July 28, 1917 Anti-Lynching Parade in New York City, 1917 W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Read about W.E.B. DuBois Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, and the film
July 28, 1932 Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression. More on the Bonus Army (It’s WaPo; you can read it for free, but you have to sign in) Film of the confrontation in Washington (Watch on YouTube for free without sign in)
July 28, 1965 Pfc. John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens. [Khe Sanh, February 1968.]” Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar. 1968. cover President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled. Lyndon Johnson told the nation Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please Though it isn’t really war We’re sending fifty thousand more To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese — part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” Full lyrics of the song President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.””
July 28, 1982 San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.
My thanks to Charlotte Clymer for the news! Here’s a snippet:
The Good Lord’s Porn Enthusiast by Charlotte Clymer
Hands can never be idle when they’re in prayer. Read on Substack
(snip) So, it came as some surprise when reports emerged that Mr. Walters is being accused of displaying pornography on a television in his office during an executive session of the State Board of Education this past Thursday, according to a few board members in attendance.
Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage—both of whom were appointed this year to the Board by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitts—were the only two in a position to see the screen and were understandably shocked. Here’s what Ms. Carson said:
I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like, ‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was watching.
I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully, like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, ‘What is on your TV? What am I watching?’ He was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ He stood up and saw it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,” Carson recalled. “And I said, ‘Turn it off. Now.’ And he was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ So he acknowledged it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, ‘I can’t get it to turn off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off.’ And I said, ‘Get it turned off.’ So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn’t address it. He didn’t apologize. Nothing was said.
Mr. Deatherage concurred: “I don’t know if he turned it off or switched the channel, I don’t remember. I was surprised that when he came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn’t ever hear an apology for that being on, and he didn’t seem to be fazed that it was on.”
Republican leaders in the State Senate are now launching an investigation into the matter, which they described as a “bizarre and troubling situation.” All seem unanimously perplexed and concerned. (snip-please do go read the rest; Charlotte closes with some excellent wordplay!)
July 27, 1919 A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams. The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23 colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future . . . .” The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station. Gangs and the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.
July 27, 1953 After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March. Korean War Memorial photo: Heather Stanfield The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces. There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died. There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict.
July 27, 1954 The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ’90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war. “They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country’s only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.” Jacobo Arbenz More about Arbenz The real coup story through official U.S. documents
July 27, 1996 Trident sub being loaded Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles). Details of the action
If Texas Wants To Play Dirty, Kathy Hochul, Gavin Newsom, And JB Pritzker Are Ready To Get In The Mud by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Texas using its ‘hey let’s do something about flood warnings’ special session to cheat like the dickens. Read on Substack
The Texas Lege is in special session and putting together a redistricting plan aimed at adding five new Republican-leaning congressional districts, in hopes that might improve the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House in next year’s midterms. No, there hasn’t been another Census that you forgot about, they just want to rig the electoral map for Daddy Trump.
During a committee hearing on the gerrymandering plan Thursday evening, a Democratic candidate for Congress, Isaiah Martin, was tackled and arrested because he wouldn’t yield the floor after his time expired. Martin was testifying to a state House committee against the plan, which is likely to chop up the 18th Congressional District where he’s running to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in office in March.
“You need to have shame. History will not remember you for what you have done. It is a shame,” Martin yelled out as he was shoved to the ground. “It’s horrific for what you have done. You should all be ashamed. America will rise up against you!”
Martin was booked into Travis County Jail on charges of “criminal trespass, disrupting a meeting or procession and resisting arrest,” but eventually all the charges were dropped. But not quickly: Instead of simply being booked and released Thursday, Martin was held in the jail for about 26 hours, only getting out at 9:30 p.m. Friday — and then he told reporters he plans to be at a second redistricting hearing being held today in Houston.
The special session of the Lege was called to pass disaster relief following the deadly flash floods in the Texas hill country a few weeks ago, but Republicans decided — after Donald Trump told them to do it — that it was also a dandy opportunity to try to prop up the slim and increasingly unpopular GOP majority in Congress.
Before his time ran out and his mic was cut off, Martin condemned Republicans for turning a deadly disaster into a power grab:
“And you choose, after we literally got out of one the worst mass casualty events in our state’s history, to go and gerrymander people out of their seats. That’s what you have chosen to do with your time,” Martin said. “Because you are scared of Donald Trump. You are scared and terrified because you are seeking an endorsement.”
