New York

Author & Former President's Niece

b. May 3, 1965

“Donald … destroyed my father.  I can’t let him destroy my country.”

Mary L. Trump is a psychologist, an author and a political figure famous for her best-selling memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” The niece of former president Donald J. Trump, she has been a scathing critic of her uncle’s presidency and political influence.

Mary Trump was born in New York City to Linda Clapp and the former president’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr. Growing up, she lived mostly with her paternal grandparents in Queens, New York. She suffered a traumatic childhood marked by callous and chaotic family dynamics, abuse and neglect. Her father, who was devalued by her grandfather and uncle Donald, died from complications of alcoholism when Mary was 16. His death became a source of family strife.

Trump attended Tufts University as an undergraduate, then earned her master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University.

In a 2020 interview by The Advocate, Trump described her family as “anti everything” that was unlike them. Her grandmother denigrated Elton John for being gay, referring to him as “that little faggot.” Trump feared disownment if she came out as a lesbian. She kept her sexual orientation hidden for many years. When she eventually married a woman, she did not disclose her spouse’s identity.

Simon & Schuster published Trump’s first book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” in July 2020. In it, Trump reveals herself as the main source for the New York Times’s investigation of Donald Trump’s financial history. She also provides a professional assessment of the former president’s mental stability, saying he exhibits sociopathic tendencies. She considers him a “terrified little boy” who was never held to any standard of accountability.

During the 2020 election, Trump worked with LPAC, an organization that encourages and supports female LGBTQ+ candidates for public office. “If it’s only men making decisions about women’s issues or straight people making decisions about LGBTQ issues,” she said, “then that’s where we run into problems.” LPAC is credited with helping Senators Tammy Baldwin and Kyrsten Sinema, two of 11 openly LGBT members of Congress, get elected.

Trump lives with her daughter on Long Island, New York. She has owned multiple businesses and is the founder and CEO of The Trump Coaching Group, a life coaching organization. Her second book, “The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal” was published in August 2021.

Author & Activist

b. July 19, 1875
d. September 18, 1935

“Unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a racially-mixed bisexual poet and author whose career spanned multiple literary genres and culminated during the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a lifelong educator and activist who fought for women’s suffrage and equality for Black Americans.

Dunbar-Nelson (née Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 years after her enslaved mother gained freedom. Her father, who was rumored to have been a white merchant, left when she was young.

An exceptional student, Dunbar-Nelson graduated from high school at age 14. She attended Straight College (now Dillard University) and received her teaching certificate in 1892. She later attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Initially, Dunbar-Nelson taught in the Louisiana public school system and worked on her writing. In 1895 she published her first book, a collection of stories and poems titled “Violets and Other Tales.” Soon after, she moved to Boston to pursue a literary career. Her work for the Boston Monthly Review captured the heart of a fellow writer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and they began a two-year correspondence.

During this period, Dunbar-Nelson relocated to Harlem where she cofounded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a “home for Black girls and women.” In 1898 she married Paul Dunbar in New York, and they settled in Washington, D.C.

In 1899 her second book, “The Goodness of St. Rocque and Others,” about Creole life, launched Dunbar-Nelson’s career-long exploration and critique of American culture and racial oppression. She wrote novels, stories, essays, poems, and reviews and kept a diary.

Dunbar-Nelson’s husband physically and emotional abused her. She divorced him in 1902 and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught at various high schools and colleges. She created the Wilmington Advocate, a newspaper promoting racial uplift. She quietly married and divorced a second time and explored relationships with women, including Edwina Kruse, a high school principal, and Fay Jackson Robinson, a journalist and activist.

In 1916 Dunbar-Nelson married the journalist Robert J. Nelson. His activism further ignited her own. Among other pursuits, she served on the Delaware Republican Committee and championed civil rights and women’s suffrage.

During the Harlem Renaissance — the golden age of African-American art and expression in 1920s and ’30s — Dunbar-Nelson lectured and wrote prolifically. Her work inspired influential writers of the era.

Dunbar-Nelson died from a heart condition. Fifty years later, W.W. Norton & Co. published her journal, “Give Us Each Day.” It is one of only two African-American women’s journals published in the 20th century.

