Rechy, a novel exploring the gay male obsession with accumulating tricks.
1967: Publication of Brutality Through the Ages by John Swain.
1967: Publication of Sexual Sadism - The Pleasure of Inflicting Pain by Edward Podolsky MD and Carlson Wade.
1967: Publication of Erotic Variations by John Barry.
1967: Publication of Sex and Sadism by Val Vane.
1967: A survey that questions 643 Germans on their attitudes towards sexual deviant groups shows that sadists are seen as egotistical, aggressive, revolting, unsympathetic, wild, unbalanced, strict, dominating, hard, active, cold, sick, introverted, pedantic, and close-mouthed. They are associated with the stereotypes of murderers and pimps. Homosexuals, themselves still considered deviant, and students have slightly less negative attitudes. Attitudes towards masochists are not examined. [wd]
1967: Bob Mizer of Athletic Model Guild is arrested and charged with running a male prostitution ring because of his first concept of AMG as a referral service for models. He is convicted and for most of 1968 Physique Pictorial fails to appear and Mizer, who hated to travel, is not at home. [Hooven 95]
1967: Formation of Cheaters MC and Constantines of the Bay Area, both in San Francisco.
1967: Barbary Coasters present their first annual San Francisco Motorcycle Awards.
1967: Nick O'Demus opens his A Taste Of Leather shop upstairs at FeBe's. One of the first in bar leather shops.
1967, Jul. 26: The United States Federal Court for the District of Minnesota upholds a landmark decision affirming the right of all persons to receive materials dealing with the nude male figure. [JR]
1967, July 27: The Sexual Offenses Act, removing criminality from sexual relations between consenting adults, an action which had been recommended by the Wolfenden Report in 1958, finally becomes law in England and Wales.
1967, Aug.: The newsletter of PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) becomes The Los Angles Advocate.
1967, Aug.: The third national North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) meets in Washington, D.C. , with friction between East Coast and West Coast representatives.
1967, Oct. 9: The film I am Curious - Yellow premiers in Stockholm. It will become a major example of sexual liberation in the US.
1967, Nov. 17: The Oscar Wilde Book Shop, the first gay and lesbian store of it's kind, opens in New York City. For years all SM publications are banned from the store.

1968: Off the Levee is opened at 527 Bryant in San Francisco by the owner of the leather bar "On The Levee". This location later becomes the leather friendly bar and restaurant Chez Mollet. [R]
1968: The Ramrod at 1225 Folsom in San Francisco, opened and quickly succeeded FeBe's as THE leather bar, at least for the SM crowd, while FeBe's remained the prime bar for MC club socializing. [R]
1968: Formation of Buddy MC and Warriors MC in California, Nine Plus and Cycle MC in New York City; Serpents in San Francisco; Spartan MC in Baltimore and Washington DC; SMCLA, later changed to Lost Angels, in DC; V Senses Rubber Club in NYC; Rocky Mountaineers MC in Denver; and Texas Riders MC, originally the Warlocks and later the Cobras, in Houston.
1968: Cycle MC holds first annual Bass River Run.
1968: Metropolitan Community Church founded in Los Angeles by Rev. Troy Perry, a leatherman.
1968: In New York City several leather friendly bars, restaurants and private clubs open. These include: The Hayloft private club; The International Stud bar, JB's Restaurant, OK Corral dining room; the Skull after hours bar; the Tool Box bar; and the Nine Plus clubhouse on 21st St. Louie's Bar is renamed Louie's Spartan Lounge.
1968: Cycle MC begins publication of it's newsletter Wheels and Nine Plus begins publication of its Scimitar. New York Motor Bike Club publishes last issue of its Black and Blue.
1968: Alan Selby begins Mr. S Leathers in London, England.
1968: One of the earliest explicitly gay male SM novels, The Real Thing by William Carney (birth Dec 29 1946), is published by Putnam's, a major publishing house.