Dems Name ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ Tune In Three Notes
Also on Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s not ruling out the possibility of redistricting in her state if Texas and Ohio insist on artificially juicing Republicans’ chances. Speaking at an unrelated event in Buffalo, Hochul answered a reporter’s question by saying, in effect, hell yeah, if they’re gonna play dirty, we’re not going to take it sitting down: (vid on the page)
“All’s fair in love and war. We are following the rules. We do redistricting every 10 years. But if there’s other states violating the rules and are trying to give themselves an advantage, all I’ll say is, I’m going to look at it closely with Hakeem Jeffries.”
In answer to a follow-up question, Hochul added, “I’m not surprised that they’re trying to break the rules to get an advantage. But that’s undemocratic, and not only are we calling them out, we’re also going to see what our options are.”
That could be easier said than done, because unlike Texas, New York actually has a bunch of dumb clean-government laws aimed at preserving electoral fairness, including a constitutional provision specifying that redistricting can only be done once every 10 years, following the US Census. Lousy stinking good government!
In 2022, the state’s highest court threw out a Legislature-drawn electoral map that gave an advantage to Democrats (22 D-advantage seats and four R-leaning seats, compared to the prior map’s 19-8 split), so the maps were redrawn by a state court. That gave Republicans a chance to win more seats in Congress, but the good news here is that thanks to Trump’s fuckery and to their support of the Big Ballocky Buggery Bill that everyone hates (and that not even Republican voters are all that fond of), many of those narrowly elected Republicans are likely to be in trouble next year anyway.
“This is not a bluff,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Friday afternoon, minutes after meeting with Democrats from the Texas House. “This is real, and trust me, it’s more real after listening to these leaders today, how existential this is.”
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois issued a similar pledge. “Everything is on the table,” he said on Friday.
Pritzker added that he considered redistricting in between Censuses to be “cheating,” but if Texas Republicans go ahead and “take this drastic action, then we also might take drastic action to respond.”
As in New York, redistricting in either state could be a heavy lift, since Illinois’s electoral maps were already redrawn in 2021 to add one Democratic district and eliminate two Republican-advantaged ones — a move that also led to more extreme Republicans winning their primaries for the remaining R-leaning seats.
In California, district lines are drawn by an independent commission, but Newsom said Friday that he’s considering several different options that could change that process in time for the 2026 election. That could include maybe a voter referendum, or getting a two-thirds vote in the state Lege to allow changes. He said after meeting with the Texans, “We have got to fight fire with fire,” emphasizing that it’s really up to whether Texas goes ahead with its gerrymander.
And back in Texas, Democrats in the Lege are considering all their (very limited) options. Friday’s trips to meet with Pritzker and Newsom took place while the special session was in recess, but the idea of blocking a quorum in the state House by skedaddling from the state — a time-honored tradition in Texas politics — is just one thing Dems are looking at if it becomes necessary. If they do that, each member could be fined $500 a day for being absent, under a 2021 rule change Republicans passed after the last time Democrats went on Rumspringa, that time to delay passage of Republicans’ voter-suppression bill, which eventually passed anydamnway, because electoral fuckery is a time-honored tradition for Texas Republicans, the end. (snip)
July 26, 1953 In his first move to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, 26-year-old Fidel Castro led 134 other young revolutionaries to unsuccessfully attack the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Castro had concluded that armed struggle was the only way to unseat Batista, who had taken power in a military coup in 1952. The Cuban Revolution is known as the July 26 Movement, and is celebrated annually there. The Moncada Barracks, still showing a few bullet holes and pockmarks from that fateful early morning assault in 1953, is now both a historic site and an elementary school.
July 26, 1967 H. Rap Brown, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was ordered arrested by then-Governor Spiro Agnew, who accused him of inciting a riot through his speech two days earlier at a civil rights rally in Cambridge, Maryland. At the event, Brown declared, “Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down . . . If Cambridge doesn’t come around, Cambridge got to be burned down.” Shortly after the speech, Brown was hit in the head by buckshot from a policeman’s shotgun. That night the segregated elementary school on the black side of town and 20 businesses burned down (there was no looting), some along Race Street, the racial divide which neither black nor white were expected to cross. H. Rap Brown following the disturbances in Cambridge, Maryland. What happened in Cambridge
July 26, 1990 The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It prohibited discrimination based on disability in employment, in public accommodation (e.g., hotels, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, health care facilities, convention centers), in transportation services, and in all activities of state and local governments. The law did not go into effect until January 26, 1992.