New York Times Columnist

b. October 31, 1964

“It’s a hell of a thing to have your identity, your dignity — your very hold on happiness — pressed into partisan battle and fashioned into a political weapon.”

Frank Bruni is a longtime writer for The New York Times and the newspaper’s first gay columnist. He is the best-selling author of three books. Frank Bruni and Andrew Sullivan are the two most impactful commentators on gay equality.

The middle child of three, Bruni was born and raised in White Plains, New York. His parents dubbed him the “big klutz,” and labeled his brothers respectively as “charismatic and confident” and “crafty and focused.”

In Bruni’s humorous and poignant memoir, “Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite” (2009), he recounts his life through the lens of disordered eating. His parents teased him about his weight, joking that his initials (F.B.) stood for “fat boy.” He eventually joined his mother on a series of fad diets.

The incessant focus on food led Bruni to develop multiple eating disorders. Through prep school, he jumped from one weight-loss scheme to another, including extensive fasting, amphetamine abuse and excessive exercise. Realizing he was gay was not terribly unsettling for Bruni, but his struggle with anorexia and bulimia filled him with such shame, he abstained from sexual contact.

In 1986 Bruni graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He earned an M.S. in journalism with highest honors in 1988 from Columbia University.

Bruni started his career at the New York Post. He moved to the Detroit Free Press in 1990 where, in 1992, he became a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his profile of a child molester.

In 1995 Bruni joined The New York Times. As a White House correspondent, he reported on George W. Bush. His book “Ambling into History” (2002) chronicles Bush’s presidential campaign. Bruni went on to become a restaurant critic for The Times and was named an op-ed writer in 2011.

Bruni has been a career-long LGBT and AIDS activist and has often opined about marriage equality. In 2016 he wrote extensively about Pete Buttigieg, then the openly gay Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, positioning him as a talented and serious potential presidential candidate.

In 2018 Bruni wrote about a rare condition that led to significant vision loss in his right eye. He left his official post at The Times in 2021 to accept an endowed chair in journalism at Duke University.

Bruni received the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist in 2012 and 2013. In 2016 the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association presented him with the Randy Shilts Award for his dedication to LGBT Americans.

Bruni lives in Durham, North Carolina. He contributes to The New York Times and CNN.

Revolutionary War General

b. September 17, 1730
d. November 28, 1794

“You say to your soldier, 'Do this' and he does it. But I am obliged to say to the American, 'This is why you ought to do this' and then he does it.”

Baron Friedrich von Steuben was a German-born American general and a hero of the Revolutionary War. Historians believe he was openly gay—a rarity at the time, especially for a military officer.

Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the son of an engineer lieutenant in the Prussian Army, von Steuben joined the military at age 17. He served as the personal aide to Frederick the Great, a gay monarch, in the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763), a world conflict that arose from the French and Indian War in North America.

In 1763, when von Steuben was an army captain, the military abruptly discharged him. Some scholars believe he was dismissed due to his homosexuality. He then worked for the German courts. In 1771 the Prince of Hollenzollern-Hechingen named him a baron.

Struggling financially in 1775, von Steuben tried unsuccessfully to join the French, Austrian and other foreign armies. When he learned that Benjamin Franklin was in France, he traveled there to offer his service to the American army fighting the British. He impressed Franklin with his knowledge of military order and discipline.

Von Steuben was eventually assigned to George Washington’s winter quarters in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Valley Forge functioned as the third of eight military encampments for the main body of the Continental Army.

With the help of translators, von Steuben taught the troops crucial military structure and tactics. Borrowing from his own strict Prussian Army training, he shaped the ragtag recruits and militiamen into organized, efficient fighters and boosted morale under the difficult conditions at Valley Forge. George Washington was so impressed, he extended von Steuben’s training to his entire command. He appointed von Steuben the first inspector general of the Army.

From January to October 1781, von Steuben served as a divisional commander under Washington in Yorktown, Virginia. The Yorktown campaign resulted in a decisive Franco-American victory and the start of peace negotiations. Many historians regard von Steuben as second only to Washington himself.

Although gay sex was a crime in the 1700s, same-sex romantic liaisons were tolerated. Von Steuben formed serious relationships with William North and Benjamin Walker. When the Revolutionary War ended, the U.S. granted von Steuben citizenship. He moved to New York, where he legally adopted both men, a practice commonplace among homosexuals, centuries before gay marriage.

