Famous/Highly Visible Queers

[Andrew, Jr.]

Calperna Addams does it for me. Yowza! Lynn Conway is also another looker for me, but she is married, and living stealth with her husband. Her eyes are gorgeous.

[Dante]

Anthony Perkins ....... actor
Best known for playing the deranged Norman Bates, in Psycho......
Born in 1932, died of AIDS in 1992.

[Nat]

Former Olympic swimmer Daniel Kowalski



Announced two days ago

"Things pop in my head that make me realise that I clearly suppressed these thoughts of being gay … because it was 'wrong', as a male it's 'wrong' but even more as an elite athlete," he said.

"I always knew that I lacked confidence when I stood up on the blocks and I do wonder sometimes if that lack of confidence was fear – fear of not really knowing who I am.

"On the sporting side, I lost to some amazing champions, so I'm not for a second saying that this is the reason I didn't win. I often wonder if the lack of self-confidence and lack of identity in many ways held me back from reaching my potential."

He added that he hoped to find love soon, saying: "I look for all the things straight people do. I want to fall in love and be happy and be proud of who I am."

[Nat]

Welsh Rugby Player Gareth Thomas



and a youtube where he talks about coming out

[Nat]

Michael Stipe

[Nat]

Annie Leibovitz



+

Susan Sontag



from pbs.org

Leibovitz met Susan Sontag in 1989 while photographing the writer for her book AIDS and its Metaphors. “I remember going out to dinner with her and just sweating through my clothes because I thought I couldn’t talk to her,” Leibovitz said in an interview with The New York Times late last year. Sontag told her, “You’re good, but you could be better.” Though the two kept separate apartments, their relationship lasted until Sontag’s death in late 2004.

Sontag’s influence on Leibovitz was profound. In 1993 Leibovitz traveled to Sarajevo during the war in the Balkans, a trip that she admits she would not have taken without Sontag’s input. Among her work from that trip is Sarajevo, Fallen Bicycle of Teenage Boy Just Killed by a Sniper, a black-and-white photo of a bicycle collapsed on blood-smeared pavement. Sontag, who wrote the accompanying essay, also first conceived of Leibovitz’s book Women (1999). The book includes images of famous people along with those not well known. Celebrities like Susan Sarandon and Diane Sawyer share space with miners, soldiers in basic training, and Las Vegas showgirls in and out of costume.

[Medusa]

Greg Louganis!

[Nat]

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

2007 - In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. "Dumbledore is gay, actually," replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort's predecessor who appears in the seventh book. After several minutes of prolonged shouting and clapping from astonished fans, Rowling added. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy."

[Cyclopea]

[Cyclopea]

[Luv]

I wasnt surprised about Chely comeing out. Her best friend in the early 90's went on a trip and bought her and Chely matching pearl rings which they both wore on their left hands for a very long time..makes ya go hmmm...

I say congrats to her for finally coming out and being happy ! She lives in NY now,its the perfect place for her at this time of her life

[Nat]

According to Greek mythology and the Roman poet Ovid, who wrote about transformations in his Metamorphoses, Iphis (or Iphys) was the daughter of Telethusa and Ligdus in Crete. Ligdus had already threatened to kill his pregnant wife's child if it wasn't a boy. Telethusa despairs, but is visited in the middle of the night by the Egyptian goddess Isis, attended by Anubis and Apis, who assures her that all will be well.

When Telethusa gives birth to Iphis, she conceals her daughter's sex from her husband and raises her daughter as a boy. Iphis falls in love with another girl, Ianthe. Iphis is deeply in love and prays to Juno to allow her to marry her beloved.

When nothing happens, her mother Telethusa brings her to the temple of Isis and prays to the goddess to help her daughter. Isis responds by transforming Iphis into a man. The male Iphis marries Ianthe and the two live happily ever after. Their marriage is presided over by Juno, Venus, and Hymenaios, the god of marriage

[Nat]

Margaret Cho

[Cyclopea]

[Cyclopea]

[Nat]

George Washington Carver

[Nat]

Former Republican National Committee chair and Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman says he's gay after years of denial.



While he was a top GOP operative, the Republican Party was actively pushing anti-gay marriage initiatives. Mehlman acknowledged that if not for his secret, he might have been a voice for a more conciliatory approach to gays, according to the interview on the Atlantic's website.

"It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. Now, he said, he will openly back gay marriage as consistent with such GOP principles as "individual freedom."