July 24, 1974 The United States Supreme Court (U.S. v. Nixon) unanimously ordered President Richard Nixon to surrender tape recordings of White House conversations regarding the Watergate affair. Speaking for the Supreme Court in front of a packed and hushed courtroom, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (a Nixon appointee) rejected President Nixon’s claims of executive privilege (virtually total confidentiality for the White House) because the need for fair administration of criminal justice must prevail. The White House feared review of the recordings by a U.S. district judge would reveal, among other crimes, impeachable offenses. Listen to the tapes online (It’s a YouTube playlist!)
July 24, 1983 Canadians and Americans spanned the international border at Thousand Islands Bridge, linking New York and Ontario, to protest nuclear weapons and border harassment of peace activists. Thousand Islands Bridge
July 24, 1983 Women tagged a U.S. warplane with anti-nuclear graffiti at Greenham Common, an air base in England. The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp had been set up just outside the perimeter of the base in 1981 to get U.S. Cruise missiles, some of which were deployed at the base, out of their country. Other tactics included disrupting construction work at the base, blockading the entrance, and cutting down parts of the fence. Read more about The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
Mesopithecus pentelicus thrived in the rainforests of the late Miocene, 7 million years ago. Credit: Mauricio Antón
Small, slender and short-lived, with broad noses, big, dark-adapted eyes, living underground, and in the shadows of a shattered, steamy, chaotic world. Richard Musgrove asks: will this be us in 10,000 years?
Climate change is the greatest challenge in human history – current trends could have us eventually approaching extremes not seen on our planet for 15 million years. Will a destabilised global climate wreak economic havoc, leading to societal collapse, mass mortalities, even extinction? Or will we pull ourselves out of this spectacular self-imposed nose-dive?
Which raises the question – what if we don’t? How will humanity change on a much hotter Earth?
Numbers matter
Uncharted territory approaches as we nudge the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, on track for a potentially catastrophic 2.7°C by 2100. What about 2200, or 3200?
Globally, days above 50°C have doubled since the 1980s – in Australia, Pakistan, India and the Persian Gulf – with the ‘feels-like’ temperature often higher. Even immediately reduced carbon emissions will still mean lingering planet-wide heating and associated effects for many thousands of years.
Our adaptability has led us this far, but what does evolution have in store for our species if we don’t rise to face our greatest challenge? The answer is unlikely to be in the mirror.
Nothing sweats like us (snip-MORE)
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Medicaid ‘gamers’ are the new ‘welfare queens’ by Aaron Rupar
Republicans are taking strawman arguments to absurd extremes. Read on Substack
Earlier this month, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed a grotesque budget bill that (partially) funds massive tax breaks for the wealthy and a ramped-up ICE goon squad by cutting cutting $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and an additional $185 billion from federal food assistance programs, all while adding $2.8 trillion to the deficit.
Not surprisingly, the bill is massively unpopular. As a result, Republicans are gaslighting Americans about its impact, particularly regarding the cuts to Medicaid, which are expected to cost 10 million Americans their health coverage.
The Medicaid cuts could result in more than 16,000 extra deaths per year, researchers say. Republicans have tried to distract from that reality with a combination of blatant lies and misdirecting rhetoric. To hear them tell it, they’re only cutting supposed waste, fraud, and abuse. So when you lose benefits, they’re here to explain why it’s probably your own damn fault.
The lazy gamer myth
Republican messaging surrounding Medicaid cuts borrows heavily from Ronald Reagan’s playbook. (snip- MORE)
Of course, there are innumerable instances when the Bible has historically been used to enforce the idea that gender is a divinely ordained binary, with male and female genders that are distinct, complementary, and assigned at birth.
Indeed, the Bible’s general attitude toward gender is expansive, with verses exploring God’s focus on the interior over the exterior, the distinction between sex and gender, the role of eunuchs in scripture, and more.
Here are 10 Bible verses that show a biblical approach to gender that is as varied as the colors in a rainbow.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Day and night. Water and dry land. Male and female. The creation poem might sound like it’s dealing in binaries, but we know that all of these things have transitional elements. Day and night contain transitions at dawn and dusk; the spectrum of water and dry land includes tidal plains and coral reefs; and people who are intersex, genderqueer, nonbinary, and more can be found between “male and female”.
Genesis 25:27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.
Jacob is described as “smooth” (Genesis 27:11) and stays in the tent where he cooks – traditional female attributes in the ancient world. Yet he is chosen over his “hairy” brother Esau, a skilled hunter, to lead God’s people, showing that God does not place value on traditional gender norms.
Isaiah 56:4-5 For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
Eunuchs were men who had been castrated, especially those employed to guard the women’s living areas. They represent clear historical examples outside of the gender binary in the Bible and are welcomed into the temple and to the community of worship.
