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(music) out magazine was founded in 1993, it was a fairly radical vision for a gay magazine at the time the goal of out was really to celebrate lgbt life

-what we try to do, really, is represent you know, queerness, in 2013. -the way i saw the agenda ofthe magazine was how how do you... talk about a gay lesbian bisexual transgendered

experience when it is alsomainstreaming at the moment. -the out100 is different, and is unique. -the out100 has been one of themost fascinating, fulfilling, bizarre, um and rewarding things that i've ever worked on, so i reallyenjoy that, of course

it takes up about half of ouryear while we're also doing everyother issue -i've worked on many of these, actually, and it is you know, really, one of thehighlights of my work at out -the idea that i get to be partof documenting a time period that is so

progressive and transgressive meant everything to me. i would have taken on about 200 had i been given it. -the out100 is really a celebration of the dynamism and the power and the spirit of the lgbt community. the depth andthe breadth

of what we do and achieve in the wider world i'm arron hicklin, i'm theeditor in chief of out magazine. -my name is jerry portwood, i'm the executiveeditor of out magazine. -my name is jason lanfier, i'mthe senior editor at out -my name is danielle levitt, i'm a photographer, and i'm afilmmaker

we launched the out100 as a fully photo- graphed portfolio of 100 people only 7 years ago. prior to that a lot of the images were were...we'd use existing art. but in 2007, we took thedecision that the entire out100portfolio

all 100 people plus the covers um, which is 104 people should be photographed um, by us, using if possible asingle photographer and that meant that we could really push theboat out when it came to using a theme, drawing on atheme um, to

to relate all these photographstogether this years theme is thedreamers we chose the dreamers because dreaming is really what allpeople who engage in radically moving society forward and bringing down barriers

and changing the profile oftheir community is what they do! -the way i interpreted it, was, everyonehas dreams what do you do to make thosedreams come true, as cliche as thatsounds, -you know, opting for thedreamers theme gave us a freedom really, to represent each

honoree the way that theywanted to be represented. -we came to daniele because she has a history with themagazine and this is out100 really felt that we wanted to shoot as many people as we could in context. -so, for each candidate in theout100

we used elements of their lives, their dreams, what inspires them, who they were, what we knew about them, to createimages -danielle levit is very good at capturing the gesture. themoment. -and you have writers

in this portfolio that are setting the tone, and they're changing perceptions -gay and lesbian writers. trans * writers, um all of them. they're the ones that arecreating the narratives, they'recreating. they're storytellers. -if it were not for writers

um, very little of our socialhistory would be documented -they're synthesizing the experiences that they andother people had and then presenting it tothe world either as a play as um, as a book -then theres someone likechoire sicha who, um, began his career

um, as a kind of bilious, commentator on society, um, on gawker. -but now very recent history came out,which was really exciting because we haven't really had uh, a recent

uh depiction of queer life in new york when i was a kid, like, i usedto sit around and secretly write.i was like a really terrible writer. like, i was really hacky. like i didn'tknow how to put together a sentence, and ididn't go to college, so like, its not like i ever tooka writing class

or even a reading class what really helped me waswriting online everyday because there was thepressure of having an audience even though i was writing formyself, like, i knew people were actually going toread it, so i was like uh..i have to work at it like writing listings wasamazing for me because to, uh

cram stuff into like two sentences, and explain what itwas, explain where it was, and nail it all down and i got really concise after doing that for ayear my name's choire siche and i work as a writer theres a huge amount of young gay guys herein new york

they're also, um, you feel like theres this sort of endlesssense of community that doesn'tstop and start but i also felt like they all knew or knew of or knew someone who knew everyone, do you know what imean? like, its like it was like a giant, um a giant facebook web, of like, friends of friends, basically

the weird common ground iswhether you hung out in this bar inwilliamsburg, or whether you were in manhattian, you wouldall meet up online, actually. so there wasthis weird way in that the city is super transparent across like, different genres of people? thats notreally what you would say communities of people. etc.

i was a very weird child. uh, i was unnaturally shy, like, for which i mean, there was noreason. my parents were pretty great, like. i was like a weird child who sort oflike i was a pack-rat, and a slob i was very messy as a child

and i also was much happier lying about things than like, tellinguncomfortable truths so i was like a weird little pyromaniac liar. i was not a great or fun kid. i realized i wasn't like other kids reallyearly but i don't know

why or what it was. i think the other kidsnoticed i didn't really have to come out in high school. i was out um, i mean i started dating at like, 13. i came out to mymother at 17, not very well it was like a big productionnumber for no reason shes also gay

um, so thats weird. but i did it very poorly. yeah. and its fine, you know,you just you do a sloppy job, that, itworks. just as well. it doesn't matterreally in the end it tortured me like, i felt tortured by it but i don't really know why. and it

shouldn't have been, and itsnot a big deal. it was definitely hard being it was definitely not funbeing, like the only out person in high school of4,000 people for four years. but uh, it was kind of worth it i was 30 and i quit my sort of stable job, to take a 24,000 dollar ayear

writing job which was the firstperson to ever pay me to write anything and i just had a terrible break up, and i wassort of like this is now or never. like, you are 30 now, you have to do this or you'renever gonna do it. and. you know it was just sort of this lesson

i keep learning over and overagain which is such a cliche it sounds like i grew up in california which idid, which is like you saying yes to things. like,sure yes of course, i'm in my 30s andi'd love to make 24,000 dollars a year. like you know, thats nuts! but, um but it was totally worth it and it was a great opportunity

and um, and if i hadn't donethat i wouldn't be working as a writer today atall. (rock music) i grew up reading the gay magazines because where else would i hear and learn about gay stuff? and so i was always, i always

had this thing where i waslike, well, who are these queens? like, youknow what i mean? and like um, and they're not so great! being on the out100 list is mostly amusing. i mean, itsfunny! its funny. i would like a little, like title or like something to wear

that proclaims me as like 100 most important gays for sure. tarell mccraney is uh a prime example of one of those kind of, astonishing queerwriters who are telling queer stories, and um, really i think inspiring young people