[Nat]

Was going to put this in the breaking news section, but it just cannot compete with the creation of anti-matter in a lab(!), but since our friend Eleanor was family, I thought I'd post this here:

'Franklin And Eleanor': A Marriage Ahead Of Its Time from NPR

Both Franklin and Eleanor also "gave each other space" to cultivate romantic friendships outside of the marriage. Whether or not these relationships were physical is still up for debate, but the language of existing letters shows there's no question they were passionate. In Eleanor's case, those romantic friendships were with men, like her beloved bodyguard Earl Miller, as well as with women, like the journalist Lorena Hickok. It was no secret to her colleagues in the press corps that "Hick," as she was called, was a lesbian; nor was it a secret that she and Eleanor seemed to be deeply in love. A few months after FDR's first inauguration, Eleanor wrote to "Hick" about their open secret: "And so you think they gossip about us ... I am always so much more optimistic than you are. I suppose because I care so little about what 'they' say." By the way, Rowley can quote those fearless words because Lorena Hickok preserved almost all of the 3,500 letters she and Eleanor wrote to each other from 1932 until Eleanor's death.

The Roosevelt's nonconformist love lives, as well as their expansive impulses to turn the White House into a World War II-era hippie crash pad, have been recounted by other superb biographers, notably Blanche Wiesen Cook and Doris Kearns Goodwin. What distinguishes Rowley's chronicle is her focus on the evolution of the Roosevelt marriage from a standard-issue high-society alliance of its day to a ... what? We don't even have a term for such an unconventional relationship — certainly "open marriage" sounds too naughty, although "open" is what the Roosevelts clearly became.

Of course, they didn't transform their marriage out of mere happy whim. There was the harrowing tragedy of FDR's polio and his rehabilitation, which naturally forced the couple apart. During the late 1920s, Rowley points out, Franklin was away from home for 116 weeks: Eleanor was with him for four of those weeks; his secretary, Missy LeHand, was with him for 110.

And then there were the failures that loosened both the marital and family ties: FDR's affair with Lucy Mercer; Eleanor's rather strained style of parenting the couple's six children. Eleanor, an eternal daddy's girl, sadly confessed later in life that: "I do not think that I am a natural born mother. ... If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father." Rowley doesn't excuse these flaws but traces how the hard times helped the couple achieve what she dubs "one of the most interesting and radical marriages in history."

[Nat]

Though it sounds like this was an episode rather than a life-long issue -



This morning for some reason I began reading about Ted Kaczynski's psychological profile and I ran across this:

While at the University of Michigan he sought psychiatric contact on one occasion at the start of his fifth year of study. As referenced above, he had been experiencing several weeks of intense and persistent sexual excitement involving fantasies of being a female. During that time period he became convinced that he should undergo sex change surgery. He recounts that he was aware that this would require a psychiatric referral, and he set up an appointment at the Health Center at the University to discuss this issue. He describes that while waiting in the waiting room, he became anxious and humiliated over the prospect of talking about this to the doctor. When he was actually seen, he did not discuss these concerns, but rather claimed he was feeling some depression and anxiety over the possibility that the deferment status would be dropped for students and teachers, and that he would face the possibility of being drafted into the military. He indicates that the psychiatrist viewed his anxiety and depression as not atypical. Mr. Kaczynski describes leaving the office and feeling rage, shame, and humiliation over this attempt to seek evaluation. He references this as significant turning point in his life.

[Nat]

Originally Posted by Nat

Though it sounds like this was an episode rather than a life-long issue -



This morning for some reason I began reading about Ted Kaczynski's psychological profile and I ran across this:

While at the University of Michigan he sought psychiatric contact on one occasion at the start of his fifth year of study. As referenced above, he had been experiencing several weeks of intense and persistent sexual excitement involving fantasies of being a female. During that time period he became convinced that he should undergo sex change surgery. He recounts that he was aware that this would require a psychiatric referral, and he set up an appointment at the Health Center at the University to discuss this issue. He describes that while waiting in the waiting room, he became anxious and humiliated over the prospect of talking about this to the doctor. When he was actually seen, he did not discuss these concerns, but rather claimed he was feeling some depression and anxiety over the possibility that the deferment status would be dropped for students and teachers, and that he would face the possibility of being drafted into the military. He indicates that the psychiatrist viewed his anxiety and depression as not atypical. Mr. Kaczynski describes leaving the office and feeling rage, shame, and humiliation over this attempt to seek evaluation. He references this as significant turning point in his life.

or not.

"He claimed that by putting on an act he could con the psychiatrist into thinking him suitable for a feminine role even though his motive was exclusively erotic. "

"As I walked away from the building afterwards, I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do and I felt - humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. "