Matthew 19:11-12 But [Jesus] said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
The disciples ask Jesus to clarify the explanation of gender in Genesis 1 as it relates to divorce. In answering them, Jesus offers this non-judgmental example of eunuchs that invokes a range of genders. This indicates the law should be flexible enough to allow for this range, instead of being too narrow to recognize its existence.
Galatians 3:27-28 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
The apostle Paul explains that unity in Christ is what’s important, superseding the concept of gender and other identity markers.
Mark 11:17 [Jesus] was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
In this verse, Jesus is referencing Isaiah 56, when eunuchs are welcomed into the community at temple. He prioritizes welcoming all people, regardless of gender.
Acts 8:38-39 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.
1 Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
When the prophet Samuel was charged by God to look for a new king, David didn’t seem as king-like as the other options presented to Samuel — but he was still the right choice. Once again, we see that God does not share the human preoccupation with external biological features. Our physical bodies do not determine deeper matters of our identity.
Romans 2:29 Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.
As with the example of God choosing David because of what was in his heart, here the Bible says that physical alteration (like being circumcised) isn’t what matters to God — it’s what’s in the heart.
Genesis 16:13 So [Hagar] named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi,” for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Hagar changes the name she uses for God, reflecting a change in how she recognizes who God is — not a change in God’s own identity, but an uncovering that leads to a fuller understanding and affirmation of God’s identity. Similarly, someone may choose to change the gender (and the name that goes with it) that they identify with as a reflection of a greater understanding and affirmation of who they are, out of a desire that the world may better know and understand them, too.
Heather BradyHeather Brady is the audience engagement manager at Sojourners.
July 23, 1846 Author Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax as a protest against the Mexican war, which in turn led to his writing “Civil Disobedience.” This essay became a source of inspiration for Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. From Thoreau’s essay: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau Out of Thoreau’s jailing grew a legend: The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked, “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied, “Why are you not here? Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Thoreau was not alone in his opposition: Thomas Corwin of Ohio denounced the war as merely the latest example of American injustice to Mexico: “If I were a Mexican I would tell you,‘Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead.’” Henry Clay [former speaker of the House and presidential candidate] declared, “This is no war of defense, but one of unnecessary and offensive aggression.” Abraham Lincoln also opposed the war, and lost his seat in Congress as a result. The entire essay (in annotated form)
July 23, 1967 Detroiters angry at loss of jobs and, especially, at the abusive and virtually all-white police department, started rioting in what became known as the Detroit Rebellion. The intitiating incident was an early-morning raid on a blind pig (Detroit for after-hours drinking club) on 12th Street. The violence spread elsewhere in the city, and led to President Lyndon Johnson’s calling out 8000 members of the National Guard. Order was not restored for six days. In the end, there were 43 known dead, 347 injured, 3800 arrested, 1000 families homeless. Thirteen hundred buildings burned to the ground and twenty-seven hundred businesses were looted. Online documentary on all aspects of what happened, “Ashes to Hope” The Rebellion from a 40-year perspective
The year was 1877, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was drowning. Not in the Moscow River, though he’d fucking consider it soon enough, but in the suffocating heteronormative bullshit of Imperial Russia. Here was a man whose soul screamed in B-flat minor, whose heart pounded in 4/4 time, and whose sexual identity was buried so deep beneath layers of social expectation that it would take historians over a century to dig through the wreckage and find the truth: Tchaikovsky was gay as a fucking rainbow, and it nearly destroyed him.
I literally played the youtube video musical all through writing this shit. Thats how fucking awesome this is.
Tchaikovsy, how I love you.
The Tortured Genius Behind the Swan Lake
Let’s cut through the academic ass-kissing and get to the brutal reality. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born in 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia, was a man caught between two worlds: the soaring heights of musical genius and the crushing depths of societal homophobia. This wasn’t some gentle “product of his time” situation—this was a death sentence with a fucking bow tie.
In 19th-century Russia, being gay wasn’t just socially unacceptable; it was literally illegal and punishable by exile to Siberia or worse. The Orthodox Church considered homosexuality a mortal sin, the state considered it a criminal act, and society considered it grounds for complete social annihilation. Tchaikovsky knew this shit intimately, and it carved holes in his psyche that would bleed beautiful, agonizing music for the rest of his life.
The evidence of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality isn’t hidden in some dusty archive—it’s splattered across his correspondence like blood on a battlefield. His letters to men, particularly to his nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davydov, drip with passion that no amount of Victorian-era emotional repression can disguise. These weren’t your typical “Dear Friend” pleasantries; these were love letters disguised as family correspondence, each word carefully chosen to dance around the truth that could have killed him.
