25 LGBTQ+ figures you should know

Alan Turing was a mathematician who is often credited with creating the foundation of artificial intelligence and computer science. He also played a major role in World War II, helping break several German codes.

In the ’50s, he told police that he had a sexual relationship with a man and was arrested for gross indecency. He was then chemically castrated. He died in 1954 due to cyanide poisoning.

BBC News reported that Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. Three years later, the UK government announced it would posthumously pardon other men convicted of abolished sexual offenses, in what was dubbed the “Turing law.”

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman and, at the time, the youngest American, to travel to space when she flew aboard the Challenger space shuttle.

As the first American woman in space, Rider faced scrutiny based on her gender, which she repeatedly rejected. Throughout her life, she worked to encourage girls to go into science, and in 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a nonprofit aimed at inspiring young people in STEM.

While Ride kept her personal relationships private during her life, at the time of her death in 2012, her nonprofit and her sister, Bear Ride, revealed the astronaut had been in a relationship with science educator and Sally Ride Science co-founder Tam O’Shaughnessy for 27 years.

“Sally never hid her relationship with Tam,” Bear Ride wrote following her sister’s death, as reported by NBC. “They were partners, business partners in Sally Ride Science, they wrote books together, and Sally’s very close friends, of course, knew of their love for each other. We consider Tam a member of our family.”

James Baldwin grew up in Harlem, New York, and published his first book, “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” a semi-autobiographical novel, in 1953.

The following year, he published his groundbreaking novel “Giovanni’s Room” — its main character is a gay man. Baldwin continued writing books and essays with LGBTQ+ and Black characters, speaking out about racial discrimination and becoming a civil rights advocate.

“He was fearless,” his sister Paula Whaley told The New York Times in 2024. “He would say, ‘You have to walk straight into it.'”

Christine Jorgensen grew up in the Bronx, New York, and lived a quiet life. But the World War II veteran said she felt like a woman stuck in a man’s body. When she read about a doctor who was carrying out gender therapy in Copenhagen, she jumped at the chance to go.

After hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery in Europe, Jorgensen returned to the US in the 1950s as Christine. Overnight, she became a celebrity; she shared her story widely, including in an autobiography.

Although most people associate the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin was a key organizer, per the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In fact, Rustin is the one who taught Dr. King about Gandhi’s belief in non-violence and civil disobedience. 

Rustin was also an openly gay man, so he often spoke about the importance of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. He shifted his focus from civil rights to LGBTQ+ activism in the ’80s.

His life was the focus of the 2023 Oscar-nominated film “Rustin,” starring Colman Domingo.

Born in Halls Summit, Kansas, in 1890, physician and radiologist Alan Hart identified as a male from a very young age, per Scientific American.

Throughout his medical research career, Hart pioneered the use of X-rays to detect early stage tuberculosis, a practice that is still used today to diagnose patients and that is credited with saving “countless lives.”

Transitioning in 1917, Hart became one of the first trans men to undergo a hysterectomy in the US.

Before the Stonewall riots, Barbara Gittings was on the frontlines, attempting to normalize homosexuality.

Per Time magazine, she joined the Daughters of Bilitis, the first organization that focused on lesbian rights, and started its New York chapter in 1958. She also began editing the Ladder, a magazine by and for lesbian women.

Gittings was also an important figure in reversing the American Psychiatric Association’s belief that homosexuality was a mental illness.

Although Marsha P. Johnson never officially identified as transgender, she is considered a transgender pioneer. As a drag performer, sex worker, and self-identified “transvestite,” Johnson played a major role in the historic Stonewall riots in 1969 that jump-started the gay liberation movement, CNN reported.

After the riots, Johnson and her friend, Sylvia Rivera, became leaders in the community and used their power to open Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which helped provide housing for homeless and transgender youth.

Sylvia Rivera is often credited with throwing the second Molotov cocktail at the Stonewall riots in 1969 when she was only 17, according to Biography.com. After taking her place in history, she joined forces with her friend Marsha P. Johnson to create Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. 

Rivera experienced drug addiction, incarceration, sex work, and racism, so she fought for the rights of many marginalized groups throughout her lifetime.

When the Costa Rican-born Mexican singer entered the music scene, the Rancheras genre she eventually grew popular in was astoundingly male-dominated. Still, she sang.

Covering popular songs in the genre, often love songs written by men toward women, without changing their pronouns, and performing in traditionally masculine clothing, Vargas, who was born in 1919, challenged the societal view of the genre and the role women played in it.

When the then-81-year-old publicly came out as a lesbian in her 2002 biography, fans weren’t surprised, NPR reported. The singer was reported to have had multiple romances with women, including with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Billie Jean King is one of the most famous names in professional tennis. She earned 39 Grand Slam titles from 1966 to 1975, and also beat Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes” match.

But in 1981, King was outed as a lesbian, and her publicists told her to deny the claim. Instead, she confirmed that she was a lesbian and became one of the first out gay athletes.

Harvey Milk was the first out gay politician to ever be elected in California. While on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, Milk made a name for himself as a prominent, outspoken LGBTQ+ activist.

He was assassinated in 1978 in City Hall.

Eerily, Milk predicted his death by saying, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country,” NBC News reported.

CNN reported that, in 1978, Harvey Milk asked his friend Gilbert Baker to make a symbol that would represent gay pride.

Using the US flag as inspiration, Baker hand-sewed a rainbow flag. He said each color on the flag represented something that was important to the community. For example, the hot pink was for sex, and the red was for life. The rainbow pride flag was first flown in San Francisco on June 25, 1978, for Gay Pride Day.

