BURIED TOGETHER

Partner Donald Vining, buried together

Queer Places:
Forest Grove Cemetery, Winthrop St, Augusta, ME 04330, Stati Uniti

Donald Vining was a gay diarist. Vining published essays on gay relationships - his own with his partner Richmond Morell Purinton lasted more than 43 years - which appeared in varied American periodicals. Many of Vining's original diaries (1932-1958) are now at Yale University. Donald Vining was a pacifist who admitted his homosexuality to his draft board because his mother needed his support, and he could not afford to be placed in a camp for conscientious objectors. In his review, John D'Emilio said, "A Gay Diary is, unquestionably, the richest historical document of gay male life in the United States that I have ever encountered.... It chronicles a whole life in which homosexuality is but one part and an ever changing part at that.... It illuminates a critical period in gay male American history.” D'Emilio discusses the earlier years of the diary at some length in his Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority. The strength of Vining's diary lies precisely in his detailed chronicle of the daily life of non-professional gay men in Manhattan over a period of more than 40 years.

My published books:

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