The Marriage That Nearly Killed Him
Enter Antonina Miliukova, a woman whose timing was about as good as a heart attack during a symphony performance. In 1877, this aspiring opera singer decided to confess her love to Tchaikovsky through a series of increasingly desperate letters. Most gay men throughout history have developed sophisticated avoidance techniques for such situations, but Tchaikovsky was operating under a particularly cruel form of internalized homophobia mixed with genuine terror.
The composer’s response? He fucking married her. On July 18, 1877, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky walked down the aisle like a man walking to his execution, because that’s essentially what it was. The marriage was a disaster from day one—a psychological horror show that lasted all of nine weeks before Tchaikovsky fled like his ass was on fire.
But those nine weeks? They nearly broke him completely. Tchaikovsky’s mental health, already fragile from years of sexual repression and social anxiety, shattered like a champagne flute hitting concrete. He attempted suicide by walking into the Moscow River in October 1877, hoping to catch pneumonia and die “naturally” rather than face the shame of admitting his marriage was a lie. The water was too fucking cold, and he survived, but the psychological damage was done.
The Brother Who Lived Free
While Pyotr was busy torturing himself with heteronormative performance art, his younger brother Modest was living his truth with the kind of balls that would make a bull jealous. Modest Tchaikovsky was openly gay in a time when that shit could get you killed, and he gave exactly zero fucks about what society thought.
Modest became a prominent playwright and librettist, penning the libretto for Pyotr’s “Queen of Spades” among other works. Their artistic collaboration flowed from deep fraternal understanding and shared sensibilities—two gay brothers finding ways to create beauty in a world that wanted them dead. But the difference between them was stark: Modest embraced his identity and lived authentically, while Pyotr remained trapped in a cage of his own making.
The psychological impact of watching his brother live freely while he remained closeted must have been excruciating. Modest’s existence was living proof that authenticity was possible, even in Imperial Russia, but Pyotr’s internalized shame and terror kept him locked away from his own truth.
The Music That Bled Truth
Here’s where Tchaikovsky’s genius becomes both heartbreaking and historically significant: he couldn’t live his truth, so he composed it. Every note, every crescendo, every heart-wrenching melody was a piece of his closeted soul screaming for recognition. The “Pathétique” Symphony, his final masterpiece, isn’t just music—it’s a fucking suicide note written in B minor.
Listen to the 1812 Overture and try to tell me that’s the work of a heterosexual man. The dramatic tension, the explosive release, the way it builds to an almost unbearable climax—this is the musical equivalent of a man who’s been sexually and emotionally repressed his entire life finally finding a way to express what he can’t say out loud.
Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty—these aren’t just ballets, they’re coded messages from a gay man who couldn’t be gay. The tragic heroines, the impossible love stories, the themes of transformation and hidden identity—Tchaikovsky was writing his own story in every goddamn note, and the world was too busy enjoying the pretty music to notice the pain behind it.
The Psychological Massacre of the Closet
The psychological effects of Tchaikovsky’s forced closeting weren’t just personal—they were epidemic. Here was one of the world’s greatest composers, a man whose music would outlive empires, reduced to a trembling, suicidal wreck because he couldn’t love who he wanted to love. The internalized homophobia didn’t just damage him; it robbed the world of the person he could have been if he’d been free to live authentically.
Tchaikovsky’s diaries and letters reveal a man in constant psychological torment. He described his sexuality as a “curse” and spent his life trying to cure himself of feelings that were as natural as breathing. The self-hatred was so profound that it affected every aspect of his existence—his relationships, his work, his health, even his death.
The composer died in 1893, officially of cholera, but the circumstances were suspicious enough that many historians believe he committed suicide. Whether he died by disease or by his own hand, the cause was the same: a society that killed its own children rather than let them love freely.
The Ripple Effect on LGBTQ+ History
Tchaikovsky’s story isn’t just about one tortured genius—it’s about the systematic destruction of queer lives throughout history. Every note he wrote in anguish represents thousands of LGBTQ+ people who were crushed by the same forces that nearly destroyed him. His music became a sanctuary for queer people who recognized their own pain in his melodies, a coded language that said “you are not alone” to generations of closeted individuals.
The philosophical implications are staggering. Here was a man whose gifts to humanity were immeasurable, whose music brought joy to millions, whose artistic legacy is literally priceless—and society nearly destroyed him because of who he loved. How many other Tchaikovskys did we lose? How many symphonies were never written because their composers were too busy trying to survive in a world that wanted them dead?