-a black gay writer like tarellalvin mccraney is doing a really valuable and profound job in documenting um, not only the lives of, not only being black in america, but being black andgay in america. -he has this ability whereeveryone wants to be his friend, andeveryone wants to know him

and spend time with him becauseyou feel like you're learning about him, but you're alsolearning about yourself we're at yale. at the windom cambell award ceremony because i am being honored with uh, 8 other writers we are in categories of fiction non-fiction and playwriting

being given 150,000 dollars each for our integrity and for our work the idea of the windom cambell award is to impact writers um, at whatever stage of their career. my name is tarell alvin

mccraney. i am a playwrite. and a director. ensemble member at thesteppinwolf theater i spent a lot of time in thearts i spent a lot of time, um going to class for theater for, um, acting my first job as a teenager was to go out

and do preventative theater um, in the community. talking about hiv and aids preventionand um, and drug abuse and prevention. i sort of kept that in the back of myhead and didn't really know what i wanted to do butkept working in the theater none the less,and then one day i turned around and ihappened to be

a theater artist which was strange and just sort of wokeup one morning and i was, this is what i wasdoing um, and it felt organic because i just had always been doing it i'm always interested in the dubious nature of peoples identity, and how they can be performative in one way, butalso

that that performancesublimates and becomes something else in another. i'm alwaysinterested in how you know, someone can presentthemselves as sort of a tom-boy um, but then maybe in, at dinner they like to be treated like, youknow a princess. my work is trying to specifically talk about thedubious nature

of character i don't know, i guess the wordi would use is that i let go. a lot, or i have to let go.cause theres no way of sort of wrangling it i recognize that i wasn't likethe other kids almost immediately and instantaneously. um

but i also noticed that therewere other kids who were not like everybodyelse, too i felt weird a lot. and awkward. i also thought...ialso had a good time in my own mind. i always had the ability to gauge myself through my parents. um, i could see the look that theygave me

often and they were always kindof befuddled they always looked at me like,what is happening? and then i woulddo something, and they wouldcome see, you know, a performance, or you know, hear about something i did outside of the house andthey kind of looked at me in one way and i was like,okay, yeah alright we know that kid. one of the things that onreflection, i can

i absolutely remember noticing is that there were a gaggle of sort of, misfit kids who kind of ran together and as we matriculated through the process of school um, you could see some conform, and some stick to their sort of...

strange duckling ways. its less of a process of coming outand more so a process of clarifying and i've had to clarify all my life and i think mostpeople do but, i didn't have that momentwhere i had to sit anybody down at thanksgiving dinner andsay you know i'm a man who likes to sleepwith men

but also i think women areattractive pass the turkey, like i didn'thave to sit down and have that sort of byline conversation i was brutalized as a kid, so i wasalways afraid to sort of take steps to assert myself and to reach out for what i believed in. one of the thingsthat happened to me when i wasbullied

there was a day where i was coming home from school um, and a group of boys decided that they weregonna chase me with rocks. and, um they were running after me, throwing these big-ass boulders at me and um, and then all of asudden i

ran past a parking lot, and they stoppedthrowing the rocks at me, and they werestill running after me, but they stopped throwingthe rocks, and i couldn't figure out why. and then i realized that afteri passed the parking lot they startedthrowing rocks again and they were throwing rocks they stopped throwing the rocksbecause they didn't

want to break the glass in thecars and it made me think to myself in that moment, i kind ofrecognized in myself that they valued me less than they valued thisglass in the cars and how these boys thought of me as sort of worthless

shook me um, it frightened me because in that moment, they .....i was worthless... i had empathy for those young men for somereason. i still do. i can only imagine what theywere dealing with at home that madethem feel the only power that they couldget

was to, um to oppress me, in a way my hope, my inner hope is that sharing this earth and sharing space allows people to know that at heart i am for them and hopefully they're for me which, actually that doesn'tmatter as much as knowing

that i am certainly for them,and for their benefit. representations of queercharacters on television and in film has played a critical role in, uh, in helping us get the equality that we have so long deserved

-tv and film have had such a huge impact on people's perceptions -they need to look back in time and tell the story of salminio and tell the story of allen ginsburg and you know, tell the story

of harvey milk, and in doing that, they create an understanding -one of the highlights for me,being an editor of out magazine is i get topick and choose who i want to interview and earlier this year i wasable to interview daniel radcliffe for an editionof out based on his roll in

kill your darlings. it was super clear from daniel's enthusiasm for working with john krokidas who co-wrote and directed kill your darlings, that he was a specialguy and you know, all of us whowork in a creative field really shouldthink of ourselves as collaborators,not, you know

the "artist" at the top of thepyramid and i think john krokidas really does that i am actually living the dream you know, i decided around theage of 21, 22, that i wanted to try my hand atfilmmaking i've been living with this movie

for the last 10 years of mylife, you know, doing everything i can in my power to get this film made. i just cared this much about the story and knew thatthis was what i was good at you know, i told myself that if i didn't make my first film by the timethat i was

40, that it was time to give up and go to plan b and one of the really poignant parts of this experience was we had our new york premier onthe last night of my 39th year i literally just made it under the gun

my name is john krokitas andi'm a filmmaker spike lee was one of mydirecting professors at nyu, and he made us write down in twosentences why do you want to make films? and i remember writing down to entertain people andhopefully make the world a better place there has to be

some kind of social resonance for me. its about finding topics that you care somuch about that you need to tell the story you know, when doing a movie onallen ginsburg jack carowack and williamburrows i mean you're taking on thesethree huge like, artistic icons and there came a point in theresearch

process where i just became so ...theres so much out there onthese guys that i became kind of overwhelmedand intimidated by having to somehow live up to the legends theywould later become, even though inthe movie at this point in the time of their lives,they're kind of just theseawkward insecure 19 year olds this movie is about a closetedkid from

patterson new jersey, who justgot into his dream school in new yorkcity and can't wait to get there because theremight be other bohemians and theremight be other gay people there. like, that was acharacter that i knew i could write, and thati could direct. and i approached working with the actors in the same way. thecast that i got

this is like, my dream cast.its like i won the lottery. and while it was incrediblyintimidating at first to be surrounded by so many experienced actors who's work iadmired the great thing about it is they really supported me and trusted me and taught me so much about

the collaborative process offilmmaking i started off, i went tocollege wanting to be an actor. but when i went to college i was still somewhat closeted,and i wasn't really ready to access i think, my inner emotions and display them for the restof the world to see and so

you know, you realize aftergetting cast as knave number 5 one too manytimes or for me it was being cast as the mute in the musical the fantastics, and having to mimein black lycra while everyone elsewas singing and dancing around megoing, what the hell am i doing with my life that i realized that perhaps

acting was not what theuniverse had intended for me i just started playing around with the cameraand making little movies with my actorfriends it felt like a good fit and somehow i convinced one ofmy professors to let me make a film instead of a paper for mythesis and it started getting

some play on local public television, and my friends watched it and my best friend who actuallywrote kill your darlings with me, austin bunn i remember said, john, itdoesn't suck and its a lot better than ithought it would be and thats the kind ofaffirmation you need when you're first starting out.