1968: Publication of The Agency, and its sequel, The Agent, two novels of explicit SM by David Meltzer.
1968: Publication of "The Figa" by Paul Mariah, a poem paean to fisting. [R]
1968, Jan.: Under pressure to abandon its militant roots, PRIDE was dissolved by its founders, who sold The Advocate to Dick Michaels, Sam Winston and Bill Rand for one dollar. [LRF]
1968, Jan.: Der Kreis, the world's oldest known homophile publication, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, ceases publication after thirty five years. [LRF]
1968, March: An Orange County man looses his home and auto insurance after a neighbor sees him kiss a man in his backyard. The neighbor reports the incident to the police, who contact the man's insurance company. [LRF]
1968, April 14: Mort Crowley's play, The Boys in the Band opens in New York City. (Birth Aug. 21, 1935)
1968, Aug.: A dedication to militant law reform and a formalization in structure sweeps thorough the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) which meets in Chicago. [LRF]
1968, Aug.: LA police raid the Patch II, a gay bar in Wilmington, leading "flower laden gays to raid the Harbor Police Station and help start MCC and two other major organzations." [Kepner 95]
1968, Sept.: Demanding equal access to the Yellow Pages, San Francisco homophile groups lodge a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission asking for a separate listing of "Homophile Groups", the phone company accedes in August 1971, after several years of court struggles.
1968, Dec.: The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that homosexuals have the right to assemble in public, overturning the revocation of three New Jersey bars' licenses for "permitting apparent homosexual to contregate." [LRF]

1969: Time magazine declares 1969 "The Year of the Newly Militant Homosexual"
1969: Fred Halsted meets Joey Yale at the Black Pipe, a Los Angeles leather bar. They make the film LA Plays Itself, with explicit SM scenes, and begin a lifelong relationship.
1969: Publication in France of Return to the Chateau by Pauline Reage, a sequel to The Story of O. US edition published in 1971.
1969: Publication of Leather, The Leather Queens, and several similar erotic novels by Dirk Vaden.
1969: Publication of the American edition of Flagellation & The Flagellants - A History of the Rod by Rev. Wm. A. Cooper, BA.
1969: Publication of $tud, the first Phil Andros novel written by Samuel Steward and published by Guild Press.
1969: Publication of The Homosexual Handbook by Josef Bush, which includes the names of people the author suspects of being gay. The publisher quickly recalls and destroys 7000 copies, then reprints the book omitting only one name: J. Edgar Hoover. [TOL]
1969: American anthropologist Paul Gebhard publishes his article on Fetishism and Sadomasochism, placing SM in a cultural context. SM is seen as a result of cultural forces and as a form of scripted behavior. Gebhard's break with the view of SM founded by Krafft-Ebbing and Freud paves the way for sociological studies on SM. [wd]
1969: Formation of Apollos, Commanders MC, UYA MC and Wheels MC in NYC; Border Riders MC in Seattle & Vancouver BC; Vanguards MC in Philadelphia; Vikings MC in Boston and the AAMC, the Atlantic Midwest Coordinating Council, lather the Atlantic Motorcycle Coordinating Council. In London England V Senses Rubber club becomes Rubber Man's Club of London.
1969: Newsletters are first published by several clubs: The Longship from Vikings MC (ceases publication 1970); Innertube from V Senses Rubber; and Tread from Wheels MC.
1969: The Den bar opens in New York City.
1969: The Shed becomes Boston's leather-levi bar.
1969: The Leather Cell (a leather and toy shop) opens in the basement, "The Pit", of the Gold Coast in Chicago.
1969, Jan.: Bob Mizer brings out Physique Pictorial Natural introducing both color and frontal nudity to his publication. [Hooven 95]
1969, Jan.: Members of the Danish parliament considered a bill to legalize marriages between homosexuals; the bill will be defeated and reintroduced annually until it is finally passed in 1989. {LRF +]
1969, Feb.: The Correctional Association of New York called for an end to the state's criminal statutes against abortion, prostitution, and homosexuality. [LRF]
1969, April: Chain Male #1, one of the BEST gay male SM/bondage photobooks is published.