The Social Impact of Closeted Genius
Tchaikovsky’s forced closeting had massive social implications that ripple through history. His marriage to Antonina became a cautionary tale about the dangers of forced heteronormative performance, but it also demonstrated how society’s homophobia damages everyone involved. Antonina became a victim too, trapped in a marriage with a man who could never love her the way she deserved.
The composer’s patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, provided him with financial support for thirteen years on the condition that they never meet in person. This relationship, conducted entirely through letters, became one of the most important in his life precisely because it was free from the sexual and social expectations that tormented him elsewhere. Von Meck understood, perhaps intuitively, that Tchaikovsky needed space to be himself—even if she never knew exactly what that meant.
The Philosophical Questions That Haunt Us
Tchaikovsky’s life raises philosophical questions that should make every thinking person’s blood boil. What is the moral cost of forcing human beings to deny their fundamental nature? How do we measure the artistic and social contributions we lost when we systemically oppressed LGBTQ+ people? What masterpieces were never created because their potential creators were too busy fighting for survival?
The composer’s struggle with his identity wasn’t just personal—it was a reflection of humanity’s broader failure to accept and celebrate diversity. His music became a form of resistance, a way of smuggling queer sensibility into mainstream culture without triggering the violent backlash that open authenticity would have provoked.
The Legacy That Survives
Despite the psychological torture he endured, Tchaikovsky’s music survives as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. His compositions continue to move audiences to tears, to inspire dancers and musicians, to provide soundtrack for some of humanity’s most beautiful moments. The Swan Lake pas de deux has become synonymous with romantic love, performed by countless couples who have no idea they’re dancing to the work of a closeted gay man.
This is the ultimate irony: the music that emerged from Tchaikovsky’s repression has become the soundtrack for heterosexual romance across the globe. His pain became everyone’s pleasure, his torment became the world’s joy. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking—a reminder that LGBTQ+ people have always been here, creating beauty even in the darkest circumstances.
The Modern Relevance
Tchaikovsky’s story remains devastatingly relevant because homophobia didn’t die with the 19th century. In Putin’s Russia, being openly gay is still dangerous. In dozens of countries around the world, LGBTQ+ people face imprisonment, violence, or death for being authentic. The composer’s struggle continues in the lives of countless individuals who still can’t live their truth without fear.
But his story also demonstrates the power of art to transcend oppression. Tchaikovsky couldn’t be openly gay, but his music queered the world anyway. Every performance of Swan Lake is a small act of resistance, every rendition of the Nutcracker Suite is a celebration of queer creativity, every tear shed during the Pathétique Symphony is a recognition of the pain caused by forcing people to hide who they are.
The Psychological Impact on Modern LGBTQ+ Communities
For modern LGBTQ+ people, Tchaikovsky’s story serves as both inspiration and warning. His music provides comfort and validation—proof that queer people have always existed, have always created beauty, have always found ways to express their truth even under impossible circumstances. But his psychological torture also serves as a reminder of what happens when society forces people to deny their authentic selves.
The composer’s internalized homophobia mirrors the struggles many LGBTQ+ people face today. The self-hatred, the attempts to “cure” himself, the desperate conformity to heteronormative expectations—these patterns persist in communities where acceptance is still lacking. Tchaikovsky’s story helps modern queer people understand that their struggles are part of a larger historical pattern, that they’re not alone in their pain.
The Fucking Truth We Can’t Ignore
Here’s the bottom line: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay as a fucking rainbow, and society nearly destroyed one of history’s greatest musical geniuses because of it. His story isn’t just about one man’s struggle—it’s about the systematic oppression of LGBTQ+ people throughout history and the incalculable cost of that oppression.
Every time someone tries to deny or diminish Tchaikovsky’s sexuality, they’re participating in the same erasure that tortured him during his lifetime. Every time someone argues that his personal life doesn’t matter, they’re missing the point entirely. His sexuality wasn’t separate from his music—it was the source of his music, the pain that created beauty, the truth that couldn’t be spoken but had to be expressed.
The evidence is there for anyone willing to look: the passionate letters, the disastrous marriage, the psychological torment, the coded themes in his compositions. Tchaikovsky was a gay man living in a world that wanted him dead, and he survived by bleeding music instead of truth. His story deserves to be told honestly, completely, and without the sanitizing bullshit that has obscured it for too long.
We owe it to Tchaikovsky, to his brother Modest, to every LGBTQ+ person who has ever had to hide their truth, to tell this story with the visceral honesty it deserves. Because in the end, the music was never just about entertainment—it was about survival, resistance, and the unbreakable human spirit that creates beauty even in the darkest fucking circumstances.