my father passed away when i was in my junior year of college and it was after getting over thegrief that everything just kind of was put intoperspective for me and i realized that if filmmaking was my dream,that this was

my chance to go and make itcome true and i was trying to decide should i move to la or should imove to new york and while i was in new york having my interview for school rent was on broadway and i went to rent there are a bunch of bohemiansjumping up on tables kicking over wine bottles,declaring themselves

artists, and i said fuck the studio system i'm going to move to new yorkand jump on tables and knock down bottles of wine and declaremyself an artist yeah, if this issue is about the dreamers, you know, letthis just be a testament to anyone out there whos trying to make theircreative

dreams come true. you know, everyone always saysits about persistence, and thats absolutely right, but on the flip side, the otherthing that i've learned is if you have an incredible insecurity

and a crippling sense ofself-doubt that's a good thing because it keeps you working harder and it keeps you making whatever it is you'retrying to do and whatever dream you'retrying to make come true it makes you work that muchharder to attain it. dustin lanceblack, i think mostpeople focus on

him because of milk, and um j. edgar and these big films that hes had made but i think the other part ofhim that people forget about, is how essential he was in the fight for the repeal of prop 8. -a prime example of what we look for, uh when we select

our honorees for the out100 we're looking for people who are visible who are out there, on the frontlines trying to they are fighting for thecause. they are trying establish the equality that the lgbt community has so long deserved. he has beenfighting

he's been fighting for yearsnow. i am in such awe and respect of someone who puts their politics on the table and puts themselves on the table so that they can help effectchange i feel like i want to see a day where

uh, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered people in all 435 congressional districts, in all 50 states that we all have the same shot you know, right now we don't and that is my dream i think the power of dream is naming it. saying it.

sharing it, because i think dreams are not things that go unrealized. dreams are sort oflike blueprints for where we're going and if you can get to work those things become reality. i think stories are the most powerful thing we have uh, to communicate, to changeminds

to change hearts, if you can dothat, you can start to change communities, states, countries, the world i just think they're the mostpotent thing we have i grew up around stories, igrew up around crafting stories, andthats what i wanted to do, and um, you know, i didn't grow upwealthy so i couldn't self-financemovies, so

i became a screenwriter i am dustin lanceblack, and i'm a filmmaker writer, producer, directer, allthat uh, but my other job is as an activist in the movement and namely asone of the founding boardmembers of theamerican

foundation for equal rights,best known for waging the fight against proposition 8 here incalifornia inspiration comes from reading you know, our history reading any history. listeningto people tell stories. and for me itsalway that very very personal story

um, and its usually about an outsider of some sort and uh, and the power that the outsider has to create the chaos, and their comfortablity creatingthe chaos that's necessary to createchange i mean i grew up

in san antonio, texas uh, in a mormon home, a devout mormonhome uh, with you know, parents or stepparents who were in the military. iremember so clearly at 6 years old uh, there was a boy who had stolen a toy car from me

and, uh, and spray painted it to try andconceal it, and we're a very very poorfamily and there was no replacing it, anduh, i just remember him walking away from me, and just really feeling hurt, not angry, buthurt and knowing that that was themoment that i just absolutely had

fallen for him. i had a hugecrush on him and i was hurt that he would dosomething like that to me. now, i was, you know, aware enough of what gay men that i knew thats who i was and i knew it was a bad thing.cause thats what i'd been taught. and i knew if anyone found out

i would bring great shame to my family you know, how does that shape me well, i survived i got lucky i did the hard work, and it ishard work to recover from the injuries that you suffer when you're akid in that sort of environment.injuries

to your soul, to yourself-esteem really i've taken whatever strength i've drawn from beingable to recover from that and i work every single day, everysingle day to make sure that kids won't feel that again, cause its unnecessary. thats what that kind of childhood did to me. isturn me

into a fighter. and we're not gonna let ithappen forever. you know coming out is this long process isn't it? its a lifelong process for somepeople for many people. like you keep having to do it. you come out to your family,and you know,

and that was hard cause i docome from a conservative family and it was a process of, um going through all the sort offears that people have because of the stories they'veheard whether its in the church orthe military my mom was

she was afraid for me, shethought i would end my career, it would hurt my ability to be out in theworld and i think blaming herself thinking she had somehow donesomething wrong it wasn't until she started coming out here andshe started meeting my friends. so shewould listen to my gay and lesbian friends problems

you know? about being kickedout of their home or suffering in some way, uh,from rejection, and it didn't matchup with what she had heard about gayand lesbian people. and uh its, i'm tellin ya its those stories, its thosepersonal connections that change minds, change hearts and i watched it change my

mom i would say, in both my creative work and in my political work, um what i'm most focused on post proposition 8 uh, being done away with is the south. all the states

that we've left behind that haven't been a part of theconversation, that haven't moved forward. places where its still, you can still loseyour job and your home if you come out those of us who are luckyenough to be on the coast where we have morefreedom and protections, we'veneglected some of our brothers andsisters in the middle

of the country and in the southand we are living in two americas thats not the tradition of this country in fact the tradition of thecountry is when we see two americas, we have to fix that and i feel like thats where weare right now so whether its my creative workor my political work uh, thats

those are the conversation i'mtrying to create this is a movement of accepting diversity of accepting difference embracing difference. startingto see the value in diversity instead of that weird reaction that i saw growing up where if i was in a mall in texas and its

mostly white, you know,christian people and all of a sudden someone ofa different race or dressed very differentlywalks by, their parents will pull the child in a littletighter and i'm saying that that is counter-productive! um i do not want to see lgbt people become the same as anybody. and i think that

