Dave Navarro is an American guitarist who plays in the alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction and cover band Camp Freddy. Navarro joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1993, around the same time that he announced that he considered himself to be bisexual.
The following is what Wikipedia has written of Navarro’s romantic past.
Navarro has been married and divorced three times. He married his first wife, make-up artist Tania Goddard, in a pagan ceremony in 1990 and his second wife, Rhian Gittins, in a civil ceremony on October 15, 1994. Navarro married model and actress Carmen Electra, on November 22, 2003. On July 17, 2006, Navarro and Electra announced their split to Star Magazine. Navarro posted a message on his blog the following morning saying “I just want to say thanks for all of your love and support. I’m sure that you can understand that I wish to keep all personal matters private.” Electra filed for divorce on August 8, 2006.
What Wikipedia leaves out is that Navarro is has admitted to being bisexual in 1993, and has spoken publicly about having experimented sexually with other men. In a 2006 article with Dot News Magazine, Navarro said he now identifies as having been bi-curious in his younger years, though said he would still sleep with Johnny Depp, given the chance.
While he no longer identifies as a member of the community, Navarro reached out to LGBT teens after an alarming spike of teenage suicides, through an open online letter.
This is an excerpt:
I know how overwhelming the feelings can get and how small the reality can feel, but the bottom line is that this is but a drop in the bucket in terms of the magnitude of life. You can get through this. High school is full of plenty of bullies and fear based hate, as is the world. With any group of people comes a percentage of people who just don’t get it and probably will never get it. That’s OK. We all deal with this to an extent. The truth is that in high school, you are kind of stuck in the group you are a part of until graduation, but trust me … You can pick and choose who you associate with and there are plenty of like-minded people in the world that are understanding, accepting and loving. Sometimes, we just have to stick it out to meet them.
Also this.
Woah, that’s a lot of fans of Frida.
On April 15, 1837, 28-year-old arrived in Springfield, Il with less than $20 in his pocket, but with a dream to become a lawyer. One of the first stops that Abraham Lincoln made was at a general store, where he went to buy a bed. The shopkeeper, a young man named Joshua Fry Speed, totaled the price to $17. That was more than Lincoln could afford to spend on a bed, but he inquired if he could buy the bed on credit. Speed later said of the day, “I never saw a sadder face.” He suggested, rather than Lincoln buying a bed, he shared his bed in his living quarters above the store.
The two men lived, and slept, together for four years.
On January 1, 1841, Speed left to return to his home state of Kentucky. Lincoln suffered a nervous breakdown. At the time, Lincoln wrote, “I am now the most miserable man living. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
For years, the two penned passionate letters to one another, letters which Lincoln always signed “Yours forever”-a phrase which Lincoln never wrote to any woman, including his wife, though he used it in letters to several other men.
In the book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, by C.A. Tripp, documents an earlier love affair between Lincoln and Billy Greene, a friend and frequent bunkmate during the 1830s. At around the same time, Lincoln wrote a poem about two young men getting married and trying to have a baby, which became well known among his friends and neighbors. It is considered to be one of the earliest and most explicit gay poems of the 19th century.
Here’s an excerpt:
Rubin and Charles has married two girls,
But Billy has married a boy.
The girls he had tried on every side,
but none could he get to agree.
All was in vain, he went home again,
and since that he is married to Natey.
Frida Kahlo began painting at the age of 19, after suffering a traffic accident that left her with chronic pain. The young women began to produce hundreds of paintings, the majority of which were self-portraits that related to contemporary and feminist issues. Of her work, Kahlo said, “I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.”
Kahlo was striking for her unconventional look. She refused to remove her facial hair, (she had a unibrow and a small mustache, both of which she emphasized in many self portraits,) and she was known for her stylish clothing that related to traditional Mexican dress.
Kahlo had a stormy relationship with two-time husband Diego Rivera, due to irritable temperaments and numerous affairs.
Kahlo had several love affairs with women, including Actresses Dolores Del Rio and Paulette Goddard. She was also involved with Josephine Baker and Artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Kahlo once said about the artist, “O’Keeffe was in the hospital for three months, she went to Bermuda for a rest. She didn’t make love to me that time, I think on account of her weakness. Too bad.”
Dr. Alfred Kinsey was a professor of entomology and zoology and a biologist at Indiana University. Kinsey spent 25 years conducting his famous sex surveys. From 1938 to 1963, he and his staff interviewed more than 18,000 men and women, asking about the relative frequency of practices likea masturbation and premarital, extramarital, and homosexual sex. He is often cited (and blamed) for the sexual revolution of the mid-20th century.
Years after Kinsey published the works that made him famous, it became known that he was bisexual, and explored relationships with men more and more as he grew older.
