June 4th

06-04-1975 Angelina Jolie – Born in Los Angeles, California. Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. Her acting awards include an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. For her humanitarian activism, she has received the Jean Hershel Humanitarian Award and an honorary damehood of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, among other awards. Jolie has been married three times. Her third marriage was in 2014 to Brad Pitt (they had been together since 2005 and are now divorced). Jolie considers herself to be bisexual. In 1996 she began a long relationship with model-actress Jenny Shimizu. They met on the set of Foxfire (1986). She later said, “I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her.” She also stated, “I was open about it (bisexuality) because I wanted people to know that I had been with a woman. I spoke about it because I’d discovered something wonderful and I thought people should know my experience was very real, very normal.” In an interview, she said, “I love women and men equally and I see people and love as love, so I think it makes sense that a woman would know I’d appreciate and love her as much as I would a man.”

06-04-1944 Lili Lakich – Born in Washington, D.C. She is an American artist best known for her work in neon. Her neon sculptures have been included in major publications on contemporary sculpture, neon sculpture, and feminist art. She has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris and Los Angeles. Her first show was in the Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, in 1974. She was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the Great American Lesbian Art Show at the Woman’s Building in 1980. From 1982, Lakich founded and served as the first director for the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles, until 1999. She authored two books on her work, Neon Lovers Glow in the Dark (1986) and LAKICH: For Light. For Love. For Life (2007).

06-04-1955 Val McDermid – Born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. She is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of suspense novels featuring Dr. Tony Hill. McDermid considered her work to be part of the “Tartan Noir” Scottish crime fiction genre. In addition to writing novels, McDermid contributes to several British newspapers and can often be heard on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland. Her novels, especially the Tony Hill series, are known for their graphic depiction of violence and torture. McDermid is openly lesbian.

06-04-1959 Gina Genovese – Born in Newark, New Jersey. She is an American businesswoman and Democratic politician in New Jersey. In 2005, she was selected unanimously by the Republican majority committee to become the first Democratic mayor in the history of Long Hill Township. She also made history becoming the highest-ranking openly gay elected official in the state. Genovese attained a world ranking of 150 in tennis. Due to injury, she was forced to retire. She currently lives in Long Hill with her partner of 13 years, Wendy McCahill. She no longer holds elected office.

06-04-1978 Naomi R. Gonzalez – Born in El Paso, Texas. She was an American attorney and Democratic politician from El Paso, Texas. She was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, where she represents the 76th district in El Paso County. In 2014 Gonzalez lost her bid for re-election. During the 2010 campaign, one of her opponents, Norma Chavez, drew attention on several occasions to Gonzalez’s sexual orientation, saying that her opponent was a lesbian. Gonzalez did not deny the charge.

06-04-1987 Luisa Christina Zissman – Born Louisa Christina Kalozois in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. She is an English retail entrepreneur and reality television personality. She was runner-up on the ninth series of The Apprentice and appeared in Celebrity Big Brother 13. She is estranged from her husband, entrepreneur Oliver Zissman, by whom she had a daughter in 2010. While on Celebrity Big Brother, she revealed that she is bisexual.

06-04-1958 – 07-08-1991   Gordon Stewart Anderson – Born in Hamilton, Canada. He was a Canadian writer, whose novel The Toronto You Are Leaving was published by his mother 15 years after his death. His novel was about life in Toronto’s gay community in the late 1970s. The novel received a strong review in The Globe and Mail and from Canada’s gay press. Anderson died of AIDS-related causes and is remembered on the Canadian AIDS Memorial Quilt.