A Star-Forged Ruby

Bayard Rustin was an openly gay Black man who was Martin Luther King’s right hand man. He planned the Million Man March and was subject to scrutiny for his sexuality and deemed a “deviant” and “pervert”.

Bayard Rustin can be found in nearly every picture of MLK yet he has undoubtedly been erased from history. We have to fix that.

Well then, let’s bring that name back.

Bayard Rustin, openly gay, human rights activist, proud black man.

(the guy on the left in case you wondered)

Despite orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington, and being personally embraced by King and his family, Rustin’s sexuality saw him relegated to the margins of history — largely forgotten and, for too long, uncelebrated. While he died long before the mainstream embrace of LGBT rights, recent social shifts have allowed for his memory to be revived. In 2013 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom; Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is currently working on a biopic of the civil rights icon with HBO; and now, his longtime New York residence has been recommended to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.  

Following the recognition of the Stonewall Inn as a historic landmark, LGBT history is finally stepping out into the light. With his home’s landmark status in the works, we look back in photos at the man who so many will meet over the years to come.

i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.

and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum. 

and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god. 

i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.

like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.

in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster. 

john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all. 

Willem Arondeus was a Dutch resistance fighter who gave his life trying to protect his Jewish countrymen from the Nazis. Born in Amsterdam in 1895, Willem was one of six children. From a young age, he was a talented artist and his parents encouraged his creativity, until he came out as homosexual at age 17. In a time when nearly all gay people were in the closet, Willem’s parents could not accept his choice to live openly. Their rejection led Willem to run away from home. On his own, Willem took odd jobs and eventually became a successful visual artist and writer. He was commissioned to paint a mural for Rotterdam’s town hall, in a style that combined modern abstract painting with a traditional Dutch motif. Willem was a well-respected author who published a popular biography of Dutch painter and political activist Matthijs Maris. In 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. Willem immediately joined the resistance movement, and urged his fellow artists to fight against the Nazi occupation. WIllem published illegal anti-Nazi pamphlets calling for mass resistance against the Germans. Willem was especially committed to saving Amsterdam’s Jewish community. Bringing in others to the cause, Willem arranged for Dutch Jews to be hidden in people’s homes. He used his artistic skills to create false identity papers. In 1943, Willem hatched a brazen plan. Dressed as a German Army captain, and with 15 men behind him, Willem boldly marched into the Public Record Office, where lists identifying people as Jews were kept. Willem drugged the guards and planted a firebomb. The resulting blaze destroyed tens of thousands of documents, and delayed or prevented many Jews from being identified by the Nazis. Unfortunately, Willem was captured by the Germans and sentenced to death. Willem’s last words before being executed in July, 1943 were, “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” In 1986 Yad Vashem recognized Arondeus as Righteous Among the Nations. Because of his sexual orientation, Willem’s story was omitted from Dutch history books. Only in the last 20 years has his courage become widely known.

i have never heard of this!