The Out100 2024: Together, LGBTQ+ people are unlimited

The above video interview is from the Advocate Channel's Cover to Cover, in which host Stephen Walker reviews the making of the Out100 issue. Learn more at AdvocateChannel.com.

Once upon a time, I was a student activist. As president of our gay-straight alliance, I helped stage our college’s first LGBTQ+ rally, which brought together Greek houses, sports teams, and the greater student body. At that joyful display of queerness on the quad, I (and importantly, closeted young people) felt a culture shift from indifference and unwelcomeness to one of acceptance. The only problem? The college newspaper didn’t cover our event. Editors cited a conference they were attending that day as an excuse and then claimed the news cycle had moved on.

Afterward, I was sitting in our tiny office in the student center with a rainbow flag on the door and issues of Out and The Advocate on the table. I understood in that moment the great power of media to move hearts and minds — and of erasure to silence marginalized voices. I’d had enough. I opened my laptop and wrote my own damn article about the rally and then hijacked a campus copy machine to print a few hundred copies. My fearless GSA members and I were up all night inserting the coverage into every issue of the morning paper.

Today, I have the great honor of staging another LGBTQ+ gathering in the very magazine that once inspired 20-year-old me to action. This is the 30th anniversary of the Out100, Out’s great tradition of profiling the Artists, Disruptors, Educators, Innovators, Gamechangers, and Storytellers who, through their power and platforms, engendered greater equality in 2024. An anniversary is a prime opportunity to reflect on progress, and in these pages are icons like Margaret Cho and Rachel Maddow as well as Gen Z changemakers like Chappell Roan and Zaya Wade who are leading the charge.

In celebration of our list’s anniversary, we launched the Out100 Vault, where you can review not only this year’s full list (with exciting content like behind-the-scenes videos and essays) but every honoree’s profile from the past three decades. In an age when right-wing forces try to ban our books and stories, this online archive is an essential space for our history as well as our present. We encourage you readers to visit Out.com/Out100 to access this amazing resource.

And of course, there’s our newly minted Out100 Icon of the Year, Cynthia Erivo. In her interview and photo shoot, the Wicked star also looks to history by referencing Black queer artists James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry. “They’re a direct line to me,” she notes of the writers of Giovanni’s Room and A Raisin in the Sun. The line continues. Though Wicked has not yet debuted, Erivo is already wowed to see the response from young Black girls who “never saw themselves as an Elphaba.” It’s a valuable and essential lesson for all of us — to acknowledge those whose shoulders we stand upon before becoming those shoulders for others. Or to borrow the phrase of a future glass-ceiling smasher: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Dear reader, we hope the folks in these pages move you to find your own power as well. We hope you’re inspired to create, to rally, to love, to vote. In a nod to Wicked, our Out100 theme this year is “Together, Unlimited.” And indeed, together, anything is possible. I’ll leave you with words from Out100 honoree Jodie Foster: “I feel so hopeful for this moment in our history. Freedom is on the line and, as ever, our LGBTQ+ community is leading the way. Go Love! There’s no fight more worthy of our open arms.”

Sincerely,
Daniel Reynolds
Editor in Chief, Out
@dnlreynolds