"To celebrate the opening of the 2010 Baseball Season," writes Piero Guidugli, "I compiled a random list of First Recorded Homosexual Person, Place or Reference and organized it in the format of the all American game."

Piero Guidugli writes:

The First Advocate of Gay Rights:
Heinrich Hoessli, (1784-1864) in 1836 published the first volume of Eros: Die Männerliebe der Griechen (“Eros: The Male-love of the Greeks”), a defense of same-sex love.

The Last Execution for Homosexuality in the West:
Britain, 1836, but the death penalty for sodomy was not outlawed until 1861. Sodomy was struck down in the US in 2003. In other countries the death penalty for homosexual behavior is still enforced.

The First Country To Ban Discrimination Against Gays in the Military:
The Netherlands,1974. We are still debating DADT.

The First Professional Athlete to Come Out of the Closet:
David Kopay, 1975, played, among other teams, for the San Francisco Forty-Niners (ding ding). Martina Navratilova and Billy Bean came later.

The First Transgender Politicians:
Italy’s Luxuria, 2006, the first openly transgender Member of Parliament in Europe, and the world’s second openly transgender MP after New Zealander Georgine Beyer. READ MORE