June 5th

06-05-1951 Suze Orman – Born in Chicago, Illinois. She is an American financial advisor, author, motivational speaker, and television host. She worked as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch. In 1983 she became the vice-president at Prudential Bache Securities and in 1987 founded the Suze Orman Financial Group. Her program The Suze Orman Show began airing on CNBC in 2002. She has written several books on the topic of personal finance. In February 2007, Orman said that her sexual orientation is lesbian. In 2008, Orman donated money to the Democratic Party and in an interview with Larry King in 2008 said she favors the policies of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, especially in regards to people in same-sex relationships.

06-05-1887 – 09-17-1948 Ruth Benedict – Born in New York, New York. She was an American anthropologist. She had advanced thinking in social sciences. Benedict taught her first anthropology course at Barnard college in 1922 and among the students there was Margaret Mead. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead are considered to be the two most influential and famous anthropologist of their time. They each felt a sense of pride at being a successful working woman during a time when this was uncommon. They created a companionship that began through their work, but which also during the early period was of an erotic character. In a memoir about her parents, With a Daughter’s Eye, Margaret Mead’s daughter implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was sexual. After the affair ended they still remained life-long friends. Benedict also had an 8-year relationship with Natalie Raymond.

06-05-1898 – 08-19-1936 Federico Garcia Lorca – Born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Andalusia, Spain. Spanish poet, dramatist, and theatre director. He achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of ’27. He had an intense relationship with Salvador Dali from 1925 to 1928, which forced him to acknowledge his homosexuality. The friendship between Dali and Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion, but Dali rejected the erotic advances of the poet. His best-known book of poetry is Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) published in 1928. He was executed by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War on August 19, 1936.

06-05-1834 – 01-05-1915 Annie Adams Fields – Born in Boston Massachusetts. She was the second wife of the publisher and author James Thomas Fields, whom she married in 1854. She encouraged up and coming writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Freeman, and Emma Lazarus. She was equally at home with great and established figures including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose biography she compiled. Fields was also a philanthropist and social reformer. She founded the Holly Tree Inns, coffeehouses serving inexpensive and nutritious meals, and the Lincoln Street Home, a safe and inexpensive residence for unmarried working women. After Field’s husband died in 1881, she lived with Sarah Orne Jewett for the rest of Jewett’s life. Jewett died in 1909. Field’s diaries remain unpublished, except for excerpts published by M.A. Dowel in 1922. Fields remains a somewhat puzzling figure. Her writing reflects a traditional orientation toward sentimentalism and the cult of true womanhood. However, she was a supporter of “Women’s emancipation,” and her relationship with Jewett and others suggest she was a lesbian.

06-05-1884 – 08-27-1969 Ivy Compton-Burnett – Born in Pinner, Middlesex, United Kingdom. She was an English novelist. In 1955, she was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son. Her work focused on the late-Victorian upper classes. Manservant and Maidservant (1947) is considered to be her best work. She is important for lesbian studies because she treated her lesbian characters just like everyone else. In 1916, she met Margaret Jourdain. Described as a New Woman, Jourdain, a writer and an expert on English furniture and interiors, decorated the series of apartments they shared for more than three decades. Jourdain died in 1951.

06-05-1937 Helene Cixous – Born in Oran, French Algeria to Jewish parents. She is a professor, Algerian/French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and rhetorician. Cixous is best-know for The Laugh of the Medusa, which established her as one of the mothers of contemporary feminist theory. Cixous founded the first center of feminist studies at the University of Paris, the first at a European university. She is known to be bisexual.

06-05-1978 Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla – Born in Mombasa, Kenya. He is an author and filmmaker of Indian descent. He lives in Los Angeles. Dhalla is most famous for his novel Ode to Lata published in 2002, which was adapted to a film in 2008 under the title The Ode. Ode to Lata was the first South Asian gay novel ever to be reviewed by The Los Angeles Times and to be excerpted by Genre Magazine. It was also the first account of the South Asian gay experience from an author from the African continent.

06-05-1955 Gregory S. Harris – Born in Denver, Colorado. A Democrat, he is a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the 13th district. Harris is one of four openly gay members of the Illinois General Assembly. In 2010, he sponsored The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection & Civil Union Act, which was signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn. The law established civil unions for both heterosexual and same-sex couples. (Same-sex marriage has been legally recognized in Illinois since a law signed by Governor Pat Quinn on November 20, 2013, took effect on June 1, 2014).

06-05-1972 Buck Angel – Born in the San Fernando Valley, California. He is a transgender (female-to-male) advocate and porn star. He is the founder of Buck Angel Entertainment, as a vehicle to produce media projects. He received the 2007 AVN Award as Transsexual Performer of the Year and works as an advocate, educator, lecturer, and writer. He created a unique niche, calling himself “The Man With a Pussy.”

06-05-1974 Chad Allen – Born in Cerritos, California, he is an American actor. Beginning his career as a child actor at the age of seven, he is a three-time Young Artist Award winner and GLADD Media Award honoree. He was a teen idol during the late 1980s as David Witherspoon on the NBC family drama Our House and as Zach Nichols on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads. As an adult, he played Matthew Cooper on the CBS western drama Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. He retired from acting in April 2015. In 1996, at the age of 21, Allen was outed as gay when the US tabloid The Globe published photos of him kissing another man in a hot tub at a party. Allen has since become an activist for the LGBT community. Retiring from acting, he plans to become a clinical psychologist.