June 8th

06-08-1961 – Mary Bonauto – Born in Newburgh, New York. She is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has worked to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and has been referred to by retired US Representative Barney Frank as “our Thurgood Marshall.” She grew up in Newburgh, New York in a Catholic family. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health which made Massachusetts the first state in which same-sex couples could marry in 2004. She is also responsible for leading the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Bonauto argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges case on April 28, 2015, on behalf of same-sex couples seeking marriage rights. This much-publicized case determined whether state bans against same-sex marriages are constitutional and is considered one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her wife, professor Jennifer Wriggins of the University of Maine’s law school and their twin teenage daughters. In March 2013, Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer arguing for DOMA repeal in the Supreme Court, told the “New York Times,” “No gay person in this country would be married without Mary Bonauto.”

06-08-1903 – 12-17-1987 Marguerite Yourcenar – Born in Brussels, Belgium. She was a French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie Fraçaise. Her life partner (from 1937 to 1979) was literary scholar Grace Frick. Yourcenar came to the United States when WWII began. She lectured in comparative literature at New York City College and Sarah Lawrence College. In 1951, she published, in France, the novel Mémoires d’Hadrian. The novel has become a modern classic. After the couple spent ten years living in Hartford, Connecticut, they bought a house in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, where they lived for decades. The house on Mount Desert Island, “Petite Plaisance,” is now a museum dedicated to her memory.

06-08-1945 Donna Deitch – Born in San Francisco, California. She is an American film and television director best known for her 1986 film Desert Hearts. Her film was one of the first to depict a lesbian love story in a generally mainstream vein with a positive theme. Deitch is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Desert Hearts was picked up for worldwide distribution by The Samuel Goldwyn Company. Shortly after seeing the film, Oprah Winfrey hired Deitch to direct the Emmy-nominated four-hour mini-series The Women of Brewster Place. Deitch is writing a sequel to Desert Hearts. She is openly gay. Her partner is writer Terri Jentz.

06-08-1963 Anja Hajduk – Born in Duisburg, Germany. She is a German politician and has been a member of the Alliance ’90/The Greens since 1995. From 1997 to 2002 Hajduk was a member of the parliament of the city of Hamburg. From 2002 to 2008 she was a member of the German Bundestag. Between 2005 and 2009, she also served as Deputy Chairwoman of the German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group. In the 2013 federal elections, Hajduk was again elected member of the German Bundestag where she has served as Chief Whip of her parliamentary group. In 2014, she was part of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Commission on Financial Policy which developed a comprehensive concept on Germany’s fiscal policy. She is openly lesbian.