Horror and inconvenience

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

I started this for last year's Barricade Day then forgot about it and finished it about a month ago

Happy Barricade Day 2023 everyone! I guess I'm never growing out of this

My favorite dudes in hellraiser are the people like "perhaps the torture demons will grant my wish in a way that doesn't involve torture!"

people trying to seek meaningful justice or healing through the criminal justice system

[Tweet from @/fozmeadows: "human gender and sexuality are very much like animal taxonomy, in that both look structured and simple on the surface, but once you start investigating, it turns out there's actually no such thing as a fish despite the fact that we all know what a fish is, and that's okay"]

As a biologist, that is a fantastic comparison.

We talk about “fish” (which, cladistically, do not exist, there is no monophyletic group of “fish” that simultaneously includes all organisms we understand to be “fish”-like while also excluding, say, humans) because, despite the utter fiction that is fish, it’s still a useful label when we talk about certain features that “fish” tend to have in common.

Gender is absolutely the same way.

Babe wake up new gender dropped, it's got gills

i need less "happy, fluffy cinnamon roll" luke skywalker and more "raised in the ass-end of nowhere with spiders 4ft across who used to shoot rats the size of saint bernards for fun, who at 19 killed one million people in a single shot and just happens to be really optimistic for a guy who is a guerilla fighter and a space revolutionary"

let me take you on a little journey:

luke skywalker is public enemy number one, with a bounty on his head that's astronomical, who took down the deadliest weapon the galaxy's ever seen in a single shot he fired on gut instinct listening to the advice of a ghost with his eyes closed. in one shot he took the rebellion from a sprawling network of small resistances to engaging in all-out war with the empire. he wears the lightsaber and the last name of a murdered jedi traitor, uses a banned weapon and believes in a banned religion and accompanying psychic powers that children are either slaughtered or indoctrinated into a cult for having. yesterday he'd never flown in space before and a day later he's the commander of a squadron, and he flies like a natural.

in the span of a few days after the death star is blown to smithereens, taking out a massive portion of the empire's top brass, the scariest guy in the empire - seven feet of murder and death where if he steps on a battlefield the only advice anyone can give you is run and pray he doesn't find you - calls on a moratorium of Hunting The Pilot Who Destroyed The Death Star. the scariest motherfucker in town decides that he wants luke skywalker's head on a pike, and bans anyone else from getting it. in the span of a week it looks like luke skywalker made a mortal enemy in the cyborg that hell spat out because he was too evil to contain.

and it's THAT guy who earnestly thinks this scrappy little rebellion's got a shot. it's that, this immensely weird motherfucker from seemingly nowhere, that tells you, genuinely, with his own mouth, "we can do it if we help each other and never give up :)" and he sounds like an inspirational poster on the wall of the guidance counselor's office. but you watch him wave the antique weapon the empire wants to pack him off to a firing squad for having, and you're like, well, if this guy can believe it, maybe anyone can.

okay, skeletons have xylophones, demons have fiddles, ghosts have theremins and vampires have pipe organs. but what of the humble werewolf? what instrument does she get for her very own?

Werewolves are vocalists. What instrument could rival her beautiful howl?

They’re in a band together

you gotta be as gay as possible on the computer otherwise alan turing died for nothing

Tramp stamp that says "B-But we're both girls!"

If this gets to 60k notes I'll get the tattoo

Polyamory does not equal competition 😑

It does on game night.

house of leaves / goncharov esque project consisting of the paratext of a nonexistent text where the described-but-unseen source material is an 800 page rulebook for the worst tabletop game you've ever heard of and the paratext is a series of arguments and blog posts generated by insane forum users

Obsessed with this title askfjdha

EN translation of the title from Italy: “Does the Covid 19 vaccine make you gay? You wish! Unfortunately, science does not work miracles.”

I do hope some fanartist decides to show us Crowley meeting a quokka.

I’m sure he would have opinions.

Do not turn your back on a quokka. Do not ever get into a poker game with a bunch of quokkas.

And especially, if a quokka mentions a fun game played with three cards, two black and one red, run for the hills. (Run for the hills without ever turning your back on the quokka in question, obviously.)

well maybe YOUR ominous glowing amulet is cursed but i havent had any problems with mine

I feel that today is a good day to post this picture from an ACT UP demonstration at Trump Tower on Halloween 1989 because it is more pertinent than ever

ok i’m interested. what non-necessity do you buy whenever you get the chance? like what’s something you love that you always feel you need more of? mine are phone cases and stuffed animals.

I'm against changing the pronouns in songs BUT anyone singing Orville Peck songs must change the pronouns to make the song gay to honor the original source material.

I actually change the pronouns in every song I sing to make it gay. Even if the song is narrated in third person. It’s how I get my revenge on society

I’m sitting at 4, what about you guys?

what the fuck does op think classic rock is

these bands :)

Earth, Wind and Fire is anything BUT rock wtf

It's classic rock :)

As a decrepit thirty-year-old, let me tell you, seeing Bastille on a “classic rock” post was like being dunked in a tank of ice water

Happy TDOV everyone transgenderism will win

Bugs Bunny could have simply walked into Mordor. He would have shown up at the gates of Mordor in a disguise and been like "Evil volcano inspection unit" and flashed a fake ID badge to the confused orc.

Love the implication here that the one ring would have little to no effect on Bugs

To be fair, it’s canonically established in Lord of the Rings that Tom Bombadil, an inexplicable magical trickster, is unaffected by the ring, and the only reason they don’t give the job to him is because Tom Bombadil is a silly little man who’s easily distracted and just wants to spend time with his hot wife.

Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, loves nothing more than fucking over self-important dickheads, and is also an inexplicable magical trickster, so he would in fact be perfect for this mission.

The One Ring may not tempt Bugs, but he’d have other problems with the mission: he’d get lost halfway there (”I knew I should’ve made a left turn at Albuquerque”) and get distracted enough to hand the One RIng to Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam as a prank, only for it to be stolen by Daffy Duck, leading to an ever-increasing number of characters on an increasingly-destructive chase across Middle Earth as everyone keeps stealing it from each other, (Bugs would definitely pull the “evil volcano inspector” gag to get into Mordor, and he’d then immediately turn around and pose as a customs agent stopping whoever currently has the ring at the border and relieving them of it as “contraband”) culminating in an all-out brawl at Mount Doom.  Bugs manages to reclaim the ring one last time as everyone else is busy fighting each other, only for Daffy to come out of nowhere and grab it out of his hands.  Laughing maniacally, Daffy doesn’t realize that his victory dance has taken him right off the edge off a cliff - until Bugs points it out, at which point gravity reasserts itself, and Daffy and the ring both plunge to the fiery depths below