Ellen DeGeneres
Yep, she's
your #1 hero. Ten years after she outed herself -- and her
sitcom character -- Ellen DeGeneres is on top of the world.
She's happily partnered. She's wealthy.
She's hosted the Oscars. And five days a week,
she shows millions of straight TV fans that being gay is no
big deal. What other LGBT figure of the past 40 years
has made a more spectacular mark on the world?
But that
certainly isn't the only reason Advocate
readers voted her our biggest hero of the past 40
years. DeGeneres also exemplifies the classic hero's
journey of mythology -- a call to adventure, followed
by a road of trials, and then a triumphant return to
ordinary life. We love tales of people who take big
risks, go through hard times, then brush themselves off and
emerge better and brighter than ever. And that's
Ellen for you.
In 1997, at age
39, she just couldn't breathe in the closet anymore,
so she took a big gulp of fresh air and acknowledged
what everyone already suspected: She likes girls.
Television stars just didn't admit such things
then. As newly out T.R. Knight said when he was a guest on
Ellen's show a decade later, "It just
made all the difference.... It meant so
much." She was a pioneer, and pioneers make things a
little less scary for everyone following in their
paths.
Ellen's
own path turned rocky after the brilliant "Puppy
Episode," in which her TV character Ellen
Morgan came out. Before long Ellen was canceled, her
relationship with mercurial Anne Heche ended in a
blaze of weirdness, and her next sitcom, The Ellen
Show, flopped. Ellen herself tells The
Advocate that she went through a period of being
"upset and torn and bitter," feeling that
she'd "lost everything."
But like the
mythical phoenix, she rose from the ashes. She earned kudos
for tastefully hosting the Emmy Awards right after 9/11.
Then a little movie called Finding Nemo
reminded the world how gifted she really is. In 2003,
when DeGeneres launched her talkfest--officially
titled The Ellen DeGeneres Show but, like every
other show she's been involved with, known
simply as Ellen -- an essential truth emerged:
People didn't want Ellen to be somebody else. They
loved her. Nine Emmys later, they still do.
Some of us might
complain that Ellen doesn't play up gayness more on
her talk show, but maybe we're just impossible
to please. After all, some of us complained that Ellen
became too gay. Fact is, the Ellen of 2007
doesn't hide who she is: She's very open about
her relationship with Portia de Rossi, she still
dresses in dyke-next-door chic, and she represents for
the community. "I think I represent honesty,"
Ellen says, "and I'm proud to represent
that."
Ellen took the
risk; Ellen took the heat. And now her daily unapologetic
presence as a lesbian on TV normalizes gayness for Middle
America -- a huge feat.
"I'm sure there were those who weren't
so famous who did a lot of great work," she
says of the gay heroes of the past 40 years. "So I
really am touched. It's a huge
compliment." -- Michele Kort
Barney Frank
Barney Frank has
spent more than 25 years in Congress, and he shows no
signs of slowing down. After coming out publicly in 1987,
Frank has been reelected by the fourth district of
Massachusetts in every term since. "I think by
being honest about who we are -- coming out to friends,
relatives, teammates, customers, students,
teachers--we have helped America understand a
major fact: Most Americans were not homophobic but
thought they were supposed to be," he explained to
The Advocate in 2004.
Frank is at the
forefront of gay issues in the House of Representatives
(he consistently receives a perfect 100 score from the Human
Rights Campaign), where he continues to advance the
position of LGBT people everywhere. "By now we
not only have millions of openly gay, lesbian, and
bisexual people, we also have tens of millions of relatives
and friends of gay people," he said during an
interview in 2000. "When someone comes out to
his or her parents, the parents may not in every case be
ready to become a gay rights supporter. But they sure
as hell don't want some politician calling
their kid an asshole."
Harvey Milk
Though an
assassin cut his life short, Harvey Milk packed 48 years
with enough accomplishments to last many lifetimes.
Born in Woodmere, N.Y., in 1930, Milk joined the Navy
during the Korean War, worked on Wall Street during
the 1960s, and eventually became involved with two iconic
Broadway shows: Jesus Christ Superstar and
Hair. He settled in San Francisco permanently in
1972. And Milk's potent combination of charm and
grassroots activism won him the nickname "the
Mayor of Castro Street."
After two failed
attempts, Milk was elected to the San Francisco board of
supervisors in 1977, making him the first openly gay man to
win public office in a major U.S. city. But Milk
served only 11 months in office before vengeful former
supervisor Dan White gunned down him and Mayor George
Moscone.
"There was
a bullet hole through Harvey," Dianne Feinstein told
The Advocate in 1998, describing her discovery
of the scene. "I put my finger on his wrist to try to
get a pulse. I knew he was dead. It was a terrible,
terrible moment." Though today, his story
continues to touch people worldwide. Says Feinstein:
"His homosexuality gave him an insight into the
scars which all oppressed people wear. He believed
that no sacrifice was too great a price to pay for the cause
of human rights."
Matthew Shepard
What was it about
Matthew Shepard's 1998 slaying that galvanized an
entire nation? Even Shepard's mother, Judy,
couldn't put her finger on it when she spoke to
us the following year. "There have been so many other
people who have been attacked and killed, and for some
reason, this time everything came together and took
everybody's attention," she said. "He
was just a kid who liked everything. He wasn't
different from anybody. And I think it was just so
easily identifiable for everyone, gays and straights
alike."
Perhaps
that's why, after Shepard was savagely beaten and
left to die in a remote spot outside Laramie, Wyo., he
became a cultural touchstone in the long battle for
gay equality. The death of this unassuming college
student made the cover of Time magazine and the
front page of The New York Times, inspired
countless artistic responses (including the acclaimed play
The Laramie Project), and renewed attention on
national hate-crime laws. Speaking at the trial of his
son's killers, Shepard's father, Dennis,
acknowledged that impact: "My son Matthew paid
a terrible price to open the eyes of all of us who live in
Wyoming, the United States, and the world to the
unjust and unnecessary fears, discrimination, and
intolerance that members of the gay community face
every day."
Melissa Etheridge
"I'm sort of a gay success story, a very
inspirational one," Melissa Etheridge said in
1996, shortly after being named The Advocate's
1995 Person of the Year. "What happened to me
is exactly the opposite of what closeted people fear: They
think they'll lose everything if they come out. This
did not happen to me at all. In fact, everything came
back tenfold."
Tenfold might be
conservative when you consider that this Grammy-winning
rocker famously came out as a lesbian during President Bill
Clinton's inaugural ball, then went on to see
two subsequent albums (Yes I Am and Your Little
Secret) hit multiplatinum highs. And when then-partner
Julie Cypher gave birth to two children in the late
1990s, Etheridge became perhaps the world's
most visible lesbian parent, appearing on the cover of
Rolling Stone with her extended family.
Even through
tough times, Etheridge has proved an inspiration. After
struggling with breast cancer in 2004, Etheridge showed up
bald from chemotherapy at the Grammy Awards and belted
out a defiant rendition of "Piece of My
Heart." And though Cypher and Etheridge eventually
split, the singer went on to exchange vows with
actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, who added twins to their
famous family last year. She may have started as our
little secret; now she's anything but.