1969, May: Pat Rocco's nude ballet film, A Breath of Love, is accepted for screening at the San Francisco Film Festival. [LRF]
1969, May: West Germany decriminalizes male homosexual acts between men over 21. East Germany had repealed its antigay law a year earlier. [LRF]
1969, June: After 32 years, the statue of David at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cypress, California, has its fig leaf removed. [LRF]
1969, June 27: Judy Garland is buried. Memorial services are held in New York City.
1969, June 28: New York City Police raid the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher St. near 7th Ave. triggering riots that last several nights, and becoming the seminal event in public awareness of the fight for gay rights.
1969, June 29: "Four Policemen Hurt in Village Raid" reported the New York Times, on page 33. [LRF]
1969, July: Reporting on the Stonewall riots, Time magazine says, "The love that once dared not speak its name now can't seem to keep its mouth shut." [TOL]
1969, July 1: US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia holds that homosexuality does not automatically disqualify a government employee for continuing in his job. [JR]
1969, July: The Gay Liberation Front is formed in New York City. [LRF]
1969, Aug.: North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) meets, again in Kansas City. [LRF]
1969, Aug.: Alaska's Supreme Court rules the term "crime against nature" unconstitutional. [LRF]
1969, Oct.: A National Institutes of Health Task Force on Homosexuality, headed by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, submits its report favoring the decriminalization of homosexuality.
1969, Oct.: The University of Minnesota recognizes a club for gays and sympathizers called FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression). [LRF]
1996, Oct. 30: Film star Ramon Novarro is murdered in his Los Angeles mansion by Paul and Tom Ferguson, brothers and hustlers. Paul had previously modeled for Kris Studios. Rumor has it that the murder weapon was a metal dildoe (gold in some stories, lead in others) given to Novaro by Rudolph Valentino.
1969, Dec.: In a landmark decision the California Supreme Court rules that the state cannot revoke a teacher's credentials over charges of homosexual conduct. [LRF]
1969, Dec.: Hawaii's state Penal Revision Project recommends that private homosexual activity be legalized. [LRF]
1969, Dec.: 21: Gay Activist Alliance founded in New York City.


1970

1970: The explicitly homoerotic SM film Born to Raise Hell starring Val Martin, produced by Terry LeGrand and directed by Roger Earl, is released in Los Angeles. It remains a classic of the genre to this date. [Joseph!!! see 1972. Which is correct???]
1970: Publication of Cruising a murder mystery novel by Jay Green set in New York's leather bars. When later made into a movie starring Al Pacino it was the subject of vocal demonstrations by gay activists who objected to the portrayals.
1970: Publication of The Young Master by William Lambert III, one of the best from this prolific author of gay erotica with an SM twist.
1970: Publication of Leather Ad V1: M and V2: S novels by Larry Townsend.
1970: Publication of Sex and the Lash Lovers by R. Rodgers Kingman.
1970: Michael Holm starts Revolt Press in Sweden. He publishes Tom of Finland's books of artwork, and later starts Mr. SM and Toy magazines.
1970: Formation of Atons of Minneapolis; Boston Bike Club; Centaur MC of Richmond VA; Druids MC of Washington DC; Entre Nous of Boston; The Lake Riders of Chicago; the Libertines of Kansas City; MS Amsterdam, MSC Rhein-Main Frankfurt; MC Kemo of Montreal; PCMC of Los Angeles; Praetorians of New York City; The San Franciscans; South Pacific MC of Sydney; Southern Cross MC of Melbourne; Spearhead of Toronto; TOR MC of Toronto and Vulcan Rubber Club of Washington DC. New York First, a council of New York motorcycle clubs is formed.
