Photo by Stefanie Keenan for Getty Images
Storytellers
Robbie Rogers
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Robbie Rogers is many things. He was the second U.K. male soccer player to come out as gay. Later, he became the first out gay man to compete in any top North American pro sports league when he signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2013. He’s a producer, bringing ideas to life as films and TV shows and pushing projects over obstacles. And he’s a husband and a father, raising two children (both Arsenal Football Club fans like their proud dad) with fellow producer Greg Berlanti.
In the entertainment sphere, Rogers is a producer of My Policeman, the period gay Amazon Prime Video film starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin. This year, Rogers is one of the producers of Fellow Travelers, an exciting — and erotic — historical drama coming to Showtime and Paramount+. The show stars Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Jelani Alladin, and Noah J. Ricketts as four gay men who meet in 1950s Washington, D.C., and tracks them through decades of queer life.
Filming a show set over three decades in different cities across the country with two powerful gay love stories at its center was a monumental feat. But Rogers is used to performing monumental feats — and hopes to set an example for the younger generation. “I would love for the youth in our community to know that they can accomplish anything they dream of,” he says. “It’s all possible.” @robbierogers
Mey Rude
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Photo by Brendan Fay
Randy Wicker
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Photo by Brendan Fay
Over the last 65 years, LGBTQ+ advocate, journalist, and archivist Randy Wicker has achieved many firsts. In 1962 he organized a radio broadcast that caused the Federal Communications Commission to rule that homosexuality was a legitimate topic for on-air discussion. In 1964 Wicker organized the first public demonstration for gay civil rights in the United States, which took place in front of the U.S. Army Induction Center in New York City. Also in 1964, he was the first out gay person to participate in a live television show when he answered calls on The Les Crane Show.
“I’ve always been a truth-telling journalist willing to confront power and champion unpopular causes,” says Wicker. “That is what motivated me to join the New York Mattachine Society in 1958 and be the first self-identified homosexual to speak out on radio in 1962.”
Now 85 years old, Wicker shows no signs of slowing down. This year Wicker launched a petition to remove the statue of Gen. Phil Sheridan from Stonewall National Park — because of Sheridan’s massacre of Indigenous people. He also served as a grand marshal at this year’s NYC Pride March.
Recently, he donated his archives to the National LGBTQ+ Archives. “My archives are titled ‘The Randy Wicker & Marsha P. Johnson’ archives since Marsha P. Johnson lived with me for over a decade and was the house mother of my extended gay family,” says Wicker. “Twenty-five years of my Christmas letters contain many stories about her.”
Though much progress has been made thanks to Wicker’s work, he is adamant that the fight continues, especially in other parts of the world. He notes that “genocidal hatred and religious intolerance” run rampant in many societies. “We must help LGBTQ+ people overseas improve their circumstances!” @randolfewicker