July 30th

07-30-1989 marks the passing of Mary Gail Black – Born in 1898, place unknown. She was the first woman reporter of what is now the San Luis Obispo Tribune. In the 1970s she was an out lesbian, a feminist leader, and anti-nuke hero. Black wrote about her time as a newspaper reporter, Profile of the Daily Telegram: A Story of San Luis Obispo 1921 – 1923.  She began her job as a reporter at the age of nineteen. Black wrote stories about the temperance activists, bootleggers, a Ku Klux Klan parade, prostitutes, and more. When her reporting days ended, she attended UC Berkley on a scholarship and graduated summa cum laude. Black was arrested in a 1977 protest at Diablo Canyon. The following link is an article and photos dated July 22, 2016, by David Middlecamp – https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/photos-from-the-vault/article91439412.html Mary Gail Black lived in the Rosa Butrón de Canet de Simmler adobe on Dana St. in San Luis Obispo from 1927 until her death in 1989. Her home was willed to the city of San Luis Obispo.

07-30-1979 Lucas Silveira – Born in Toronto, Canada. He is a Canadian vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter, with the group Cliks. He is a transgender man. According to Silveira, at the age of about 3, “I knew exactly who I was…, which sucked, not having words for it and being told I was something else.” He knew he was a boy and asked his mother to buy him a penis like his brothers. The first time he heard about transgender people was on Geraldo Rivera’s show when he was about 14 or 15. In 2010 he began hormone replacement therapy. He was named Canada’s sexiest man in 2013.

07-30-1944   Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling – Born in Queens, New York. She is a Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University. Dr. Fausto-Sterling has written extensively on the biology of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, gender roles, and intersexuality. She is married to Paula Vogel, a Yale professor and Pulitzer-winning playwright.

07-30-1954   Paula Martinac – Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is an American writer. In 1991, her novel Out of Time won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Her biography of k.d. lang was published in 1996. From 1997 to 2005 she wrote a biweekly column Lesbian Notions, which was syndicated to LGBT publications across the United States. In 2014 Martinac moved to North Carolina, where she teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her novel The Ada Decades was published in 2017. In April 2019 her fifth novel, Clio Rising, was published.

07-30-1966 Sean Patrick Maloney – Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. He is an American politician. A New York Democrat, he was elected in 2012 and 2014 to represent New York’s 18th District. He is the first openly gay man elected to the US Congress from New York. He has been with his husband Randy Florke since 1992. Together they have three adopted children. Florke is an interior decorator who has been featured in Oprah’s magazine. On June 21, 2014, he and Florke were married in Cold Spring, New York. Maloney became the second member of Congress to legally marry his same-sex partner while in office, the first being former Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

07-30-1968 Deb Mell – Born in Chicago, Illinois. She is an American politician. A Democrat, she is a member of the Chicago City Council. She previously served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 2009 to 2013. Mell was arrested in 2004 while protesting her inability to get a same-sex marriage license from the Cook County clerk’s office. She is openly lesbian. Mell has received a National Organization for Women award for her activism, and also the Howard Brown Cornerstone Award for community excellence.