I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! Hewrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
dude had guts, someone needs to update his Wikipedia page
I had this one lucid dream where a lady came up to me and said, “Don’t control the dream,” really softly. I had the same dream again a couple days later but instead of just one lady. I was surrounded by a whole group of people with glowing eyes just saying, “Don’t,” and I got so freaked out that I never tried to lucid dream ever again.
I really feel like when we sleep we just kinda cruising in another demesion.
i read a book on lucid dreaming where the author told a story of a friend who, while lucid dreaming, held a town hall meeting with all the people in the dream and tried to explain to them that this was all his dream and that they’d disappear when he woke up. They didn’t believe him at first and were concerned for his mental health and then one girl stood up and said SHE knew she was real and was scared what would happen when he woke up if he was telling the truth, and soon everyone in the room was crying and screaming and begging him not to wake up.
in the same book he told a story of when he was lucid dreaming and told all his friends in the dream that he could do whatever he wanted because it was just his dream and so he started flying and his friends got pissed and started yelling at him and jumping up and grabbing his legs and pulling him back down
Yeah sounds about right. When you’re dreaming you’re still beholden to your brain, and turns out we act very very human when unconscious
rip tumblr 