In the same year, Cook, along with his famous Apple liaisons, attended the San Francisco gay pride parade and has been ever since. Probably the most influential gay man in the tech industry, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook came out openly during an interview to the famous Bloomberg Business magazine, saying, “I consider being gay is one of the greatest gifts God has given me.”. That said, let’s see 10 famous gay men and their stories in brief: Tim Cook
And while there exists some that famous gay men that still need that courage and inspiration to come forward - let’s recognise the ones that came out proudly.Īnd also hear what they have to say about being gay, coming out, the hardships, the reward because these individuals are the ones that are actually making out society more inclusive and present a sweeping history that even the gay men can be the crème de la crème of the community. However, with social acceptance becoming a norm, these men do not have to hide their sexuality.
READ MORE: How the Great Depression Helped End Prohibitionīy the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban living, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexuality crusades championed by Joseph McCarthy would help push the flowering of gay culture represented by the Pansy Craze firmly into the nation’s rear-view mirror.ĭrag balls, and the spirit of freedom and exuberance they represented, never went away entirely-but it would be decades before LGBTQ life would flourish so publicly again.Gay men have been an integral part of our society, either openly or in the shadows of being a “gentleman”. This not only discouraged gay men from participating in public life, but also “made homosexuality seem more dangerous to the average American.” In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap points out, a wave of sensationalized sex crimes “provoked hysteria about sex criminals, who were often-in the mind of the public and in the mind of authorities-equated with gay men.” The sale of liquor was legal again, but newly enforced laws and regulations prohibited restaurants and bars from hiring gay employees or even serving gay patrons. Each gay enclave, wrote George Chauncey in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputation.
In addition to these groups, whom social reformers in the early 1900s would call “male sex perverts,” a number of nightclubs and theaters were featuring stage performances by female impersonators these spots were mainly located in the Levee District on Chicago’s South Side, the Bowery in New York City and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities.īy the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem and the bohemian mecca of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Times Square), and the city’s first lesbian enclaves had appeared in Harlem and the Village. “In the late 19th century, there was an increasingly visible presence of gender-non-conforming men who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities,” says Chad Heap, a professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.