1970: Spearhead holds its first Roundup run and the Vanguards hold their first Oktoberfest. The first Leather Sabbat is held in Washington DC.
1970: Leather bar openings include: the Barn in NYC; Boots in Ft. Lauderdale; The Cellblock in NYC, The Leather Game in Los Angeles; The Leather Stallion in Cleveland, the Eagle's Nest, NYC:, the Triangle in NYC,
1970: Professor Louis Compton of the University of Nebraska teaches the first gay studies course in the US. [TOL]
1970: The Gay Activists Alliance selects the Greek letter lambda (8) as a symbol of the gay movement.
1970, Jan.: More than 250 homosexuals, led by the Rev. Troy Perry, march for police reform on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. [LRF]
1970, Jan.: Customs officials seize and seek permission to destroy, ten artworks from an international erotic exhibit scheduled to show in New York City. Permission is denied by a New York court citing the First Amendment. [LRF]
1970, March: A gay San Francisco postal worker fights an attempt by the Civil Service commission to terminate him for "moral incompetency," recovering his job in November, and paving the road for future Civil Service Commission reforms. [LRF]
1970, June: Celebrating the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the first gay pride parades/marches/rallies are held in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Cycle MC marches in the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade in NYC.
1970, July 6: Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Church, and a leatherman, sits on the steps of the Federal Building in Los Angeles refusing to eat or leave until someone from the city of Los Angeles comes and talks to him about Gay rights. Eleven days later city Councilman Robert Stevenson holds a curbside meeting with Perry, ending his vigil. [TOL]
1970, Aug.: North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) holds its final meeting in San Francisco. Morris Knight leads street people in to smash NACHO. "Anarchy faced off with arrogant conservatism, and anarchy won," says Jim Kepner. [LRF]
1970, Sept.: The Federal Commission on Obscenity and Pornography urges the repeal of most anti-pornography laws. [JR]
1970, Nov. 25: Yukio Mishima commits ritual suicide after a failed attempt to incite a riot at a Military school in Japan. (Born Jan. 14, 1925).


1971

1971: The In Between opens at 1347 Folsom in San Francisco, in between FeBe's and the Ramrod. It soon metamorphosed into the No Name, a popular leather bar. [R]
1971: The first FFA run is held in Cambria CA.[R]
1971: Formation of Argonauts, Cycle Runners MC, Koalas, and LOBOC in California; Chicago Knights MC; Keystone Riders in Philadelphia; Kingmasters in Los Angeles, Northern Riding Club in the UK; Scorpions MC (originally Centaur MC's DC chapter) in DC; Thunderbolts MC in Connecticut; Tribe MC in Detroit and Unicorns MC in Cleveland. The Boston Bike Club disbands.
1971: Runs initiated include The Centaur's Olympia, Entre Nous' Days of Equinox and Hell-Za-Popper held jointly by Wheels and Nine Plus.
1971: Leather bar openings include: the Bootcamp in San Francisco, DC Eagle, The Ramrod in Phoenix, the Stockade in NYC and the 247 in Philadelphia.
1971: Publication of All or Nothing by Dirk Vaden, one of the most popular leather novels of its time.
1971: Publication of two of Larry Townsend's best early novels: Run Little Leather Boy and The Scorpius Equation.
1971: Publication of the photo illustrated History of Flagellation in two volumes by Jon A. Peterssen.
1971, Jan. 3: First lesbian center in the US opens in New York City, sponsored by the NY Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis.
1971, Feb.: The Eulenspiegel Society is founded in New York City as North America's first SM organization. It is open to all sexes and orientations.
1971, Apr.: Bob Ross begins publishing the Bay Area Reporter, aka the B.A.R., in San Francisco. Mr. Marcus begins his leather column in this newspaper in August of 1971. As of this writing in Jan,. 1999, both the paper and the column are still going strong after 28 years!
