Coming Out Day: Thoughts from 10 famous people...

Kenneth Anger, pioneer queer filmmaker: 'I love making films and I've always been out. My grandmother accepted me, my father did not...I was the black sheep. But I wouldn't be anything else."

JenRo, hip hop artist: "I feel that being queer, being young and woman of color and actually being out, it's a really good thing for me and the people I'm representing in the queer community. I just focus on making music that comes from the heart and me talking about liking girls is what comes out. If I write a love song, I will include a chick's
name. Hip Hop is about keeping it real."

Lance Bass, singer: "The thing is, I’m not ashamed – that’s the one thing I want to say," he explains of his decision to come out. "I don't think it's wrong, I'm not devastated going through this. I'm more liberated and happy than I’ve been my whole life. I'm just happy."

Wilson Cruz, actor: (On his decision at 19 to be professionally out when he landed the role of a gay character on "My So Called Life" opposite Claire Danes: "I felt that because of the role I was playing and what we were trying to say with the role, that acceptance is a journey, and that I was going to take that journey on the show, that in the end, the character was going to find acceptance and love for himself. For me as a gay man, to play the role and not own those values in myself was hypocritical. I thought anyone who played that role needed to stand up with him."
Thomas Roberts, CNN anchor: "I wasted way too much time worrying about this and I didn't want to do it anymore. There's no more time to lie. My personal life is much more important to me than the professional. It switched for me in my late 20s. When you hold something back, that's all anybody wants to know...and it becomes bigger than it is."

Martina Navratilova, icon: "Everything that I’ve done, I’ve known what the consequences will be but I’m willing to accept them," she says. "If I didn’t come out and pretended I was someone else, what are those consequences? I would not be who I am. Not being accepted by Madison Avenue because I was a lesbian, I could accept those consequences. My guidelines are totally philosophical and what’s morally right to me. I was never guided by
financial gain."

Alec Mapa, actor: "I really didn't come out professionally but you'd have to be deaf dumb and blind to not know I'm gay. Then I discovered that it wouldn't make a difference. What? I was going to lose out on all the great roles for Asian males under 5 foot 5? The minute I came out it was the first authentic thing I had to offer, the only authentic voice I had."

Tony Tripoli, actor: "I’m an actual gay guy on a show and I’m actually gay! A practicing homosexual who’s not ashamed of it. It’s huge to think about these gay and questioning youths flipping through the dial and to be able to see themselves in television shows. That’s great and profoundly impactful."

Miss Cleo, infomercial star: "The reason it’s scary is because in my personal experience, black cultures throughout the world have a more difficult time accepting homosexuality in their family. I have family members who will be
shocked, they don’t know. I have some family members who are very, very close to me and they do know. But I’ve been afraid of the wrath, of the exiling. When I came out to a number of friends in the late 80s, I had a number of friends who turned their back on me and walked away. That was really intense. I really believed they were my
friends."

Brian Graden, the out president of MTV Network’s Music Entertainment Group says he was "viscerally taken aback" by the reaction to MTV's Loga channel series "Coming Out Stories." He says one of the show's participants ran into him Human Rights Campaign event and showed him pages and pages of printed emails from viewers who said watching the show gave them the courage to come out in their own lives.
"I see the validation in people’s eyes as they talk about the affirmation of seeing themselves in their living room and the power of pictures to humanize all of us," says Graden. "Anything that injects itself into the cultural conversation that says, ‘We count, we are included’ is invaluable."