John Addington Symonds, 1840 – 1893.

Tomorrow is the birthday of John Addington Symonds. I'm sure I've gone on about him here before so I won't again. To oversimplify, when we look at the history of the "modern lgbt rights movement," all roads lead back to a handful of guys, mostly English, in the second half of the 19th century, one of whom (and for my money the most remarkable) is John Addington Symonds.

Most of Symonds’s personal papers were burned after his death by his biographer. You might or might not be surprised how often that happened. Homophobia is a forest fire raging through gay history. Vast fields of research are just smoke and cinders now. But, incredibly, Symonds autobiography survived and was published in the 1980s as “The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds.” It’s quite a read.

We stand on awesome shoulders.