Oregon
William Quartier, the Oregon State Penitentiary’s pharmacist, is arrested for sodomy “under dramatic circumstances” at work, but local newspapers give no further information.
In reaction to the Vice Clique Scandal, the Oregon legislature amends the state’s sodomy law to broaden it to cover virtually any erotic act whatsoever except the missionary position and triples the maximum penalty to 15 years in prison. the legislature enacts a law authorizing the sexual sterilization of “sexual perverts” and “moral degenerates.” A referendum is launched against the new proposal and, in what can be classified accurately as this nation’s first Gay rights referendum, Oregon voters repeal the law by a 56% 44% margin.
On New Year’s Day, the body of Edwin “Sid” Ghirardelli is found in his room at the Byron Hotel in Downtown Portland. He has committed suicide by poison after being fired from his job for being Gay and being rejected by his prominent San Francisco family for the same reason. His family had sent him to Portland to keep him away from various men in San Francisco and told his Portland employer to keep an eye on him to be sure he didn’t “stray.” When Ghirardelli “strayed,” he was fired.
President William H. Taft
State equality and discrimination bills
Utah
James Dwyer, co-founder of Salt Lake City’s LDS University (now LDS Business College), had been “teaching young men that sodomy and kindred vices are not sins…” and this comes to the attention of the First Presidency. Dwyer’s daughter, actress Ada Dwyer Russell, was already in a long-term relationship with lesbian poet Amy Lowell. Dwyer’s bishop and stake president wanted to excommunicate him, but First Presidency allows Dwyer, now in his eighties, to voluntarily “withdraw his name” from LDS church membership.
National
The Anti-Defamation League is formed to fight social injustice and discrimination primarily for Jews but their scope quickly expands as civil protections should be applied to everyone.
United States LGBT History for 1913
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