October: LGBTQ+ History Month: Notable People

Famous Firsts

Deborah Batts
Deborah Batts was the first openly gay federal judge.
Angie Craig
She is the first openly gay mother elected to Congress.

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan (b.1987)
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan serves as a Senior Associate Director for Public Engagement and the White House’s primary liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. She is the first appointee in the Obama White House who is openly transgender.

Lori Lightfoot
She is Chicago’s first openly LGBTQ and first black female mayor.
Claudia López
She is the first female and first openly gay mayor of Colombia’s capital and largest city.
Bernárd Lynch
He was the first Catholic priest in the world in an out same-sex partnership, he
advocated for LGBT rights at a great personal sacrifice.

Jason Collins
First openly gay athlete to play any professional sports team in the US.
He has played for:
New Jersey Nets
Houston Rockets
Brooklyn Nets

Jess O’Connell
She was the first openly LGBT CEO of the Democratic National Committee.
Laura Ricketts
She is the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports team.

Sally Ride
The first American woman to travel into Space. She spent over 343 hours in space, and served on the committees that investigated both the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Megan Smith
She was the first female and first lesbian U.S. chief technology officer.
Rabbi Deborah Waxman
She is the first woman to lead a Jewish seminary and a national congregational union.

Katie Sowers
The NFL’s first openly gay NFL assistant coach and the first woman to coach at the Super Bowl.

Entertainers

RuPaul Andre Charles
American drag queen, actor, model, singer, songwriter, and television personality.
Rob Epstein
He is a multi-award-winning nonfiction filmmaker whose work focuses on LGBT issues.
Angelica Ross
She is a businesswoman, a transgender rights advocate and an actress.
Moisés Kaufman
“The Laramie Project” (2000), about the murder of Mathew Shepard, is one of the most-produced plays.
Billy Porter
He is an Emmy, Grammy and Tony Award-winning actor and singer.
Kate McKinnon
Since she joined “SNL,” McKinnon has appeared in a number of screen
productions.
Harris Glenn Milstead
He was a trailblazing drag actor best known as Divine.
Lauren Morelli
She is an award-winning writer and the co-producer of “Orange Is the New Black.”
Montero Hill
Known as Lil Nas X, is a Grammy Award-winning rapper, singer and songwriter

Sports

Emile Griffith - Outsports

Emile Griffith
He won five world boxing championships.

Billie Jean King - NBC News
Billie Jean King
Former World No. 1 professional tennis player.
She was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups.
Brittney Griner - Outsports
Brittney Griner
Basketball Teams:
UMMC Ekaterinburg
Baylor Lady Bears basketball
Phoenix Mercury
Megan Rapinoe - Outsports
Megan Rapinoe
Two-time World Cup Champion, and co-captain of the US Women's National Team.
Michael Sam - Outsports
Michael Sam
National Football League (NFL)
Los Angeles Rams
Missouri Tigers
Robbie Rogers - Outsports
Robbie Rogers
Soccer Team:
LA Galaxy

Activist

Felicia Elizondo
Her activism has been crucial in raising public awareness of transgender history.
Menaka Guruswamy & Arundhati Katju
They won a historic Indian Supreme Court case decriminalizing homosexuality.
Nikolay Alexeyev
His leadership brought international attention to LGBT rights in Russia.

Marsha P. Johnson
An activist, self-identified drag queen, performer, and survivor. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.

David Mixner
He is an activist, a powerful political advisor and a bestselling author.

Sylvia Rivera
She was a transgender and gay rights activist in New York. She identified as a drag queen, and founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Marsha P. Johnson to help homeless LGBT youth.

Laxmi Narayan Tripathi
She is the most influential figures in India's LGBTQ community.

Authors and Artists

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942-2004)

Poet, writer, and feminist theorist.

Some of her most famous work includes:

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981)
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
Making Face: Making Soul/Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (1990)

Mishima Yukio
Author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director, and founder of the Tatenokai. Notable Works include:
“The Sea of Fertility”
“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion”
“Confessions of a Mask”
“The Decay of the Angel”
“The Temple of Dawn”
“Patriotism”
“Spring Snow”
“Runaway Horses”

Emily Dickinson
She is one of America’s greatest poets.

Patricia Highsmith
Novelist and short-story writer known for her psychological crime thrillers.
Best known for:
Strangers on a Train
The Talented Mr. Ripley

Christopher Isherwood
His best-known works include the novel that inspired “Cabaret.”
Ifti Nasim
He was a trailblazing Pakistani-American poet and LGBT activist.
Mary Oliver
Her highly acclaimed poetry provided a window into the natural world.

F. Garcia Lorca
A Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director.
A selection of his poems is available for reading on the Poetry Foundation site.

Sappho
She was one of the great Archaic lyric poets.

Alain Locke
Writer, educator, philosopher, and patron of the arts.
He is known for the anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature titled "The New Negro: An Interpretation."

U.S. Armed Forces

Anne McClain
Anne McClain is a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served as flight engineer for Expeditions 58/59 to the International Space Station. She is the second LGBTQ person to become an American astronaut.
Baron Friedrich von Steuben
He helped America win the Revolutionary War.

5 LGBTQ service members who changed history - MSF

Science

Ben Barres
Neuroscientist focusing on the role of glial cells. Barres was a transman who used his position as a professor at Stanford University to not just do neuroscience research but to also advocate for gender equality.
Alan Turing
British mathematician, who created the Turing machine which is the basis for all computers. The 2014 film The Imitation Game, portrays his life during the time he broke the Nazi Enigma code during World War II.
Lynn Conway
Transgender computer scientist who helped invent modern microchip technology.

Alexander Von Humboldt
He profoundly affected the way science viewed nature.

Alan Hart
Alan L. Hart was an Oregon physician, researcher, and writer and one of the first female-to-male transgender persons to undergo a hysterectomy in the United States and live the remainder of his life as a man.

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