UPDATED POST: Mr. Wahls (b. 1991) has achieved significant success since this original posting on 12/30/2011.  A 2012 quote from Mr. Wahls: To be clear, I don't consider myself an ally. I might be a straight cisgender man, but in my mind, I am a member of the LGBT community. I know the last thing that anyone wants is to add another letter to the acronym, but we need to make sure as a movement we're making a place for what we call "queer-spawn" to function and to be part of the community. Because even though I'm not gay, I do know what it's like to be hated for who I am. And I do know what ..read more

  Whatever happened to Matt Dallas? For starters, he’s starring in Shoulder Dance (2023), an LGBTQ comedy / drama / romance movie, and has a smaller role in another film, Every Breath She Takes (2023 thriller / drama), capping a four-year dry spell that began in 2019. Both films can be streamed on Prime Video. Even so, he’s still best known for his lead role in 3 seasons of Kyle XY (American Family network 2006-2009, 43 episodes, sci-fi / fantasy / drama). He played the title role of a test tube baby born without a belly button. He was in his mid-twenties at the time the series aired. Bu ..read more

*UPDATED January 7, 2024 to include mention of the 2023 bio-film MAESTRO.   a gay man who dabbled in the straight world Bernstein photographed in 1988 at home in Connecticut. Leonard Bernstein* (1918-1990) was a celebrity American conductor and composer. As principal conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic, he was without peer, so much so that the orchestra had a difficult time recovering when he departed the podium. He composed music for the concert hall, cinema and the theater, making him the most celebrated American composer since George Gershwin. *He pronounced ..read more

 Rinkēvičs Sworn In as President of Latvia This July (2023) 49-year-old Edgars Rinkēvičs took office as President of Latvia, becoming the first openly gay head of state in a European Union country. He won the national election in May. Your blogger is more than weary of bad news, so this lifts his spirits all the more, because East European countries are generally more conservative and less accepting of gays (Hungary and Turkey, for example). Rinkēvičs was already involved in Latvian politics when he announced he was gay on Twitter in 2014. He speaks fluent English and earned a masters de ..read more

This is an update of a controversial post from 2012. Be sure to read the shit storm of four dozen reader comments at the end. Bisexual Russian-born actor Yul Brynner (1920-1985) began his career playing guitar and singing gypsy songs among Russian immigrants in Parisian nightclubs. His fluency in Russian and French enabled him to build up a following with the Czarist expatriates in Paris. After a brief stint as a trapeze artist with the famed Cirque D'Hiver company in France, he started acting with a touring company in the early 1940s. He was soon on his way to becoming the first ever bald st ..read more

Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) was an English-born South African who was a co-founder of the De Beers diamond company as well as the honored namesake of the southern African country of Rhodesia (today’s Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia). Notably, upon his death he bequeathed funding to establish the Rhodes Scholarship program, which to this day is endowed by his estate. During his short life he was active as a businessman, politician and philanthropist who lived and dreamed on a grand scale. Rhodes moved from England to South Africa while still a teenager in hopes that a better climate would ease his ..read more

In 1920 Bill Tilden, who made no effort to hide his homosexuality, won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon. He was the first American to compete at Wimbledon and went on to win two more Wimbledon titles, in addition to seven U.S. championships. As well, he led U.S. teams to seven Davis Cup victories. From 1920 to 1934, Tilden was generally considered the world's greatest tennis player. In 1925, Tilden won an astonishing 57 matches in a row. Although Tilden lost part of his finger in an accident in 1922, he simply modified his grip and continued to play at the same level as before the injur ..read more

  The Habsburg dynasty had a consequential problem with inbreeding, resulting in a family that, how shall we say, lacked handsome physical attributes. Archduke Ludwig Viktor was no exception. His only advantage was the fact that his older brother, Franz Josef, was the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. The archduke (1842-1919) had a face only a mother could love (evidence at left). After having produced three male heirs, Ludwig’s mom ignored the fact that he wasn’t the girl she had wanted and dressed him like one. As if not to disappoint her, he grew up gay as a goose. It didn’t help that ever ..read more

NOTE: Your blogger recently performed an organ work by Saint-Saëns, so this post has been expanded and updated. When his father died when he was only three months old, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was raised by his mother in Paris and continued to live with her until her death. He became one of the world’s most famous composers in his day, and he was a homosexual possessed of a complicated private life, which often revealed his dark side. Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy (on the level of Mozart), and made his debut as a concert pianist in 1846, before his eleventh birthday. As an encore, Saint ..read more

UPDATE October 2022: On September 15, 2022, it was announced that Don Lemon will co-anchor a new CNN morning show with Kaitlin Collins and Poppy Harlow. On October 12, 2022, it was announced that the morning show will be named CNN This Morning. In 2009, Don Lemon (b. 1966) made Ebony magazine’s list of 150 Most Influential African-Americans. When he came out in 2011, the CNN news anchor jested that he was “a double minority,” being both black and gay. Born in Louisiana, Lemon found his first on-air work in Chicago as a co-anchor at NBC5 News and as a correspondent for The Today Show and The N ..read more