When von Steuben died, North and Walker inherited his estate. The baron’s secretary, John Mulligan, with whom he was also believed to have had a relationship, inherited his library.

Von Steuben’s burial place became the Steuben Memorial, a state historic site in Steuben, New York.

Award-Winning Theater Director

b. November 21, 1963

“Art is a great prism through which we can understand history and current events.”

Moisés Kaufman is an award-winning theater director and playwright. His work is known for its bold, perceptive portrayals of contemporary social issues, particularly those of sexuality and culture. His groundbreaking play, “The Laramie Project,” inspired by the brutal killing of a gay college student, Mathew Shepard, generated worldwide empathy and dialogue around LGBT hate crimes.

Born in Venezuela, Kaufman grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. As a youth, he was exposed to avant-garde theater. While working toward a business degree in Caracas, he joined an experimental theater group and toured as an actor.

In 1987 Kaufman moved to Manhattan to study theater direction at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Recognizing the originality of Kaufman’s ideas, Arthur Bartow, the university’s dean, advised him at graduation, “No one will hire you. You should start your own theater company.”

In 1991 Kaufman and his husband, Jeffrey LaHoste, founded the experimental Tectonic Theater Project, dedicated to developing consciousness-raising, innovative works that push the boundaries of theatrical language and form. In its early years, the cash-strapped troupe rehearsed in the couple’s apartment. Under Kaufman’s artistic direction, Tectonic eventually flourished. The theater company has since created and staged more than 20 plays and musicals. Many, including the “The Laramie Project,” “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” and “33 Variations,” have garnered international acclaim.

Shortly after the murder of Mathew Shepard in 1998, Kaufman took his Manhattan-based theater company to Laramie, Wyoming, the small college town where the crime occurred. They conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with 200 local residents. Kaufman used the conversations to write and produce “The Laramie Project.” The play, which premiered in 2000, became one of the most-produced works of the decade. It has been performed worldwide in theaters and schools and used to educate people about homophobia. Kaufman also wrote and directed a screen adaptation that was released on HBO in 2002.

Kaufman has earned numerous accolades for his work, including an Obie Award for his Broadway directorial debut, “I Am My Own Wife”; two Tony Award nominations: one for “I Am My Own Wife” and one for “33 Variations”; the Outer Critics Award for “Gross Indecency”; and two Emmy nominations for “The Laramie Project.” In 2009 President Obama invited Kaufman and Techtonic to witness the signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. In 2016 President Obama presented Kauffman with the National Medal of Arts.

First Out Federal Judge

b. April 13, 1947
d. February 3, 2020

“I'm a mother, I’m an African American. I’m a lesbian.”

Deborah Batts was the first openly gay federal judge. She presided over prominent cases involving political corruption, terrorism and criminal justice. A trailblazer for women, African Americans and LGBTQ people, she is remembered as a devoted jurist whose humanity inspired generations of lawyers.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Batts graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972. She worked in private practice before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York. In 1984 she joined Fordham University as a law professor.

In 1994, President Clinton nominated Batts for a federal judgeship. Her sexual orientation, about which she was open, was not an issue. The Senate unanimously confirmed her. Batts, who addressed her sexual orientation publicly, did not want to be known for that single aspect of her identity. “I’m a mother, I’m an African American, I’m a lesbian, I’m a former professor,” she said.

Batts presided over many high-profile cases, including the decade-long civil litigation brought by the Central Park Five, a group of minority youth who were wrongly convicted of the widely publicized assault and rape of a female jogger in 1989. In 2007 Batts denied the motion to dismiss the case against the City of New York, which lead to $41 million settlement. She presided over the civil lawsuit in which New York residents accused the former EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, of making misleading statements about the air quality at the World Trade Center site after the attacks of September 11.

A lifelong advocate for equality and justice, Batts worked closely with a mentoring program that sought to increase diversity among lawyers appointed for indigent defenders. She also worked with RISE, a program aimed at reducing recidivism among at-risk offenders.

Batts’s presence on the bench served as an inspiration for the openly gay federal judges who followed. According to Judge Pamela Chen, Batts “literally broke down the closet door and allowed the rest of us to walk through it.”

