May 6th

05-06-1961 George Clooney – Born in Lexington, Kentucky. He is an American actor, writer, producer, director, and activist. He has received three Golden Globe Awards for his work as an actor and two Academy Awards, one for acting and the other for producing. He had been a long time supporter of marriage equality. In December of 2011, he signed on to star in the LA staging of the play Prop 8, written by Dustin Lance Black. Clooney played lawyer David Boise. In an interview with E! Online Clooney said, “It is astonishing that gay and lesbian Americans are still treated as second-class citizens. I am confident that, very soon, the laws of this nation will reflect the basic truth that gay and lesbian people — like all human beings — are born equal in dignity and rights.

05-06-1925 – 05-29-2001   Hédi Temessy – Born in Budapest, Hungary. She was an actress that worked for over 50 years, on stage, in films, and television. She was married and had one child. After her divorce, she began a relationship with actress Hilda Gobbi (b. June 6, 1913) . Their relationship lasted from the late 1950s into the 1960s. Being gay in 1961 was no longer a crime in Hungary, but it was still considered a mental illness. After they broke up, Temessy became involved with writer, Erzsébet Galgóczi (b. August 27, 1930). Both women, that Temessy was involved with, were out lesbians. (Photo by Demeter Miklós from the film Ballagás, 1980)

05-06-1941 — 08-06-2015 Beth Brant – Born in Detroit Michigan, she had a Mohawk father and a Scottish-Irish mother. Even though she grew up off the Tyendinaga Mohawk Reserve in Ontario, Canada, she maintained a deep link to her Mohawk heritage with her paternal grandparents where she learned the culture, language, and traditional stories. At seventeen she became pregnant and married the baby’s father. It was an abusive relationship and she divorced in 1973. Brant became active in the feminist community and announced her sexual orientation as a lesbian. In 1976, she met her life-partner, Denise Dorsz. At the age of forty, she starting writing. In 1983, she was chosen to edit a collection of Native American women’s writings. The book, A Gathering of Spirit (1988), was the first anthology of Native American’s women writing edited by another Native American woman. In 1985, her collection of short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction was published, titled Mohawk Trail. Her writing reflects her personal experiences of being a lesbian, having an abusive spouce, and her mixed blood heritage.

05-06-1963   Paige Braddock – Born in Bakersfield, California. She spent her childhood in Mississippi. Her father’s job as a forester caused the family move frequently. By the time she reached high school in Brevard, North Carolina, the family had moved 17 times.  She is best known for her award-winning comic strip, Jane’s World, the first gay-themed comic work to receive online distribution by a media syndicate in the U.S. In 2015, Braddock began writing lesbian romance novels under the pen name, Missouri Vaun. In 2018, Braddock ended the comic strip after completing its 20-year run. As Vaun, she has won two Golden Crown Literary Society awards in 2019. Braddock and her wife, Evelyn, live in Northern California.

05-06-1949 Olga Broumas – Born in Hermoupolis, Greece. She is a Greek poet and now a resident in the United States. Broumas is an out lesbian. Her first collection of poems, Beginning With O, contains erotic poems toward her women lovers. She was the first non-native speaker of English to receive the Yale Younger Poets Series Award in 1977. Other honors have included a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Broumas has been Poet-in-Residence and Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University since 1995. In the 1980s she founded and taught at a school for female artists called Freehand, Inc. located in Cape Cod.

05-06-1978 Bengt Fredrick Federley – Swedish politician. He was born in Munktorp in Köping Municipality, Västmanland County but grew up in nearby Kungsör. In 2006, he was elected Member of Parliament. He served from 2006 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2o14. As of 2014, he is in the European Parliament and a member of the Committee on EU Affairs. Federley was the first out gay leader of a political youth organization in Sweden when he was elected General Secretary in October 2002.