1971, Apr. 30: Richard Chinn and John Cantrell are arrested in downtown Chicago for kissing each other in public.
1971 Aug. 5: The Bootcamp, a uniform themed bar opens at 1010 Bryant St. in San Francisco. Marcus Hernandez, aka Mr. Marcus, is manager. [R]
1971, Aug. 29: Tribe M.C. (later Tribe Detroit, Inc.) founded.
1971, Aug.: In Chicago: Thirteen men decide to organize a group specifically to hold gay male SM play parties and the Chicago Hellfire Club is created.

1972

1972: The Folsom St. Barracks at 1147 Folsom St in San Francisco is the city's first leather oriented "Bathhouse". [R]
1972: Marcus Hernandez, leather bar manager and leather columnist for The Advocate and later for the B.A.R, is selected as the first gay Emperor of San Francisco. (Not counting the Emperor Norton, of course.)
1972: Formation of Atlantis MC (originally Unicorn/Atlanta) in Atlanta; Atons of Minneapolis; Bucks MC in Pennsylvania; Celtics MC in Mississippi; Hawks MC in Los Angeles; the Interclub Fund in San Francisco; Iron Cross MC in Montreal; Knights of Malta, Black Rose Chapter, Portland OR; Knights of Malta, Emerald Chapter in Seattle; NY Levi Club; Omaha Meatpackers; Rainbow MC in California; The Selectmen of Detroit, The Stallions of Cleveland; and Titan MC of Boston.
1972: Frank Ball founds TAIL, The "Total Ass Involvement League," with members all over the world who communicate through frequently published newsletters, and membership rosters with carefully coded indications of sexual specifics offered and sought.
1972: Marshall Loeb begins publication of SMads, which offeres gay male subscribers a chance to place and respond to explicitly SM personal ads.
1972: Cycle MC sponsors its first tour to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
1972: Iron Cross publishes first issue of its newsletter Crossroads and Nine Plus publishes last issue of its Scimitar.
1972: Two New York leather bar institutions, the Ramrod and The Spike (formerly the Stockade) open. Nine Plus moves to a new location between The Spike and The Eagle.
1972: Publication of Black In White IN by K. Kevork, Interracial gay sex with strong elements of SM.
1972: Publication of A Persian Boy by Mary Renault, a novel that follows a slaveboy in the service of Alexander the Great.
1972: Publication of Punishment, An Illustrated History by Peter N. Walker
1972: The Leatherman's Handbook by Larry Townsend, the first non-fiction book about gay male leather lifestyles, is published.
1972: Producer Terry LeGrand and Director Roger Earl make a gay male SM film starring Val Martin and a large cast. Born to Raise Hell is still regarded as one of the best gay male SM films ever made. [Joseph, see 1970. Can you resolve this question?]
1972: R. Litman and C. Swearingen, in an article in the Archives of General Psychiatry, describe a "bondage subculture" in the USA. This is the first such reference to any leather group recognized as a "subculture" in the professional literature. [wd]
1972, April: The (San Francisco) Bay Area Reporter newspaper begins publishing a column devoted to leather related news, gossip and information written by "Mr. Marcus," (Marcus Hernandez.) The first, and longest running, column of its type, in 1999 it is still going strong!
1972, April 4: "tons of Minneapolis" is founded.
1972, May: Chuck Holmes sends out his first mail order flyer for gay erotic 8mm films, one of which starred the legendary king of porn John Holmes (no relation). The business would eventually become Falcon, one of the biggest gay video companies in the world.
1972, May 2: Death of J. Edgar Hoover, for many years the director of the US Bureau of Investigation. For years his federal police force had kept surveillance records on thousands of individuals and organizations including many that were gay or engaged in other sexual activities beyond vanilla. After his death stories surfaced about his 44 year "friendship" with Clyde Tolson (1900-1975) who was his right hand man at the FBI and was his housemate outside the office. Photos of Hoover in female drag have also appeared. It seems tha