Batts died at age 72. She is survived by her wife, Dr. Gwen Zornberg, and her children, Alexandra and James McCown.

Pulitzer-Winning Novelist

b. January 24, 1862
d. August 11, 1937

“Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”

For her celebrated novel, “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At a time when society constrained women from achievement, she became one of America’s greatest authors, publishing more than 40 books.
 
Wharton was born during the Civil War to an aristocratic New York family. She spent much of her childhood in Europe, where she cultivated a passion for languages and the arts. Wharton gained access to her father’s library from a governess and read voraciously.
 
Though writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman in the late 19th century, Wharton’s talent was evident early on. Encouraged by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, her parents privately published a volume of Wharton’s poems when she 15.
 
A debutante at 17, Wharton became a keen and witty observer of her privileged social status. Her insider’s knowledge of New York’s upper class later featured prominently in her writing. At 23 she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, a wealthy Boston banker with whom she had an unhappy, tumultuous marriage. They divorced after 28 years. Toward the end of her marriage, Wharton had an affair for several years with William Morton Fullerton, a bisexual journalist. She also had affairs with women, including the writer Janet Flanner.

Wharton crossed the Atlantic 60 times, with Italy and France among her frequent destinations. She wrote many successful books about her travels and related topics, such as architecture and gardens. Back in France at the start of World War I, she devoted herself to creating a complex network of humanitarian organizations. She received the French Legion of Honor for her philanthropic work.

Beloved for the vividness, humor, irony and satire in her fiction, Wharton garnered her greatest literary success later in life. The contradictions in upper-class society, conflicts between social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and manners of the affluent old families and the new elite formed central themes in her novels and short stories. Her famous works include “The House of Mirth” (1905), “Ethan Frome” (1911) and “The Age of Innocence” (1920). Set in New York during the Gilded Age, “The Age of Innocence” earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize in 1921, making her the first female to receive the award. She subsequently became the first woman presented with an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University and the first to receive full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Wharton died in Pavillon Colombe, France, at age 73.

LGBT Historian

b. July 18, 1940

“My writing has been my activism.”

Commonly known as the mother of LGBT history, Lillian Faderman is an internationally recognized pioneering lesbian scholar and historian. Her award-winning books have been translated into numerous languages.

Faderman was born in New York during World War II and raised by her mother and aunt, Latvian Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment industry. The remainder of her family died in Europe during the Holocaust.
 
After moving with her mother and aunt to Los Angeles in her teens, Faderman began acting and modeling and discovered the underground gay bar scene. She bravely came out as a lesbian in 1956 during the Lavender Scare, a challenging period for gay Americans that was closely tied to McCarthyism.

Faderman went on to study at UC Berkeley, where she paid for her education working as a stripper. She then attended UCLA. She became an English professor at California State University Fresno, where she sought to address long-ignored populations. Toward that end, she co-edited her first published work, an anthology of multi-ethnic literature for the college classroom. Released in 1969, it was one of the first anthologies of its kind.

Although Faderman longed to write about sexual minorities, homophobia in the 1960s made such work difficult. In the 1970s, however, as feminism entered serious academic discourse, Faderman became one of the first academics to publish books about female same-sex relationships.
 
A pioneering authority on LGBT history and literature, Faderman has written 11 books. Among other recognition, she has received six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards and several prestigious lifetime achievement awards for her scholarship, including the James Brudner Award from Yale University. The New York Times honored her books “Surpassing the Love of Men” (1981),“Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991) and “The Gay Revolution” (2015) on its list of Notable Books of the Year. The Guardian named “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers,” about lesbian life in the 20th century, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History and “The Gay Revolution” one of the Six Top Books of LGBT Life. “Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death,” her book about the slain gay San Francisco politician, was named Most Valuable Biography of 2018 by The Nation. In addition to her scholarly work, Faderman has published creative nonfiction, including her own memoir and a reconstructed memoir of her mother’s life.

Faderman retired in 2007 and serves as historian in residence for the Lambda Archives of San Diego. She has a son, Avrom, and lives with her partner of more than 45 years, Phyllis Irwin.

Journalist

b. September 3, 1949

“You do it story by story … and try to get to the bottom of what’s really happening.”