Joan Jett made a national splash as a leading part of the 1970s all-girl rock group, The Runaways.The group recorded four albums and shocked the nation when the young girls took the stage in risque outfits and by living their “wild party lifestyles.” The five-girl group influenced musicians including Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna. Since the 70’s, Jett has made a name for herself with her solo career and the creation of her record label.
Though the raven-haired rocker has never officially came out, rumors of Jett sleeping with fellow Runaways member Cherie Currie spread during the height of the band’s fame. While Jett has never denied rumors of her being a lesbian, she has never confirmed it.
During an interview with In and Out Magazine Jett responded to this question by saying, “I’m not saying no, I’m not saying yes, I’m saying believe what you want.”
Civil rights pioneer Sylvia Rivera was one of the instigators of the Stonewall uprising, an event that helped launch the modern gay rights movement.
“I’m not missing a minute of this, it’s the revolution!”
Seventeen-year-old drag queen Sylvia Rivera was in the crowd that gathered outside the Stonewall Inn the night of June 27, 1969, when the Greenwich Village gay bar was raided by the police. Rivera reportedly shouted, “I’m not missing a minute of this, it’s the revolution!” As police escorted patrons from the bar, Rivera was one of the first bystanders to throw a bottle.
After Stonewall, Rivera joined the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and worked energetically on its campaign to pass the New York City Gay Rights Bill. She was famously arrested for climbing the walls of City Hall in a dress and high heels to crash a closed-door meeting on the bill. In time, GAA eliminated drag and transvestite concerns from their agenda as they sought to broaden their political base. Years later, Rivera told an interviewer, “When things started getting more mainstream, it was like, `We don’t need you no more’.” But, she added, “Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned.”
Sylvia Rivera (né Ray Rivera Mendosa) was a persistent and vocal advocate for transgender rights. Her activist zeal was fueled by her own struggles to find food, shelter, and safety in the urban streets from the time she left home at the age of ten. In 1970, Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) to help homeless youth.
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), an organization dedicated to ending poverty and gender identity discrimination, carries on Rivera’s work on behalf of marginalized persons.
In 2005, a street in Greenwich Village near the Stonewall Inn was renamed in Sylvia Rivera’s honor.
Calif. bill would add LGBT history in public schools
A bill to make sure the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are accurately portrayed in public school teaching materials is wending its way through the California legislature.
The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act, Senate Bill 48, written by state Senator Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, passed the Democrat-led state Senate on a party-line vote in mid-April, just before the legislature’s spring recess. When the legislature returns next week, the bill will be heard in Assembly Committees.
Leno’s bill would add the LGBT community to the underrepresented cultural and ethnic groups already listed in the state’s inclusionary education requirements. It would also add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing bans on bias in school activities, instruction, and instructional materials.
Predictably, a number of religious and conservative organizations, including the California Catholic Conference and the California Family Council, oppose the bill and are encouraging their members to lobby against it.
If the Assembly passes the FAIR Education Act and Governor Jerry Brown signs it into law, California will become the first state to require teaching gay history in public schools.
“Most textbooks don’t include any information about LGBT historical figures or the LGBT civil rights movement, which has great significance to both California and U.S. history,” Leno said. “We can’t tell our youth that it’s OK to be yourself and expect them to treat their peers with dignity and respect while we deny them accurate information about the historical contributions of Americans who happened to be LGBT.”
The bill is co-sponsored by Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.
“We’re thrilled the Senate approved SB 48, recognizing that inclusion of LGBT Americans in instructional materials will teach all students to respect each other’s differences, reduce bullying and increase safety for all students,” Carolyn Laub, executive director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, said in a statement.
Jim Carroll, interim executive director of Equality California, said the measure “will ensure all students understand the diversity of our state and its history, and it will foster greater awareness, respect and safer schools for all students.”
Isaiah Baiseri, a senior at Glendora High School in Glendora, Calif., told a Senate committee he struggled with his identify for years. “In school, I never learned that people like me had achieved great things like leading a civil rights movement,” he said. “Instead, I only learned stereotypes.” He thanked the Senate for passing the bill, “so someday other students like me can learn our history.”
Edward II and Isabella of France
Royal marriages won’t work if both parties are interested in seeing other men.
When Isabella of France married the young, handsome King Edward II in 1308, it seemed like a match made in heaven. Problems started to emerge already at the wedding banquet, however. Edward spent all his time with his “friend” Piers Gaveston, and practically had to be dragged kicking and screaming to his marriage bed.
Things didn’t improve when some nice gentlemen took it upon themselves to cut Gaveston’s head off; Edward simply hooked up with another strapping young lad called Hugh Despenser. To get some privacy, he sent Isabella off on a diplomatic mission to her brother, the king of France.
Here she found herself a lover, gathered an army, and invaded England. After the king had relinquished power to his son, no-one ever heard from him again. Probably because it’s rather difficult to keep in touch with a man who was viciously killed through the process of having his intestines scrambled with a hot, iron poker inserted into his rectum.
