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21 Jewish American LGBTQ+ people who are making history

Celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month with these history-making artists and activists.
By · Updated on May 15, 2024
Oct 6, 2020; Bradenton, Florida, USA; Seattle Storm guard Sue Bird (10) celebrates with teammates during game three of the 2020 WNBA Finals at IMG Academy. Mandatory Credit: Mary Holt-USA TODAY Sports
Sue Bird in 2020 Photo: Mary Holt-USA TODAY Sports via IMAGN

A big part of the LGBTQ+ community’s strength and resistance comes from its diversity. There are LGBTQ+ people of all races, ethnicities, genders, and religions.

May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and Pride Month is just around the corner, so it’s a good time to learn about some of the accomplishments of Jewish American LGBTQ+ people. Some of the biggest icons of the LGBTQ+ rights movement have been Jewish, and here are 21 to get you started.

Jazz Jennings

Jazz Jennings at NYC Pride in 2016. Jennings, who is Jewish and transgender, transitioned as a child.
Jazz Jennings at NYC Pride in 2016. Jennings transitioned as a child.

Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest transgender people to share her experiences with America through her hit reality TV series I Am Jazz and her popular children’s book by the same title.

Jared Polis

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks on Friday, May 27, 2022, at the Occhiato Student Center at Colorado State University Pueblo before signing a bill into law that allows veterans to audit university courses for $10 or less.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks on Friday, May 27, 2022, at the Occhiato Student Center at Colorado State University Pueblo before signing a bill into law that allows veterans to audit university courses for $10 or less.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) is the first out gay man to be elected governor of a state. He has used his tenure to advance LGBTQ+ rights, make housing and health care more accessible in the state, and help the state obtain more funds for roads and transit.

Janis Ian

Janis Ian at the National Stadium Dublin in 1981, via Wikipedia

Musician Janis Ian wrote her first hit song – “Society’s Child” – when she was just 14 years old. She went on to become a commercially successful singer/songwriter in the 1960s, with multiple singles that topped the charts.

Harvey Milk

In this April 1977 file photo, San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk sits in the mayor's office during the signing of the city's gay rights bill in San Francisco.
In this April 1977 file photo, San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk sits in the mayor’s office during the signing of the city’s gay rights bill in San Francisco.

A gay icon, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was one of the first — but not the first — out LGBTQ+ elected officials in the country. During Pride Month 1978, he delivered his famous Hope Speech in response to the Briggs Initiative, a California state ballot measure that would have banned gay people from working in public schools. In the speech, he told gay people, “You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.” He was assassinated months later but remains an inspiration to many LGBTQ+ people.

Judith Butler

judith-butler
Judith Butler

Professor and philosopher Judith Butler has had a profound impact on feminist and queer studies. Butler is best known for their books from the early 1990s, Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter, which challenged heteronormativity, expanded the concept of gender performativity, and demonstrated how sex is a social construct.

Admiral Rachel Levine

Dr. Rachel Levine speaking at a virtual press conference on March 20, 2020
Dr. Rachel Levine speaking at a virtual press conference as Pennsylvania Secretary of Health on March 20, 2020

Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Rachel Levine is the first out transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to an office and also the first transgender four-star officer in the U.S. military. A doctor and a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry, Levine has used her time in the Biden administration to address LGBTQ+ health disparities and help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is a legendary photographer who is known for her work with LGBTQ+ subcultures, the AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC is one of her most famous photos and it was taken as the two were headed to the Pride parade.

Jinkxx Monsoon

Jinkx Monsoon
Jinkx Monsoon

Jinkx Monsoon is the only drag performer to have won two seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The immensely popular drag queen has released two studio albums, starred in a Hulu film, and performed on Broadway in the musical Chicago as Mama Morton. She is currently in the cast of an off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors.

Frank Kameny

Michael Bedwell-Geoff Farrow-Dan Fotou-Frank Kameny-Mara Boyd
Michael Bedwell-Geoff Farrow-Dan Fotou-Frank Kameny-Mara Boyd

Frank Kameny was fired from his job as an astronomer for the U.S. Army’s Army Map Service in 1957 due to institutional homophobia. This caused him to become a powerful leader in the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement, fighting against the government’s purging of LGBTQ+ workers, founding the D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society, and working to end sodomy laws. He organized one of the first public demonstrations for gay rights, marching outside the White House in 1965.