Lou Chibbaro Jr. is an award-winning senior news writer for the Washington Blade, the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States. He has been reporting on issues affecting the LGBT community for more than 40 years and is the first openly gay journalist to be inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists Washington Hall of Fame.

Chibbaro grew up in Long Island, New York. He studied political science and biology at the State University of New York and earned his graduate degree in journalism from American University. He came out to his parents in 1975. Though they were initially alarmed, they gradually accepted  his sexual orientation. A year later, he wrote his first article as a volunteer for the Washington Blade (then the Gay Blade).

Due to widespread homophobia, Chibbaro wrote for his first two years under a pseudonym. During that period, he worked at a publishing company and then for the electric utility trade group, the American Public Power Association.

In 1978 Chibbaro took a position as the publisher of a public utility newsletter. He continued his volunteer reporting for the Washington Blade until 1984, when he became a paid staff writer. He supplemented his small journalist’s salary by driving a taxi.

In his more than four decades at the publication, Chibbaro has chronicled the spectrum of LGBT civil rights issues and angles—from politics and major protests to the AIDS epidemic and hate crimes. He has reported on federal efforts to fire gay people from their government jobs and uncovered scandals involving politicians and male prostitutes. He has reported on issues like “change therapy,” favored a decade ago by some psychiatrists for transgender teens.
 
Between 1975 and 1991, Chibbaro corresponded with Frank Kameny, the father of the LGBT civil rights movement. The Frank Kameny Papers, housed at the U.S. Library of Congress, include the pair’s historically significant communications. When Kameny died in 2011, Chibbaro penned the Washington Blade’s article memorializing him.

Chibbaro has received numerous honors, including the Rainbow History Project’s Community Pioneers Award, the Gay and Lesbian Activist’s Alliance’s Distinguished Service Award and, for his coverage of gay bashings in D.C., the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Victims of Crime Award.

In 2011 Chibbaro made history as the first openly gay journalist inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists Washington Pro Chapter Hall of Fame. His extensive reporter’s notes from 1980 to 2001, detailing LGBT life, are stored in the Special Collections Research Center at George Washington University.

Journalist & Radio Host

b. December 19, 1960

“When it comes to LGBT civil rights, as with other marginalized groups, our fundamental personhood is not an issue that has two sides.”

Michelangelo Signorile is an outspoken American journalist, author and radio personality. He gained notoriety in the 1990s for using his media platform to “out” well-known public figures and closeted anti-gay public officials.

Signorile was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in journalism. After college he moved to Manhattan and gradually came out to his friends and family. 

In the early 1980s, Signorile worked for an entertainment public relations firm where he witnessed the carefully orchestrated closeting of gay celebrities. In the late ’80s, he became an HIV/AIDS activist and joined the media committee of ACT UP to highlight the epidemic. By this time, he had concluded that public figures who kept their homosexuality hidden were hurting the gay rights movement and the fight against HIV/AIDS. 

Signorile cofounded a New York LGBT weekly and first ignited controversy in 1990 with a cover story “outing” the late publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes. He subsequently outed Defense Department official Pete Williams, at a time when gays were banned from the military, and the actress Jodie Foster, among others. Though Signorile’s views on the subject were contentious, he made a strong case for outing powerful public personalities and sparked debate about the line between the right to privacy and the exposure of hypocrisy. 

Throughout his career, Signorile has covered gay issues, culture and politics for media outlets such as the The New York Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. He has served as editor at large for The Advocate and Out Magazine and has provided commentary on “Larry King Live,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and other television programs. He currently hosts his own three-hour weekday radio program, “The Michelangelo Signorile Show,” on Sirius XM and serves as editor at large for the HuffPost.

Signorile has authored several highly acclaimed, best-selling books including the groundbreaking “Queer in America: Sex, the Media and Closets of Power” (1993), which exposes the double standard for heterosexuals and homosexuals; “Outing Yourself” (1995), a step-by-step guide on the subject; and “Life Outside” (1997), which explores the history of gay culture from the ’50s through the ’80s. 

Signorile was featured in the book “The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present,” published in 2002. In 2011 The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association inducted him into the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame. In 2012 Out Magazine honored him on its annual Out100 list.

In 2013 Signorile married David Gerstner, a film historian.