what i want for them are the same protections and thesame rights as everybody else. protect our right to be different. youknow, its what this country was built on and its what we should be. gay straight, black, white, rich, poor, i don't want people tofeel that they have to be the same as anyone

uh, and i think once we get to that point, um its very hopeful. but once we get to that pointwhere diversity is seen asadvantageous uh, we'll be the strongest country in the worldagain. lea delaria, legendary comedian, who

has never once faltered on who she was orapologised for who she was, or ever changed who she was. -lea delaria does mean different things to a lot of people because, youknow, growing up in the 90s, i do remember when she was on arsinal hall and

made her big statement that i'ma big dyke and and that again was like oh, theworld's gonna blow up, the world's gonna endand she was able to always use humor, i think, to defuse a lotof situations life is a rollercoaster and careers can be a rollercoasterand you know, lea delaria was saying

in her interview with out that,you know 2012 was one of the worst years in herlife -and then she got cast in orange is the new black -and then suddenly 2013 has become one of the bestyears of her life well, the first thing i wantpeople to know is that i'm actuallynot a lesbian that this whole thing has beena career move, and

i'm married with 5 kids. thebiggest thing i want people to know about me,is that um, i wrote the joke what does a lesbian bring on asecond date? the uhaul i wrote that joke. that jokewas so popular it beat me to the west coast. icouldn't even i couldn't tell the joke forthe west coast, it was already in the west coast. soas the counter joke, that i also wrote, whatdoes a gay man bring on a second

date? what second date? so both of those....both of those have become sort of a part of our culture. and, uh yeah. i wrote it. my name's lea delaria and i am a womanizer the fact that i'm on the out100list makes me say, not only

am i acting on this show thats a great show, but, you know,people in my community are noticing it you know, and thats importantto me, you know? i don't...i don't like to bethe one thats preaching to the choir but i do think itsimportant to me that if my community appreciates what i'm doing.yeah that makes me happy. i'm in

two things that are ontelevision right now, um one is called dear dumb diary thats a tween movie musical thats on the hallmark channel um, based on the book series of the same title i am also in orange is the newblack which is a netflix originalseries that is incredibly popular

um, in which there was a fisting scene in the pilot, sothe irony of me being on both these showsat the same time is not lost on me at all -haha wigga, please. mercy gonna dumpyour ass the second she gets out ofhere. she likes new shiny things. and outta here you, are as dull as an old

pensil, with saggy tits and afucked up tattoo on its neck. -oh, butchy, face it i win, you lose. she hates you. she loves me. -ahah. yeah. and she loved me, too. for two whole years and then she dropped my butchass for you and if you don't thinkthats the way she do

then you are dumber than youlook, which is pretty fuckindumb cause you look like yourrelatives have been fucking each other for generations. this character, uh, wasn't even originally in the show. uh when i auditioned, they loved me, and basically wrote this character for me. thischaracter was supposed to be ina couple episodes and then gone. theonly thing

about it thats different is,i've never spent more than one night in jail its easier for her to show herheart than it is for me to showmy heart let me put it that way. andagain i'm being paid to do that, andpart of that is acting, and some of that isthe butch thing for me, you know, theouter crust, the shell, is uh, a really important part

(singing) i was such a little tomboy, i was such a dyke.normally uh, a girl like that gets horribly picked on, and they never picked on me. one, causei would kick the shit out of them, i can back up my tomboy and two, because i was really

really funny, and i was able to float around from group togroup to group i look at that now, and think i don't know how i did that haha i have no idea how i didthat but thats kind of what my childhood was like. and, total asshole. just, total smartass always in trouble. alwaysgetting

wacked by the duds i can't ever remember beingattracted to men. i mean i just cant ever remember it and uh, but i remember that i knew better than to talk about it. do you know what imean? because, and all the books that i read, and all the oldmovies

that i watched, you know and all the kids that i would talk to... there didn't seem to be anybodytalking about that i was probably i guess 16 or 17 before i just admitted it out loud and you know, i was lucky

enough to have...stonewall hadhappened already so i mean i was a teenager inthe 70s so i had the sort of queer movement happening around me, on television, on the news at that time, in a way it hadn't been before. i had been discriminated against in such a variety of different

ways, um, i was arrested for being gay in saint luis in the 70s, you know, just for being gay. i was fired from my job for being gay. there was nothing i could do and the same thing with arrest,look, if the police tell you to put your hands up,you put your hands up

and of course, i was queerbashed, there was the famous i have the scar here. on my nose, its in the shape ofan l which, i don't know if you cansee on camera now but theres a scar um, cause i was queer bashed on the corner of market and uh, um, castro street in san francisco. in pretty

much broad daylight and while people stood around,and nobody helped because nobody would help inthose days, it was just the way it was. but i think that just made me push harder to try to do something about it try to make some kind ofchange. i chose to live my life

in a political way. you know i was an openly gay comic i never once cowered in the closet, i was always right outthere, i have always been exactly who iam and the reason for that besides wanting to get laid is that i'm trying to make a change.i'm trying to effect some sortof change. we still got a long wayto go

heh a really long way to go. but honestly, we've come fartherthan i ever thought we'd get in my lifetime so what we did this year was wedecided to identify 10 people who were worthy of a readerschoice award, and then submit that toour readers to select one of them. and thereaders

to my delight, chose laverne cox. i think laverne is really, again much like lea delaria, and a lot of the actresses on that show.so audacious and really willing to go there. -while we're beginning to seemore gay men and more lesbians in tvshows

seeing transgender characters and let alone transgender performers on tv is um, is very nascent its very, you know, its in itsearly stages and theres a long way to go and laverne cox is really leading the way there i'm just a person

who is trying to live mydreams. i'm just a person who wants to believe that anything ispossible and doesn't want to give up dreams are sort of whatsustains me. when i was a kid, my dream was to do what i'm doingnow what's sad to me is that, like,when

i started to really, like, youknow come to terms with being transand knew that i had to...you know,couldn't lie about that anymore, and i had totransition, i thought that it wasn't possible for me to have this dream of being anactor because i was trans, and um, here we are my name is laverne cox, i'm an

actress, and i'm a dreamer hehe! i love love love being an actor. i love the moments with other actors, i just, ilive for it, and its what i havefought to do. i fought my own demons.