Tchaikovsky’s legacy isn’t just musical—it’s a testament to the fact that LGBTQ+ people have always been here, creating the culture that defines human civilization, even when that same civilization tried to destroy them. His story is our story, his pain is our pain, and his music is our victory song—a reminder that love, in all its forms, will always find a way to express itself, even when the world tries to silence it.
Citations:
Suchet J. 2019 “Tchaikovsky: The Man Revealed”
Poznansky, K. 2014 “Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man “
Trailblazing Illinois Democrat reflects on political career and says party is ‘in a daze’ about how to combat Trump
Carol Moseley Braun speaks after Rahm Emanuel wins Chicago’s mayoral race in February 2011. Photograph: Nam Y Huh/AP
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton … ”
Carol Moseley Braun was riding a lift in the US Capitol building when she heard Dixie, the unofficial anthem of the slave-owning Confederacy during the civil war. “The sound was not very loud, yet it pierced my ears with the intensity of a dog whistle,” Moseley Braun writes in her new memoir, Trailblazer. “Indeed, that is what it was in a sense.”
The first African American woman in the Senate soon realised that “Dixie” was being sung by Jesse Helms, a Republican senator from North Carolina. He looked over his spectacles at Moseley Braun and grinned. Then he told a fellow senator in the lift: “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.”
But clearly, Moseley Braun notes, the senator had never tangled with a Black woman raised on the south side of Chicago. She told him calmly: “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry even if you sang Rock of Ages.”
Moseley Braun was the sole African American in the Senate during her tenure between 1993 and 1999, taking on legislative initiatives that included advocating for farmers, civil rights and domestic violence survivors, and went on to run for president and serve as US ambassador to New Zealand.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian from her home in Chicago, she recalls her history-making spell in office, argues that sexism is tougher to crack than racism and warns that the Democratic party is “walking around in a daze” as it struggles to combat Donald Trump.
As for that incident with Helms, she looks back now and says: “I had been accustomed to what we now call microaggressions, so I just thought he was being a jerk.”
Moseley Braun was born in the late 1940s in the post-war baby boom. Her birth certificate listed her as “white” due to her mother’s light complexion and the hospital’s racial segregation, a detail she later officially corrected. She survived domestic abuse from her father, who could be “a loving advocate one minute, and an absolute monster the next”, and has been guided by her religious faith.
In 1966, at the age of 19, she joined a civil rights protest led by Martin Luther King. She recalls by phone: “He was a powerful personality. You felt drawn into him because of who he was. I had no idea he was being made into a modern saint but I was happy to be there and be supportive.
“When it got violent, they put the women and children close to Dr King in concentric circles and so I was close enough to touch him. I had no idea at the time it was going to be an extraordinary point in my life but it really was.”
Moseley Braun was the first in her family to graduate from college and one of few women and Black students in her law school class, where she met her future husband. In the 1970s she won a longshot election to the Illinois general assembly and became the first African American woman to serve as its assistant majority leader.
But when she planned a historic run for the Senate, Moseley Braun met widespread scepticism. “Have you lost all your mind? Why are you doing this? But it made sense to me at the time and I followed my guiding light. You do things that seem like the right thing to do and, if it make sense to you, you go for it.”
Moseley Braun’s campaign team included a young political consultant called David Axelrod, who would go on to be a chief strategist and senior adviser to Obama. She came from behind to win the Democratic primary, rattling the party establishment, then beat Republican Richard Williamson in the general election.
She was the first Black woman elected to the Senate and only the fourth Black senator in history. When Moseley Braun arrived for her first day at work in January 1993, there was a brutal reminder of how far the US still had to travel: a uniformed guard outside the US Capitol told her, “Ma’am, you can’t go any further,” and gestured towards a side-entrance for visitors.
At the time she did not feel that her trailblazing status conferred a special responsibility, however. “I wish I had. I didn’t. I was going to work. I was going to do what I do and then show up to vote on things and be part of the legislative process. I had been a legislator for a decade before in the state legislature so I didn’t at the time see it as being all that different from what I’d been doing before. I was looking forward to it and it turned out to be all that I expected and more.”
Carol Moseley-Braun watches the delayed launch of the space shuttle Discovery in Chicago in October 1998. Photograph: Michael S Green/AP
But it was not to last. Moseley Braun served only one term before being defeated by Peter Fitzgerald, a young Republican who was heir to a family banking fortune and an arch conservative on issues such as abortion rights. But that did not deter her from running in the Democratic primary election for president in 2004.
