February 18

Events

1564 - A lover of boys to the end - Michelangelo Di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (and I bet you thought he only had ONE name :-) died on this date in Rome at the age of 88. He remains to this day one of the most famous Renaissance sculptors, painters, architects, and poets who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His attraction to males - particularly to boys - is revealed in his life and his art. Michelangelo had no interest in marriage, preferring the company of a group of close male friends and associates. He was in his late sixties when he met Cecchino dei Bracci, the charming and beautiful 15 year old nephew of one of his friends. Of the boy's beauty, he wrote: "With his face God wished to correct nature." When Bracci died in 1544, at the age of 16, Michelangelo designed the boy's tomb and wrote no fewer than fifty poems mourning his passing. Other boys thought to have been Michelangelo's lovers were Gherardo Perini, a muscular, strikingly beautiful young male model whose relationship with Michelangelo was the subject of much gossip at the time; Tommaso Cavalieri, an intelligent and handsome young nobleman who remained one of Michelangelo's lifelong friends; and Febo di Poggio, a young male prostitute of whom Michelangelo wrote, "Up from the earth I rose with his wings, and death itself I could have found sweet." His taste for boys was widely known though 16th century Rome. no one really seemed to mind, either.

1996 - Kick him where it hurts! - The Prime Minister of Thailand, Banharn Silapa-archa, admitted on this date that his government had not done enough to end child prostitution and said the problem was complex and could not be solved overnight. he was responding to a campaign on the Internet for a boycott of Thai products as a protest against government inaction over child prostitution. "I have to admit that we don't take it seriously enough," he said. "We don't have concrete measures to solve the problem. We seem to take it seriously only when it is a focus of public attention. And then we just let it fade away again." Banharn promised action, but many doubted whether he took the issue seriously or whether his only concern was the impact of a trade embargo.

1998 - Sometimes the injustice system is just rotten to the core - A Belgian parliamentary panel, in an investigation into child-sex murders, issued a damning report on this date that law enforcement was so lax that criminals operated unhindered. The report's main conclusion was that Marc Dutroux - the key suspect in a deadly child sex ring whose activities shocked Belgium - and his accomplices enjoyed "indirect protection" from police and justice officials. The panel's report said there was "an impressive list of failures and missed opportunities" in the Dutroux case. The document identified more than 30 members of the police and judiciary whose errors or misjudgments had allowed Dutroux to remain at liberty much longer than he should have. Michel Nihoul, Dutroux's chief associate, had close ties to magistrates and politicians for whom he held sex parties. Despite clues and tips, an investigation failed to link Dutroux to the kidnappings and a police search of his home did not find two 8 year old girls held prisoner in his basement. They later starved to death - nine months after they were abducted - after Dutroux was arrested for car theft. No disciplinary action was been taken against any of the officials named in the report.

1999 - A controversy reaches a head ... ahem ... so to speak. - Calvin Klein found himself in the middle of a controversy on this date over his advertising. He had put up a billboard in NYC of two little boys frolicking on a couch in their underwear (Klein was debuting a line of children's underwear). The billboard horrified tons of people, who accused Klein of arousing pedos with lascivious pictures of kiddies. According to the New York Post, Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, claimed that one of the little kiddie's genitals can actually be seen in the photograph (and that it must be intentional, because it's a professional photograph). This left open the question of which is worse: the possibility of child genitals in the ad, or Robert Peters spending his time staring at the children in the ad, looking for genital outlines. He probably wasn't the only one, though. Every pedo in the tri-state area probably stopped by for a peek, too.