i, you know, i feel likesometimes i'm fighting the industry that you know, sort ofsays that its not possible, so you...to do what i love doing, i'll takeall the other stuff. -what do you want from me? -i wanna see a doctor. -you can't go to the clinic unless its an emergency. -this

is an emergency. -yeah, well we don't see it that way. a lot of folks know me from theshow orange is the new black the response to my character in the show hasbeen so overwhelmingly positive and really amazing, i...folkshave literally written blogs saying that their ideas about trans people havechanged

because of this character -was there something else? -yes. you know, so many trans folks too, have also written to mesaying that they see their stories, in sophia, and i think when we have characters on television particularly

who mirror our stories i think it makes us feel lessalone it makes us feel more connectedto the world and it validates our experience how do we create spaces where we love transpeople is really really really the question i often ask myself its what i like to talk about alot

um, cordell west tells us that justice is what lovelooks like in public i'm obsessed with loving trans people and with trying to create space for that. if we really really love someone we're going to honor what

they say and how they feelabout themselves we're not going to sort of, youknow stigmatize them or demonizethem, if we really love someone, how do we, like how do we really have love for trans people and for black trans people, too and trans people of color ingeneral, because we don't get a lot of love. things

might be getting better forsome segments of the lgbt community but for the t part? its still a state ofemergency. -you really think i'd be eatinga bobble head if i wanted to kill myself? listen doc, i need my dosage. i've given five years, eighty-thousanddollars, and my freedom for this.

a lot of my childhood was about sort of achieving and trying to stay alive, and trying not to get beaten up. iwas a kid who was just creative, and liked to learn. i was a nerd i sort of, i was majorly bullied as a kid, and so

i was called anti-gay slurs and i was bullied. and i wasjust not, i was from alabama but i dunno if i was of alabama. so i initially cameout to my mother as gay, and she sort of freakedout i was at indiana university atthe time and then, several years later i came out to her as trans

and...that it was better. it was better, but then it was the adjustment of her needing to adjust her pronouns, the ...that was a big piece, andthen her freaking out about just, mechanging

my body, that there was, youknow my mother...just not pro.... medication, or surgery, or any of that stuff. but i thinkthat was the part that sort offreaked you out and i think it was really importantfor her. i still don't evenknow if she knows that thats not...that its not a gay thing.

being trans is not a gay thing it really isn't. its just, i'ma woman. and.... i've always been a woman. i just needed to...i just had to havea different journey to get there. her seeing me have a happy, healthy life where i have achieved some ofmy goals

and i'm considered successful by somepeoples standards its like, okay, its all good. hehe!you know i think most parents probably just want toknow that you're gonna be healthy and happy, and thatyou're gonna be okay, and thatscertainly what my mother has always wanted for me

i could cry thinking about me being a readers choice award winner for this its like...a black trans woman being the choice for anything is like... its still new for me, i have tosay i'm really overwhelmed and sograteful the fans of our show

are so unbelievable, and they go hard there was actually, there was some people who weretweeting, oh, you should votefor this, vote for laverne, andlike, then they make...the fans rallied eachother in social media, to like, tomake this happen. and thank you to all the fans

everyone who voted for me. itsjust there really aren't even words to describe how that feels. its crazy overwhelming. fashion is, in a lot of ways, the most basic way that we as humans express ourselves. -what i really like about

the fashion in out magazine is that i think it always tellsa story -it may to some people seem superficial or fickle, or not that relevant to their lives, but, these are some of the mostpublic gay people in society shayne oliver is really cominginto his own, and i'm

very proud to see him be celebrated. -and i think shane is a new, strong voice in the fashion world -and hes been influenced by somany new york things, its incredible a lot of the collections are like dreams, for sure, forme i mean, like, especially now

like, that i can do, like more elaborate concepts like, my dreams are becoming areality but, you know, i also have, like dreams that i try to have come true by just existing. i feel like being like, a true person changes things in a way, so its

kind of like living by example i am shayne oliver, and i'm the creative director of hood by air i was partying like, at a really young age, and i was like, 14? i was outside the club, and then like, like i was kinda

like doing like the sad eyes,and like, sophia lamore was like come in with me, and then,after that i like went home, and i told mymom like, oh my god, i met theseamazing people they're like, so cool, and like i feel at home and... she made a comment to me that

really pissed me off, i don'twant to say it, but like and i was like, well um, thats not true. and she waslike, how do you know thats not true, and i waslike, well, because i'm gay. so, i came out at like 14. she cried for one day and the day after that she um, rented me

paris is burning and that was it i started like making my own clothes, like,around the age of like 6, i guess it was just like, just like natural second nature type of thing you know its like. i used to hang out with my grandmother alot and

she was a seamstress and i usedto learn from her and then i would have herlike make me stuff. i couldn't makeit and it was like some insane things that like, um, when i think back i'mlike, ooof! the dandy-lady thing comes from her for sure

the philosophy began as this, uh, sort of concept of getting dressed...ready to look great. you know? and uh within the lifestyle that myself and my friends live so, it was kind of like, hoodby air was

like a term that represents,like, getting...looking great, feeling great, you know?um and like, coming from, like brooklin into manhattan and like going back and forth and like the kind of, uh what it took to do that you know? just like the concept

and the best of both worlds, type of thing. so it was more like, these, like objects that were meant to represent both these worlds, and now its kind of like forming yourselfinto being like a brand so the philosophy ischanging to more of this thing where itslike

its a sense of like its own luxury, and its like like genre for itself we were just like, dealing withthe issues of like uh, how americans how people like love about americans its like, howcasual we are we think everything is like,frivolous, and like, so i just wanted tobring, like

update that and kind of like uh, create a concept for how we really see it and what it meansto us cause its like, a t-shirt islike gold so thats, you know, so i grew up, like, in brooklyn and like, and the carribean,and i also uh, was involved in theballroom scene, and

i also was like, deeply like, brought up by, like,hiphop you know, and like, its likereally intimidating in a way, causeits like really powerful, its like meant to like, come at youreally hard. you know, i feel like theballroom scene is the same exact way, you know?its like

i mean i don't see any of that stuff as like, fake. idon't see vougeing as like, fake. you know, i see it as something thats likereally like its meant to be impactful and like, its full of statements, its not like coy, you know what i mean? and i think like, hiphop hasthe same

obviously has the same effecton people but like, its like, um its made its way out of the subculture. they grew up in thesame communities, you know what imean? like its like, they want the same things? you know what i mean?