Playwright Larry Kramer was on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS crisis, which disproportionately impacted — and still impacts — members of the LGBTQ+ community, per the Human Rights Campaign.

In 1981, Kramer created the Gay Men’s Health Crisis organization, which was the only group devoted to helping those who were HIV-positive, The New York Times reported. He later created Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which was an organization that held high-profile demonstrations.

In the ’80s, Kramer wrote the play “The Normal Heart,” which chronicled his experience in AIDS activism. In 2011, the play finally went up on Broadway and then was turned into an HBO movie.

RuPaul got his start in the ’90s in the music industry, releasing his hit single “Supermodel (You Better Work),” which reached the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. At the same time, he appeared in a number of films as his drag persona, including “Crooklyn,” “The Brady Bunch Movie,” and “Blue in the Face.” In 2009, he started a drag-queen competition show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and it quickly became a hit among the LGBTQ+ community.

Throughout the years, the series gained momentum and has become a major hit for mainstream audiences, leading to several spinoffs. The star has gone on to win 14 Emmys, per the Television Academy.

Edith Windsor’s wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009, igniting a court battle that would change LGBTQ+ rights forever. The federal government did not recognize Windsor and Spyer’s marriage, so Windsor was left to pay $350,000 in estate taxes, per NPR. She waged a war against the Defense of Marriage Act in court.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2013 that Section 3 of DOMA — which prevented the federal government from recognizing any same-sex marriages for the purpose of federal laws — was unconstitutional, paving the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

After college, a young Rachel Maddow became an AIDS activist, joining Act Up and the AIDS Legal Referral Panel in San Francisco. After that, she became the first out gay woman to be a Rhodes Scholar, and she studied AIDS in prisons.

Maddow hosted her own radio show, which was eventually turned into “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC in 2008. The journalist continues to be a public LGBTQ+ activist.

Anderson Cooper started as a correspondent for ABC News, but in 2003 he got his own show on CNN, “Anderson Cooper 360.” In 2012, he became the news story when he came out as gay. 

“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud,” Cooper wrote in an email to Andrew Sullivan, who was then given permission to publish in The Daily Beast, per Today.com.

In 2020, he revealed on his CNN segment that he had a son via surrogate and that he would be raising him with his ex-partner. “As a gay kid, I never thought it would be possible to have a child, and I am so grateful to all those who paved the way,” Cooper said.

He welcomed his second child in 2022.

Laverne Cox jumped into the spotlight in 2013 when she started playing transgender inmate Sophia Burset on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black.” For her role in the series, Cox was nominated for four Emmy Awards, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy in an acting category, per the Television Academy.

She is well known as an activist for transgender rights, serving as executive producer of “Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word,” which won a Daytime Emmy for outstanding special class special in 2015, making her the first transgender woman to win the award.

Cox also starred on CBS’s “Doubt” in 2017 and appeared in Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” in 2022. She has been a host of E!’s “Live From the Red Carpet” since January 2022 as well.

Lena Waithe won the Emmy for comedy writing for her work on the Netflix series “Master of None.” During her speech, she took a moment to thank the LGBTQ+ community, Time reported.

“I love you all and last but certainly not least my LGBTQIA family,” she said. “I see each and every one of you. The things that make us different, those are our superpowers — every day when you walk out the door and put on your imaginary cape and go out there and conquer the world because the world would not be as beautiful as it is if we weren’t in it.”

Waithe also uses fashion as a statement to speak out for the community. In 2019, she wore a rainbow flag to the Met Gala that was Catholic Church-themed. A year later, she wore a pantsuit that read “Black Drag Queens Invented Camp” to the same event.

Janet Mock’s powerful 2014 memoir, “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More,” chronicled her experience being transgender and became a New York Times bestseller. She released her second book, “Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me,” in 2017.

Since then, she has moved into television and become the first transgender woman of color to write and direct an episode of television on Ryan Murphy’s groundbreaking show “Pose,” the National Women’s History Museum reported. She also directed and produced episodes of Murphy’s “Hollywood.”

In 2018, Time named Mock one of the most influential people in the world.

Elliot Page is known for starring in the Oscar-winning film “Juno” and Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy.” In 2020, he came out as transgender.

“I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive,” the actor wrote in his coming-out post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Since then, Page has gone through top surgery and he sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview in April 2021 to explain his journey.

“It felt important and selfish for myself and my own wellbeing and my mental health,” Page told Winfrey about coming out. “And also with this platform I have, the privilege that I have, and knowing the pain and the difficulties and the struggles I’ve faced in my life, let alone what so many other people are facing, it absolutely felt crucial and important for me to share that.”

Page published a New York Times bestselling memoir, “Pageboy,” in 2023.

For her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 adaptation of “West Side Story,” DeBose won the Academy Award for best supporting actress, becoming the first queer Afro-Latina woman to do so.

“So to anybody who has ever questioned your identity, ever, ever, ever, or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this: There is indeed a place for us,” DeBose said in her acceptance speech.

In 2014, Michael Sam came out as gay in an interview with ESPN and made history that same year when he was drafted by the St. Louis Rams, becoming the first out gay man to ever be drafted into the NFL.

Unfortunately, Sam was let go from the team, and in 2015, CBS reported that he announced he was leaving the sport for good, citing mental health reasons.

He went on to coach in Europe and now works for ProformApp.

Per the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum, Robert Dover became the first out gay athlete when he competed in the Olympics in 1988.

The six-time Olympic equestrian athlete and four-time bronze medalist told the museum, “I feel very fortunate that the equestrian community is made up of progressive thinking people for the most part,” because he knows athletes in other sports have not always been as lucky.

“The US Equestrian Team and the federation itself has always been very fair with me and they have been my family,” Dover added.