Ellen DeGeneres

Beloved TV host Ellen DeGeneres has been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ community over the years. 

She made the courageous decision to come out on two major media platforms. In 1997, she graced the cover of Time magazine with a headline that boldly stated, ‘Yep, I’m Gay.’ Just a week later, her character on the NBC sitcom ‘Ellen’ also came out as gay.

Although the episode won a Peabody Award and an Emmy, her career suffered the consequences of her brave and proud embrace of her identity in the public eye. 

In 2017, as she reminisced on the 20th anniversary of her coming-out episode, she shared the message, ‘We’re not supposed to conform, we’re not supposed to be like somebody else, we’re not supposed to act like somebody else. As long as you stay true to exactly who you are, you will be rewarded in ways that you can’t even imagine.’