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Alan Mathison Turing, OBE (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. He is often considered to be the father of modern computer science and Turing machines are to this day the central object of study in theory of computation.

During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

In 1945, Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services, but his work remained secret for many years.

In 1952, Turing was convicted of "acts of gross indecency" after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man in Manchester. He was placed on probation and required to undergo hormone therapy. Turing died after eating an apple laced with cyanide in 1954. His death was ruled as suicide.

Sir Ian Murray McKellen CBE, (born May 25, 1939) is a veteran English stage and screen actor, and the recipient of a Tony Award and two Oscar nominations. McKellen is perhaps best known to moviegoers in recent years for his roles as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and as Magneto in the X-Men trilogy. He was made a CBE in 1979 and knighted in 1991 for his outstanding work and contributions to the theatre.

While McKellen had made his sexuality known to his fellow actors early on in his stage career, it was not until 1988 that he came out to the general public, in a programme on BBC Radio 3. The context that prompted McKellen's decision was that the controversial amendment known popularly as "Section 28" was under consideration in the United Kingdom Parliament. McKellen has stated that he was also influenced in his decision by the advice and support of his friends, among them noted gay author Armistead Maupin.

In 2003, during an appearance on Have I Got News For You, McKellen revealed that when he visited Michael Howard, the Tory then-Home Secretary, in 1988 to lobby against Section 28, Howard refused to change his position but did ask him to leave an autograph for his children. McKellen agreed, but wrote "Fuck off, I'm gay."

Julian Eltinge (born May 14, 1881; died March 7, 1941), born William Julian Dalton, was an American stage and screen actor and female impersonator. After appearing in the Boston Cadets Revue at the age of ten in feminine garb, Eltinge garnered notice from other producers and made his first appearance on Broadway in 1904. As his star began to rise, he appeared in vaudeville and toured Europe and the United States even giving a command performance before King Edward VII. Eltinge appeared in a series of musical comedies written specifically for his talents starting in 1910 with The Fascinating Widow, returning to vaudeville in 1918. His popularity soon earned him the moniker "Mr. Lillian Russell" for the equally popular beauty and musical comedy star.

Aside from the graceful femininity he exhibited onstage, Eltinge used a super-masculine facade in public to combat the rumours of his homosexuality. This facade included the occasional bar-fight, smoking cigars, and drawn out engagements to women (though he never married). He was also known to physically attack stagehands, members of the audience and others who remarked on his sexuality. Indeed, his sexual duality led to the creation of the term "ambisextrous" to describe him.

As to his homosexuality, there is some question. Milton Berle and many others who worked with Eltinge believed that he was indeed gay, though actress Ruth Gordon stated in a New York Times article that he was "as virile as anybody virile." There is no existing record of a lover of either sex, though stories did abound. According to one such story recorded by Robert Toll in his book On with the Show!, Eltinge gave a photograph of himself as Salomé, signed "From your friend Jule", to a Boston sportswriter. When the sportswriter's wife discovered the photograph in her husband's coat pocket she was outraged. Confronting her husband, she had to be convinced that the "woman" in the photograph was actually a man, but however she was disturbed to find that her husband had been spending time with him.

Candy Darling (November 24, 1944 - March 21, 1974) was a pre-op transsexual Warhol superstar who starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971). Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in New York to Theresa Phelan, a bookkeeper at Manhattan's Jockey Club and Jim Slattery, who was described as a violent alcoholic.

Early years - as a male - were spent in Massapequa Park, Long Island, New York where he and his mother had moved after his parents divorced. His step-brother Warren left home for the service, leaving Jimmy as the only child, and later denied his connection to Candy/Jimmy.

Jimmy spent much of his childhood absorbing the influences of US television and old Hollywood movies, from which he learned to impersonate his favorite actresses - his favorite being Kim Novak. He claimed to have "learned about the mysteries of sex from a salesman in a local children's shoe store" and finally revealed his inclination towards transvestism when his mother confronted him about local rumours which described him dressed as a girl frequenting a local gay bar called The Hayloft. In response Jimmy left the room and reappeared in full drag. His mother later said that "I knew then... that I couldn't stop Jimmy. Candy was just too beautiful and talented."   (More...)

Camille Anna Paglia (born April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York) is an American social critic, intellectual, author and teacher. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist", and by her own description "a feminist bisexual egomaniac."

She came to public attention in 1990, with the publication of her first book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. Her notoriety as the author of this book made it possible for her to write on popular culture and feminism in mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia describes herself as a feminist, and as a Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader. She is a strong critic of much of the feminism that began with Betty Friedan's 1962 The Feminine Mystique, and compared feminists whom she considered to be victim-centered to the Moonies. Her libertarian and Dionysian sexual world view embraces fetishism, pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality.

In September 2005, she ranked #20 in a list of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" compiled by the editors of the American journal Foreign Policy and the UK journal The Prospect. The list included 10 women, including feminist thinkers such as Germaine Greer, Martha Nussbaum, and Julia Kristeva. (More...)

Angelina Jolie (born June 4, 1975) is an American film actress, a former fashion model and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She is often cited by popular media as one of the world's most beautiful women^[1] and her off-screen life is widely reported. She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and an Academy Award.

Jolie has said in interviews that she is bisexual and has long acknowledged that she had a sexual relationship with her Foxfire co-star Jenny Shimizu, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her."^[2] (More...)

James Robert Baker (October 18, 1946 - November 5, 1997) was an American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed transgressional fiction. A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in Southern California. After graduating from UCLA, he began his career as a screenwriter, but became discouraged with that work and started writing novels, instead. Though he garnered fame for his books Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder, after the controversy surrounding publication of his novel Tim And Pete, he faced increasing difficulty having his work published. This was a contributing factor in his suicide.

Baker's work has achieved cult status in the years since his death, and two additional novels have been posthumously published. First edition copies of his earlier works have become collector's items. In recent years, three of his novels have either been filmed or optioned for the movies. (More...)

Joan Chandos Báez (born January 9, 1941) is a bisexual American folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style. She is a soprano with a three-octave range and a distinctive throat vibrato. In addition, she is noted for her activism in the areas of nonviolence, civil and human rights and, in more recent years, the environment. (MORE)

Quentin Crisp (December 25, 1908 – November 21, 1999), was an English writer, artist's model, actor and raconteur known for his memorable and insightful witticisms. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir The Naked Civil Servant brought to the attention of the general public his defiant exhibitionism and longstanding refusal to conceal his homosexuality. (MORE)