its like, they're kind of like,a mix between like of what you want, who youare its great to like, have your community like appreciate what you'redoing, you know? you know, especially like, its like, really important, youknow? the catwalk, or the runway, isalso

been, um, really important for um, ideas around sexuality and sexual identity and gender. -that you're able to have, um, a man who models womenswear, and you're able tohave a woman, like casey legler, who is modeling menswear

the way that i landed in fashion was, um by way of, um kind of the artistic community within which i inhabit here in new york, so i had a friend who was doing ashoot for muse magazine, and asked me, kind of, if i wasavailable

that day, this particular storywas called out with the boys, and um, she did not she just kind of was not so interested in using actualbiological men for the for the piece and i pass so she said are you free? and idid not know that at the end of the day

um, my pal would say i think that you might be ableto do this.. hehe! do you mind if i show these pictures to mybuddy at forward, and uh, so i said yes, and that was kind of the beginning of all ofit haha!

i'm casey legler and um, i am an artist and, uh, former um, olympic athlete and uh, currently my art has taken on, um in its most public

form, has been as a model. often times on set, definitely at the beginning i was the onlyone that understood what was going on, and i actually didn't really understand, causeyou know my background is, um, is my own art-making

practice where i used my body,but here i was kind of using it uh in collaboration and in direct collaboration withanother person so, oftentimes in the beginning i would show up on a set and i've been blessed to work with so many wonderful people

um, we all had to figure out uh, heheh! we all had to figure out that day on set kind of what was happening, cause you know, i was being booked via the mens board, so we just kinda had to be reallyspecific with people

about like, this actually doesmean that casey rolls deep with the mens clothes, you knowwhat i'm sayin? this is whats interesting to me about this list, right?is that rather than coming from a place of, um conformity uh, the place that i like to come from is

i actually have something thatyou may be interested in, and i'm happy to share it with you if you want. i happen to be able to vehicle, kind of, thecelebration of difference in a really specificway, um in the place that i take up infashion and fashion as a whole has

been so gracious. more than anything i would like to think that this is maybe opening up a little bit of a gap a little bit wider around howwe um, celebrate the differences

of people i was a young professional athlete and, um i think in many ways i was an accidental athlete, my heartwas really more in..um, was in academics, was really more in, um, art

it was more in reading, that was...that was heh that was my favorite passtimewas reading, so i was not very competitive, um the water was cold hehe! you know, uh i wanted to be doing

kind of perhaps, more quiet things. and um, and instead what was happening was thatthis career was just kind of taking on a life of its own, so, for me i have the olympic experienceof what it was like being really good atsomething that i didn't necessarily loveand adore and i feel like i've

been gifted this second opportunity to exist in a space where i get to engage with things that i love my hope is absolutely to inspire, you know and inspire, um

inspire risk taking and space taking. i'm not immune to, um not being celebrated is puttingit really nicely you know? so, how does that make me feel? allit does is it makes me kind of

wonder at the different ways inwhich i can continue to make space for difference so that maybe eventually when my niece and nephew grow up however they are going to bedifferent is going to have enough room sadly enough, we don't have alot

of out athletes -yeah, mixed marshal arts is a fascinating area, um, i mean its already given us at least two fighters who defy convention, um you know, fallon fox, who's a transgendermixed marshal

artist, um, and who has already been featured in out,and liz carmoliche, um, you know a lesbian fighter, um who's fought in the ufc -its a powerful story i'm really hoping that liz can help pave the way for more athletes to

come out. friends have suggested that i check out mma fighting, um they just thought that it'd bethe perfect mix for everything i was lookingfor. i wanted, i'm always looking for a physicalchallenge. and they justsuggested with my energy level, myaggression, that that would be a good fit, andi've been hooked ever since my first day sparing, hairpulled out

clothes ripped, and justcovered in blood hahaha! my name is liz carmoliche, i'm a professionalmixed martial arts fighter my nickname is the gorilla. and it comes from again, my coach, manolo, hes the mastermind of the entireteam the guy that comes up with allthe crazy jokes, the crazy fight-names. originally it was

liz lemon, and, uh because i would always makethese ridiculous faces when i would go in there against anopponent. and then he changed it to the gorilla, cause i wouldclimb off-cage, jump off the cages, do all these feats of strength thatshouldn't be possible for a tiny person my size. sohe deemed me the gorilla i love mma. whether its the fact

that its constantly evolving,and if you settle for one second, if youallow yourself to just kind of, sit and relax, then you fall to thewayside, and you're on the backburner. andthat, the idea of growing so much in a sport is appealing to me. i like theidea of evolving and growing and changing. and it seems like every day there are newgenerations coming up, they'relearning

so much in the sport that itmakes it fun, and it makes you wannapush yourself that much harder and then my teammates are justso much fun, and even if i'm having ahorrible day, the moment i walk throughthat door, seeing my coach, and his big smile andhis goofy jokes. it doesn't matter. iknow i'm where i'm supposed to be. getting tosee a child or just a person

when you teach them, and yousee that click you see them have a hunger tolearn it theres, its, its like a bliss i can't explain it. i lovewatching as they finally, just, itclicks, and they fall in love withsomething, and they just wannago as far as they can with it. and thereare all those struggles that they had where theyweren't quite sure whether it was something they wanted topersue, and then finally it just

falls into place. its an indescribable, wonderfulfeeling i came out for the first time was in themarine corps, and i was in a command that wasn'taccepting, in fact, quite the contrary to that, uh, so here i am trying to learnmyself and to come out and be comfortable,and i couldn't do that and on top of everything else,my roommate

was a homophobe, and a bigot, and every other thingyou could possibly think of that would threaten, having no idea of my own sexualorientation saying that if she ever metsomebody who was gay she wanted to be put on thefront lines and killed first um, and just wanted to out them and here i am with my roommate,i'm like, oh great, year we share a room together. thisis a lot of fun

