National Coming Out Day was founded by Robert Eichberg and Jean O'Leary on October 11, 1988 in celebration of the first gay march on Washington D.C. a year earlier. The purpose of the march and of National Coming Out Day is to promote government and public awareness of gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender rights and to celebrate homosexuality.
National Coming Out Day is a time to publicly display gay pride. Many choose this day to come out to their parents, friends, co-workers and themselves.
So we encourage anyone out there who is toying with the idea of coming out, to take the plunge on October 11th! In honor of this special, gay occasion, we've compiled a list of our favorite openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered celebrities/public figures. We're not going to bother listing designers, because we don't have enough bandwidth for that. 
To learn about homosexual politicians and public officials go to victoryfund.org
- Lance Bass, formerly of 'NSync, came out on the cover of People magazine in 2006.
- Neil Patrick Harris, America's favorite fictional teenager doctor (Doogie Howser), came out last November.
- Ellen Degeneres was lucky enough to come out twice... sort of. She came out in February 1997 and then later her character, named "Ellen", came out on her sitcom, also named... Ellen.
- Alan Cumming has been quoted as calling himself "bisexual". He's really just on this list because of the name. Best name ever.
- Alan Ball (another great name), the creator of Six Feet Under, is openly gay.
- Alexis Arquette makes the list because you have to pretty cool to document your sex change operation on TV. Attention whores are great, no matter what gender they are.
- Rupert Everett has been openly gay (or possibly bisexual, he's been quoted as both by various "sources") for some time now. He admitted to having been a former male prostitute in 1997. This has nothing to do with him begin gay or bi, but we just think it's funny. It's our list, we'll say whatever we fucking want, okay!?
- George Takei (Star Trek), came out in 2007 at age 68. Sulu rocks!
- Sir Ian McKellen came out in 1988 in reaction to an anti-gay rights legal proposal in England. Talk about awesome.
- Lily Tomlin, before officially coming out, was known for her involvement in feminist and gay-friendly productions.
- Anthony Rapp makes this list because we love Rent. We admit it. We do. We like to sing along to the soundtrack in the car. Don't judge us.
- Genius cult-filmmaker John Waters is gay. Do we even need to explain why we adore him? I didn't think so.
- Guillermo Diaz (Party Girl and Half Baked) has been openly gay throughout his career. I just found that out today. I was totally out of the loop.
- 80's pop-star and model, Samantha Fox, admitted to being in love with her female manager in 2003. Maybe... just maybe... naughty girls need love too.
- We're not exactly sure when Sara Gilbert (from Roseanne) came out, but it just makes me love the movie Poison Ivy even more!
We'd like to wish anyone coming out tomorrow good luck... and we'd also love to hear your own coming out stories. Leave a comment!
3 comments:
On a related note, Jeanne Phillips, aka Dear Abby, just officially came out in support of gay marriage.
"I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless 'em," the syndicated advice columnist told The Associated Press. "That is the highest form of commitment, for heaven's sake." She also said that she believes in full marriage rights, that civil unions just amount to second class citizenship.
She's also a big supporter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and they just honored her with a 'Straight for Equality' award. Who knew Dear Abby was awesome?
my coming out consisted of me saying to my friends "so I think I'm bi" and them all saying "duh!"
it was neat
Thanks for checking me out. I really enjoyed your info on Gardasil. I'll be back!!
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