Time Line 1940

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Time Line 1940
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1940 - July 27

Birth of the Reverend Troy Perry, Minister, activist, leatherman, and. founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. He devised a wonderful way to use the Gideon bible found in every hotel room as a ball weight.

1941

The first appearance of the cartoon character, Wonder Woman, an Amazon with special powers, living on an all-woman island. Her magical lasso rendered powerless anyone she placed in bondage.

1941, August 18

Birth of Robin Roberts, bondage photographer, educator, and founder of BackDrop Club in the San Francisco Bay area. The club was the first BDSM social organization in Northern California that included all genders and orientations.

1942, March 14

MP's raid a gay brothel near Brooklyn Navy Yard, among the clientele they find the US Senator who chairs the Naval Affairs Committee.

1942, April 3

Birth of Anthony F. DeBlase, aka Fledermaus, leather/SM writer, editor, publisher, teacher, and creator of the Leather Pride Flag.

1943, July 22

Birth of Robert Wiley Kirk, the erotic artist "Cirby" (died Dec 21, 1991)

1943

Jim Kepner is hoodwinked by a pen pal into joining the Sons of Hamidy, a wholly imaginary group of political and military leaders fighting for gay rights. Kepner quickly discovers the ruse, but is so involved with the idea he begins a campaign to collect books, papers, and other artifacts that grow into the International Gay and Lesbian Archives, now housed at the University of Southern California.

1944

Sweden decriminalizes homosexuality

1944, June 10

Christa Winsloe, author of "Madchen in Uniform" and vocal anti-Nazi is murdered in Vichi France.

1945

Justice Weekly begins publication in Toronto. This little magazine excerpts news items related to punishment but its highly-coded personal ads are its real attraction to SM people all over North America.

1945

Pink triangle prisoner Erwin Schimitzek, interned in Auschwitz in 1941, died in 1942.

1945

Upon the liberation of concentration camps by Allied forces, those interned for homosexuality are not freed, but required to serve out the full term of their sentences under Paragraph 175

1945

Bob Mizer founds the Athletic Model Guild in Los Angeles. His original intent is to serve as a middleman between hunky young males and the artists and others seeking their modeling (legitimate!) services. This aspect fails dismally so he begins marketing the photos directly to the public. [WES]

1945

Formation of the Veterans' Benevolent Association, the first gay membership organization in the US, formed to try to get homosexual soldiers some of the respect they deserved for the hardships they had endured.

1945, May 31

Birth of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German film maker, author, director, & actor. His films often deal with same-sex relationships in which erotic desire becomes a function of the struggle for dominance of one partner over another. (died 1982)

1945, Aug. 7

Birth of Cynthia Ann Slater, San Francisco Bay area SM activist and founder of The Society of Janus. [wd]

1945, Dec. 11

Birth of John Preston, author of Mr. Benson and many other notable volumes of leather fiction.

1946

A gay social club "The Shakespeare Club" is founded in Amsterdam. (Name change to Centre for Culture & Leisure, in 1949) Dance nights become extremely well attended and to accommodate the crowds, a large commercial dance hall, Der Oden Kring (DOK) is opened in 1955. From this basis Amsterdam has become the gay mecca of Europe.

1946

Bob Mizer takes his first photos for the Athletic Model Guild. The subject is 22 year old Howard Olson who had just been discharged from the US Marine Corps. Olson wears only a posing strap and is caught spread-eagled in the air in the middle of a jump. [Hooven 95]

1946, Sept. 26

Birth of Andrea Dworkin, American writer and feminist. An ardent crusader against pornography, SM and other sexual "evils".

1946, Dec. 29

Birth of William Carney, author of one of the earliest explicitly gay male SM novels, The Real Thing.

1947

Alfred C. Kinsey founds the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. [wd]

1947

California strikes down its anti-miscegenation law.

1947, Mid

Bob Mizer is arrested and charged with disseminating obscene material. He refuses counsel's advice and pleads "not guilty". He is convicted and serves six months in a California prison. Upon release he resumes business exactly as before. In 1953 his appeal reaches the US Supreme Court, where his conviction is overturned because the judge erred in instructing the jury on the legal definition of "obscene". [WES]

1947, July 4 - 6

More than 4000 motorcycles converge on Hollister, California and their riders unleash 40 hours of drunken terror on the town. 40 CHiPs threaten to use tear gas. Nearly 100 bikers are jailed.

1948

Axel and Eigil Axgil, a male couple, found the National Homosexual Association, the first gay rights Organization in Denmark. (It was originally called "Forbundet af 1948" ["League of 1948"].) On Oct. 1, 1989 they are the first to marry under Denmark's same sex marriage registry.

1948

Alfred C. Kinsey publishes the first part of his study on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. [wd]

1948, March 3

Birth of Albert Andrew Kraus Jr. Later to be a founder of the Windy City Bondage Club, and a co-chair of NLA:I during a critical period of its redevelopment,

1948, March 9

The Veteran's Benevolent Association, the first postwar American homosexual organization, is incorporated in New York state.

1948, March 20

Inspector Craig Ellis, head of the vice squad of Philadelphia Police Dept gives his men a list of books he considers obscene and orders that the city's bookstores be raided immediately and all titles on the list be confiscated. No search warrants or court orders of any kind are issued. 54 booksellers are raided and nearly 1200 books seized, including works by James Farrell, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Harold Robbins. The district attorney brings suit against five of the booksellers. But Judge Curtis Bok rules in favor of the booksellers and freedom of the press.

1949

Sam Steward and Steve Masters meet in Alfred Kinsey's garden. The two, who would each later be leather icons in their own right, perform SM scenes for Kinsey's research. [R]

1949

The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet is first published in France. English edition 1964.

1949

South Africa passes a law prohibiting interracial marriage.


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