“It was terrible,” she recalls. “I couldn’t raise the money to begin with and so I was staying on people’s couches and in airports. It was a hard campaign and the fact it was so physically demanding was a function of the fact that I didn’t have the campaign organisation or the money to do a proper campaign for president.
“I was being derided by any commentator who was like, ‘Look, this girl has lost her mind,’ and so they kind of rolled me off and that made it hard to raise money, hard to get the acceptance in the political class. But I got past that. My ego was not so fragile that that it hurt my feelings to make me stop. I kept plugging away.”
Eventually Moseley Braun dropped out and endorsed Howard Dean four days before the opening contest, the Iowa caucuses. Again, she had been the only Black woman in the field, challenging long-held assumptions of what a commander-in-chief might look like.
“That had been part and parcel of my entire political career. People saying: ‘What are you doing here? Why are you here? Don’t run, you can’t possibly win because you’re not part of the show and the ways won’t open for you because you’re Black and because you’re a woman.’ I ran into that every step of the way in my political career.”
Since then, four Black women have followed in her footsteps to the Senate: Kamala Harris and Laphonza Butler of California, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware.
Moseley Braun says: “I was happy of that because I was determined not to be the last of the Black women in the Senate. The first but not the last. That was a good thing, and so far the progress has been moving forward. But then we got Donald Trump and that trumped everything.”
Harris left the Senate to become the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, then stepped in as Democrats’ presidential nominee after Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election.
Moseley Braun comments: “I thought she did as good a job as she could have. I supported her as much as I knew how to do and I’m sorry she got treated so badly and she lost like she did. You had a lot of sub rosa discussions of race and gender that she should have been prepared for but she wasn’t.”
Trump exploited the “manosphere” of podcasters and influencers and won 55% of men in 2024, up from 50% of men in 2020, according to Pew Research. Moseley Braun believes that, while the country has made strides on race, including the election of Obama as its first Black president in 2008, it still lags on gender.
“I got into trouble for saying this but it’s true: sexism is a harder thing to change than racism. I had travelled fairly extensively and most of the world is accustomed to brown people being in positions of power. But not here in the United States. We haven’t gotten there yet and so that’s something we’ve got to keep working on.”
Does she expect to see a female president in her lifetime? “I certainly hope so. I told my little grandniece that she could be president if she wanted to. She looked at me like I lost my mind. ‘But Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.’”
Still, Trump has not been slow to weaponise race over the past decade, launching his foray into politics with a mix of false conspiracy theories about Obama’s birthplace and promises to build a border wall and drive out criminal illegal immigrants.
Moseley Braun recalls: “It was racial, cultural, ethnic, et cetera, backlash. He made a big deal out of the immigration issue, which was racism itself and people are still being mistreated on that score.
“They’ve been arresting people for no good reason, just because they look Hispanic. The sad thing about it is that they get to pick and choose who they want to mess with and then they do. It’s too destructive of people’s lives in very negative ways.”
Yet her fellow Democrats have still not found an effective way to counter Trump, she argues. “The Democratic party doesn’t know what to do. It’s walking around in a daze. The sad thing about it is that we do need a more focused and more specific response to lawlessness.”
Five years after the police murder of George Floyd and death of Congressman John Lewis, there are fears that many of the gains of the civil rights movement are being reversed.
Over the past six months Trump has issued executive orders that aim to restrict or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He baselessly blamed DEI for undermining air safety after an army helicopter pilot was involved in a deadly midair collision with a commercial airliner. Meanwhile, Washington DC dismantled Black Lives Matter Plaza in response to pressure from Republicans in Congress.
None of it surprises Moseley Braun. “It should have been expected. He basically ran on a platform of: ‘I’m going to be take it back to the 1800s. Enough of this pandering and coddling of Black people.’”
But she has seen enough to take the long view of history. “This is normal. The pendulum swings both ways. We have to put up with that fact and recognise that this is the normal reaction to the progress we’ve made. There’s bound to be some backsliding.
More than 30 years have passed since Moseley Braun, wearing a peach business suit and clutching her Bible, was sworn into the Senate by the vice-president, Dan Quayle. Despite what can seem like baby steps forward and giant leaps back, she has faith that Americans will resist authoritarianism.
“I’m very optimistic, because people value democracy,” he says. “If they get back to the values undergirding our democracy, we’ll be fine. I hope that people don’t lose heart and don’t get so discouraged with what this guy’s doing.
“If they haven’t gotten there already, the people in the heartland will soon recognise this is a blatant power grab that’s all about him and making a fortune for himself and his family and has nothing to do with the common good. That’s what public life is supposed to be about. It’s public service.”
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