for me. haha! never bring a girl home, i get it. andthen, once i finally got out and i pulled her aside,she was leaving to go back to her home. i am like,look, you know if our friendship is actuallygonna become a real friendship and evolve tosomething else, you have to know who i am. its something that iwasn't willing to accept for a longtime and i couldn't be myself in the marine corps, but i'mnot in the marine corps anymore

and if you're really gonnaembrace me as a friend, youhave to know who i am. and i was expectingher to hit me, i was expecting her tostorm off, do something and instead she said that through her relationship withme, she realized that she couldn't have thatview on people that to judge them before evergetting to know them in this characteristic groupwasn't fair to them. and that, by knowing me

she realized that, here issomebody that she loved and cared aboutthat happened to be gay and if she had just opened hereyes more maybe things would have beendifferent, and she didn't, now she has a differentperspective well the great thing about myfamily is my mom is this hippie who is accepting and loving ofeverybody i mean thats one of her thingsis that i can bring anybody home,friends, whomever

it happens to be and she'llaccept them and bring them intoher home so i knew it wasn't gonna be anissue coming out to her, but i stillknew that she wanted the best for me, and she didn'twant me to have any hardships in my life, and, just wantingme to be happy so, there was always thatdoubt, and what if maybe she just says thesethings but its different whenits me, and no, she was like, yeah,psh! i knew, i've just been waitingfor you. i'm like, you've been

you know, that would have beennice, if you had told methroughout so i didn't have to struggleall those years, if you justlet me know, and she was like, itried, you just weren'tlistening hehe! friends, same thing. theywere like, yeah thats not really a big surprise. so i think iwas fortunate enough that myfriends and family all knew and were accepting me for who iam i definitely feel like there is some activism i dowant to do, which is why

i have been so open about mysexual orientation because i want people, um to know as much as they canabout it and i want to be as open and honest, sothat people can ask those questions willinglyand openly and not have to worry aboutanything um, and for me right now, justwith my lifestyle and how busy itis, thats about as active as i can be with it. butany

opportunity that we have thatcan help open up peoples eyes to thingsthat they had before had such skewedviews of, i embrace, and i'm gratefulfor it, i'd rather have it be inthe mainstream and have everybody accept it, thanpeople be beaten or judged for something that... a choice that they made ordidn't make.

it was a big step for me getting out of the marinecorps. theres so many safeties there. you'reguaranteed that even if you don't getpaid, food is taken care of, your home is taken care of,if for any thing else, if you cant makerent you have a barracks room thatthey can put you up in so i knew that i had aguaranteed job, guaranteed medical, everythingessentially

was taken care of, i didn'thave to worry about anything and i took a risk in gettingout and having nothing. i didn't have a joblined up. i had barely and savings, i hadno place to live and i took that risk getting out and it showed me that i made the right decision i decided to fall on my dream to be involved in this sport, andits

set up the rest of my life, andi've just been following thatdream ever since. being in the out100 just blowsmy mind even looking back over the years i never thought that i would beone of those people and now, um it just is like, oh, it justnever was a thought, it was like, itwon't be me, i'm not gonna bethat person and its

even more than a dream cometrue. obviously one of the most profound news stories of the year was around marriageequality and around the supreme courtand the decisions that they came to with both doma and, uh, proposition 8 -defined in the last 10 yearshas really not simply

been about marriage, or i think its been about, redefining gay identity around lgbt and gay identity around love. -we would not have this tremendous news in 2013 without um without paul katami and jeffzarillo its funny, cause

we've referred to ourselfthroughout this whole process as just two ordinary guys who happen to be in love witheach other and want to spend the rest ofour lives with each other and thats really who we are. weare ordinary guys who go to work every day pay our bills, walk our dogs

and go on vacations and live our lives. thatsreally who we are but i think thats sort of our message toeverybody else. is ordinary people can make a decision to do extraordinary things. my name is paul katami and

i am one of the plaintiffs inthe prop 8 case.- i'm jeff zarrillo i'm also one of the plaintiffsin the prop 8 case and his new husband. we became involved in thislawsuit about found and a half years ago,after proposition 8 passed in california uh, the california supremecourt had

uh, ruled, that gays and lesbians had the right tomarry early in 2008 and uh soon thereafter, opponents of that ruling put a measure on the ballot incalifornia called proposition 8, that would strip those rights awayfrom gays and lesbians

and on election day in 2008, when america had elected its first africanamerican president we'd come a long way, we reallyhadn't come as far as we thought becausethe citizens of california also voted in favor of proposition 8, which took the right for paul and i to marry,and so many others like us to marry, awayfrom us

and we decided at that point that enough was enough and we wanted to do somethingabout it -it was about our love it wasn't about anything else.and we knew that if we spoke thetruth and kept it about our love, that represented so many millions ofother peoples exact desire to be married

in a situation like jeff andmine that um, we would prevail in the trial we had a 12 day trial and the opposing attorney, uhwas asked a question by judge walker and it said, i want you to tellme the harm that allowing gays and lesbians to marrywould cause

opposite sex couples. and then he said probably the three most famous words of the 12 day trial when he looked up at the judgeand said i don't know. that was the moment that we knew we had won. we hadn't really ever sat downand really talked about marriage because we

just always assumed that wewould never have the right and when you assume that you'llnever have the right, its engrained.its almost engrained in our community, we just allow discrimination to happen, andwe fight it, and we speak up, but youjust accept it. because you're always going to be that minority. andwhen people ask the question, do you thinkmarriage

would change your relationshipafter 12 years we can finally say yes, it changes everything. it makes everything better. andit actually really defines yourrelationship and solidifies everything that you think about yourrelationship becomes more real in those moments -we could empathize with eachother

we could share the frustration,we could share the pride, we could share thejoy we could share the anxietytogether and that...that part of our relationship and the foundation that had been built upon for you know, over 8 years at thetime that we became involved in this case, thefoundation

just got stronger i can remember being gay aslong as i can remember being alive and um, thats how naturally organic it is in me -i've known i was gay as long as i can remember. i don't everremember anything other than that

i remember being petrified of it i remember not knowing what it meant, i remember not knowing if it could be changed um, and then i rememberrealizing that that this was who i was we lived for so long in hiding. and we really climbed this ladder