Ben Platt

Jun 11, 2023; New York, NY, USA; Noah Galvin, left, and Ben Platt arrive at the 76th Annual Tony Awards at the United Palace in New York City on Sunday, June 11, 2023.
Jun 11, 2023; New York, NY, USA; Noah Galvin, left, and Ben Platt arrive at the 76th Annual Tony Awards at the United Palace in New York City on Sunday, June 11, 2023.

Ben Platt started his musical theater career as a child in The Sound of Music and The Book of Mormon. He then broke through to film in Dear Evan Hansen. He has won a Tony Award, a Daytime Emmy, and a Grammy Award for his work in film and theater.

Sue Bird

October 30, 2019; San Francisco, CA, USA; Megan Rapinoe (left) and Sue Bird (right) wave during the second quarter between the Golden State Warriors and the Phoenix Suns at Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
October 30, 2019; San Francisco, CA, USA; Megan Rapinoe (left) and Sue Bird (right) wave during the second quarter between the Golden State Warriors and the Phoenix Suns at Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Sue Bird is a women’s basketball star — winning four WNBA championships with the Seattle Storm — and a five-time Olympic gold medalist. She and her wife, soccer star Megan Rapinoe, became the first queer couple to host the ESPYs in 2020.

Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein is known for his work on groundbreaking plays that challenged stereotypes about gay people. He won Tony Awards for writing and acting in Torch Song Trilogy, one of the first successful plays about gay people. He also worked on films like Mrs. Doubtfire, Mulan, and Independence Day.

Lesley Gore

Gore on the cover of Cash Box, 15 June 1963

Lesley Gore was a pioneering singer-songwriter who rose to fame in the 1960s with hits like “It’s My Party” and “You Don’t Own Me,” the latter of which became an anthem for feminism and women’s independence. She later worked as an actress and hosted several episodes of In the Life, an LGBTQ+ TV show in the 1990s and 2000s.

Leslie Feinberg

Feinberg taken by Ulrike Anhamm in 1997
Feinberg taken by Ulrike Anhamm in 1997

Trans author and activist Leslie Feinberg is best known for her novel Stone Butch Blues. Inspired by her life experiences in New York City, the novel took on issues like transphobia, homophobia, classism, and antisemitism. She became a member of the Workers World Party and spent her life helping advance leftist causes. Her book Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, helped bring more attention to historical trans figures.

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg in 1979

Poet Allen Ginsberg is one of the best-known figures of the Beat Generation, a post-World War II literary movement that challenged militarism, materialism, and sexual repression. He’s known for his poem “Howl,” which police seized copies of in 1956 under obscenity laws. The judge in the ensuing trial ruled that the poem wasn’t obscene, an important early victory for gay rights and free speech.

Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman at a reading in D.C. from Slowking4 via Wikipedia

Author, historian, and activist Sarah Schulman’s novels often features complex lesbian characters and stories. Her acclaimed nonfiction works on topics ranging from gentrification and AIDS to the Israel-Palestine conflict challenge conventional wisdom.

Nick Denton

Nick Denton at SXSW 2017 via Wikipedia

Nick Denton is the founder of Gawker Media and the editor of Gawker, an immensely popular blog in the 2000s and early 2010s. The site was eventually brought down by a lawsuit from Hulk Hogan, funded by gay billionaire Peter Thiel, who Gawker Media outed.

Rabbi Stacy Offner

Rabbi Stacy Offner-lgbtq-jewish-people
Rabbi Stacy Offner

The first out lesbian rabbi in a mainstream Jewish congregation, she would become the first female vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism. She was fired from her first job as an associate rabbi when she came out in 1987, but she and some of her congregants then founded the inclusive synagogue Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis, where she then served as rabbi.

Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner on The Laura Flanders Show in 2016 via Wikipedia

Playwright and actor Tony Kushner is best known for his seminal work Angels in America, a two-part play that examines HIV/AIDS and sexuality. It won a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play. He has also worked on films with Jewish director Steven Spielberg, including Munich, Lincoln, and West Side Story.

Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has written extensively about LGBTQ+ rights, challenging the current anti-LGBTQ+ regime in Russia. They have said that they were “probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country” before immigrating to the U.S. Their work has appeared in major publications and has even led to them being investigated in Russia for spreading “false information” about the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

LGBTQ+ Jewish people have helped change the country for the better

Jewish LGBTQ+ people have made enormous contributions to the country, both when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community and the population at large. It’s hard to imagine what life would be like for LGBTQ+ people in America without these trailblazers and their important work.

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