July 5th

07-05-1985 Megan Rapinoe – Born in Redding, California. She is an American professional soccer midfielder and Olympic gold medalist. She plays for Seattle Reign FC in the National Women’s Soccer League. She is also a member of the United States women’s national soccer team. During the 2012 London Olympics, she scored three goals and tallied a team-high four assists to lead the United States to a gold medal. On July 2, 2012, Rapinoe came out as a lesbian in an interview with Out magazine. She is an advocate for numerous LGBT organizations. Rapinoe is sponsored by Nike, Samsung, and DJO Global, and has appeared in multiple promotional pieces for clothing company Wildfang, as well as for Nike. She is included in Time Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. 

07-05-1979 Amelie Simone Mauresmo – Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. She was a professional tennis player and a former World No. 1. She won two Grand Slam singles titles at the Australian Open and at Wimbledon. She also won a Silver Medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Mauresmo came out as lesbian at the Australian Open in January 1999 at the age of 19. After beating top-ranked Lindsay Davenport, Mauresmo announced that her success had to do with finding love and coming to terms with her sexuality. She retired from playing tennis in December 2009. From June 2014 to May 2016, she coached English tennis star Andy Murray.

07-05-1889 – 10-11-1963 Jean Cocteau – Born in Maisons-Laffitte, France. He was a novelist, poet, artist, and filmmaker. He is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929). and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949). Cocteau had a few minor affairs with women, but it was men he was attracted to and with whom he had many affairs. His muse and lover for over 25 years was actor Jean Marais.

07-05-1879 – 08-16-1959 Wanda Landowska – Born in Warsaw, Poland to Jewish parents. She was a Polish-French harpsichordist. Her performances, teaching, recordings, and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. In 1933, she was the first person to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord. In 1938, she became a naturalized French citizen. She lived in Paris and frequented the salon of open lesbian Natalie Clifford Barney. When the Nazi Army invaded France, she fled with her lover Denise Restout. The couple made their way to the United States and arrived in New York on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. From New York they settled in Lakeville, Connecticut in 1949 where she re-established herself as a performer and teacher. Upon her death at the age of 80, her estate was inherited by life partner.

07-05-1970 Wayne Besen – Born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is an America gay rights advocate. He is a former investigative journalist for WABI-TV, a former spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, and the founder of Truth Wins Out. When Besen came out to his parents, they gave him a DVD that could supposedly hypnotize people and turn them straight. It was that and the invitation by President George W. Bush of ex-gay leader Alan Chambers to the White House that led him to start the Truth Wins Out organization. In September 2000, Besen photographed ex-gay activist John Paulk, then Chairman of Exodus International (ex-gay therapy Christian group), in a Washington D.C. gay bar called Mr. P’s. Paulk said he was simply there to use the washroom, but Besen and other witnesses alleged he was drinking and flirting for over 20 minutes. Besen went public with the story and wrote about it in his book Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth. The book was nominated for two Lambda Awards in 2003. In June 2003, Exodus International reversed its positions on reparative therapy, apologized to the gay community to the “trauma” and “hurt” the organization had wreaked on them, and disbanded the organization.

07-05-1968 Jillian Armenante – Born in Patterson, New Jersey. She is an American television and film actress, best known for playing the role of Donna Kozlowski on the TV show Judging Amy. With Alice Dodd, her wife, Armenante co-produced, co-directed, and co-wrote Laura Comstock’s Bag-Punching Dog and In Flagrante Gothicto at the Circle X Theatre Company. Laura Comstock’s Bag-Punching Dog won the Theatre L.A. Ovation Award for “Best New Musical” and “Best Musical Production.” In Flagrante Gothicto received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for writing, directing and production. and the LA Weekly Theatre Award for playwriting and comedy ensemble. She has appeared in feature films, including North Country and Girl, Interrupted. Her television appearances include Shameless, The Closer, Grey’s Anatomy, ER, Six Feet Under, and The West Wing. She is openly lesbian.

07-05-1904 – 02-27-1994 Harold Acton (Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE) – Born into a prominent Anglo-Italian-American family at Villa La Pietra, his parents’ house outside of Florence, Italy. He was a British writer and scholar. He is known for being the inspiration for the character of “Anthony Blanche” in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited (1945). The American writer, David Plante, wrote about Acton’s years in China during the 1930s, mentioning that his predilection for young boys caused him to be described in a classified government document as a “scandalous debauchee” and prevented him from serving in China in the intelligence service when war broke out. The author A.N. Wilson remarked: “To call him homosexual would be to misunderstand the whole essence of his being” and that “He was more asexual than anything else.”