on rungs built by those whocame before us people who really put theirlives at risk to be who they are. and we livein a time now where we can be more open and if we can we should takethat privilege and we should use itbecause you have to remember that youcan get on an airplane and go someplace else in ourcountry

and in our world and get offthat plane and not have that privilege and so when you have it, use it and i think thats a big part use your voice, and be a partof your community i dream that we don't have to keep doing this. i dream that every bother and sister

in our community across thecountry and in the world can actually live their lives. and live their lives in a way thatthey don't have to feel discrimination or fear orregret that they can just be who theyare because the things that affects us most recently ithink

is how many young people youhear about committing suicide or, you know, running away, andliving on the streets and that sort ofstuff because they're trying to just be who they are and we don't know if that one kid who killed themselves couldhave cured cancer, or made a major

difference in this world. andthe only reason they're not here any longer isbecause of discrimination. its because of someones fear about theirlifestyle and it really neglects the person and labels them based on some bias ordiscrimination against what they fear

and so i dream of a day where kids like myself and like jeff and could grow up and not have toworry about that. i think we live in a world ofdreams i think when you think of the struggle that the gay and lesbian community

has gone through, and you think of the word dream as we continue to grow and as we continue to um, evolve as a people, and as a nation then the dreams of harvey milk, and the dreams of bayard ruston, and those whocame

before us, um, we're livingthose dreams today for them and i'm hopeful that we will live in a world veryshortly where the dream of equality for the gay andlesbian community is a reality but, if that does not end up being the case

by the time we leave this earth then we hope that the next generation of gays andlesbians will live our dreams for us edie windsor, who goes withoutsaying um, she had to be in the out100this year, it would have been a crime not to have, not to give ediewindsor a cover. -edie gives a lot. she gives

her heart, and she gives herstory she wants to share -many people came to know edie because of the documentary edie and thea and to learnabout them out actually published one ofthe first stories about edie um, in its love issue, um, afew years -i really believed in

love, more than i ever had. when i read her story. my names edie windsor, thats easy,however, they tell me that when i was a little kid,and people would ask me my name, i always said, i don'tknow edie. i guess we're here because i sued

the government, and okay and so suddenly became verywell known everywhere. adolescence who fall in love for the firsttime okay, are uh okay, know that theres a future my god, you know think, oh, you know, marriage

equals equality in marriage uh, the kids of of gay people don't have to apologize fortheir families anymore, well they'remarried thats why i know when thea and i gotmarried the next morning felt different

and then i started askingeverybody who had been in a long-termrelationship and then gotten married, howdid it feel the next day, and everybodysaid the same thing, different. we could be who we are it was an unbelievable love affair, okay? i guess it was very believable.uh

and uh, and very close to the end, she said, youknow we were so lucky, okay, you know like we're still in love and i said, you were lucky, iwas persistant, haha, okay? because she was a little surethat, you know that i was you know, gonna be anythingvery serious

long-range, or anything likethat in her life, uh, and she gave me a rough time. i builtthat harpsichord okay during our first dating year,when she was all for me, and then break a date, okay lie about what she was doing okay, because she could

not go on the vacation we hadplanned and stuff like that and i said i'm not gonna sitand wait for that woman to call me, and at thetime you could buy a kit, okay and the kit was not trivial it took me a whole year tobuild the damn thing ultimately she invited me for a weekend in her country

barn and, uh and, but, at the time i was up to where you had to you had to hammer weights into the keyboard, and you cant do that in a new yorkapartment so i brought my lead and my hammer and my keyboard and actually, shes waiting for thisgreat romantic

weekend, and, you know i'm busy with my keyboard uh, but, uh the, uh we met in 63, we didn't date till 67, till 65, and we became engaged in 1967 first of all, i was a good kid

i really was. and i i dated a lot of boys when iwas young uh, i had crushes on girls i didn't take them seriously till i was old enough i guess to take them seriously,and then i was terrified uh, i didn't want to do that

i didn't want to be that, ididn't know you could live okay, any kind of life like that my sister became, who had been i was her baby sister, and always, you know, we cherishedeach other at some point, she became increasingly homophobic, and

uh, a friend of hers all her friends knew me, cause i was this little kid, growingup, next to them, you know, and uh, and a friend of hers, that i knewquite well said, you know, do youthink it would be alright if i called edie, turns out my daughter's gay, and shes verylost and edie seems so

together about everything. andmy sister said, how do you know edie'sgay? and, the woman told me this all afterwords, and she said,well your mother told me! haha, okay? how did my mother know, okay? she didn't really, my mother walked around in the world, mybrother in law

then told me, she walked aroundin the world saying oh, the rapport between those girls, the love in that house, okay so, only my mother could notknow the word lesbian, okay these kids ask very sincerely you know, how do youknow its the right thing? i wanna have, you know, a

and, to them i answer to that is, always if it lasts through two years they used to say, all seasonstwice okay, cause the lesbians used to be, you know, what doesa lesbian do on the second date, she bringsa uhaul okay, if its as deliriously happy the secondspring

as the first, okay? keep going, okay? and if its not, stop! okay? you know, don't bring the the uhaul probably the single most important thing with the longevity, or toloving altogether is caring as much about the

quality of the other guys lifeas about your own. why is the out100 important because it is a its an opportunity for us to acknowledge and honor um, the extraordinary work that so many people do

-the more people that we have,that have a voice, and get their voice out the better off the community is -the whole point of the out100 is to demonstrate to the greater community the world that lgbt people are out there

-that is a very powerful symbol to every- body, straight, and gay um, that you can achieve your dreams, you can fulfill your desire. um without having to compromise onyour sexuality and and identity. -the more opportunity we have to

break down myths, and to make things accessible and tangable not scary, and real all of that is vital to the progression of ourcommunity -i really think that the out100 for me, has been

about learning the diversity of things thatpeople are capable of despite what many would see as ahandicap -we are fighters and we are visionaries -legends in their lifetime,like edie windsor those are important people, butthis is also about the many people you never hearabout

or never see. -we will continue to thrive, and we will continue to fight and we deserve to be treated like anyone else -what the out100 does for a lot of people is showthat being

um, being gay, is actually less of a handicap andmore of an asset that actuallyallows them to be able to succeed in waysthat maybe they didn't understand