A 13th century Persian poet whose love for another man inspired poetry that is still highly respected today. The homoeroticism of Rumi is hidden in plain sight. It is well known that his poems were inspired by his love for another man, although there is no proof that Rumi and shams of Tabriz had a sexual relationship the intensity of their love is evident. Before the 2006 publication of The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Works of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication, some of his more homoerotic poems were not translated into English. The book's homoerotic nature and its promotion of the "blasphemy" that one must transcend religion in order to experience God led to its restriction.

William Dorsey Swann was an American LGBTQ+ activist, known as the “Queen of Drag.” Swann and his friends (most of whom had been previously enslaved) organised Drag dances and balls at each-other’s homes in the late 1800s. Swann participated in dances such as the cakewalk, a dance performed by enslaved people in America, mimicking the mannerisms of plantation owners. Swann was arrested in police raids numerous times, including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. Swann's choice to resist that night "rather than to submit passively to his arrest marks one of the earliest-known instances of violent resistance in the name of gay rights." In 1896, he was convicted of "keeping a disorderly house" (a euphemism for running a brothel) and sentenced to 10 months in jail. After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but Swann was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community's right to gather.

Dillon was assigned female at birth and grew up with his brother and two aunts. He was a pioneer in Trans healthcare and the first person to undergo a Phalloplasty. He grew up in the Church of England. Dillon was educated at women’s colleges, but soon realised that he felt more comfortable in men’s clothing and more self-assured in male gender expression. In 1939 he sought treatment from George Foss who had been experimenting with testosterone to treat excessive menstrual bleeding. The masculinizing effects of testosterone weren’t understood at the time, but helped Dillon in feeling comfortable in his identity. However, Foss insisted Dillon see a psychiatrist who shared Dillon’s desire to transition and he was forced to flee to Bristol. Dillon suffered from Hypoglycaemia and was hospitalised due to a consequential injury. Whilst in hospital he came to the attention to one of the world’s few practitioners of plastic surgery. He performed a double mastectomy on Dillon and provided him with a note which enabled him to change his birth certificate. Foss then put Dillon in contact with Harold Gillies who performed numerous operations on Dillion (phalloplasty.) In 1945, Dillon enrolled in School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

DeLarverie was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was the spark that ignited the Stonewall uprising; spurring the crowd to action. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer who performed and hosted at the Apollo theatre and Radio City Music Hall. She was a ground-breaking drag performer, whose style was an early, striking instance of gender fluid dressing. Being a biracial, androgynous looking child caused her a lot of issues and she was twice arrested by the police who thought she was a drag queen. However, she used it to her advantage when performing choosing when to be Black, white, male or female. She is now considered to have been an influence on gender-nonconforming women’s fashion decades before unisex styles became accepted. DeLarverie has also been described as the “Rosa Parks of the gay community.”

Pierre Seel grew up in France and was imprisoned by the Nazis for being gay at the age of 17. After reporting a crime his list was added to a list of known homosexuals in France before the war. On 2 May 1941 on his return home from studies, Pierre’s mother told him that the Gestapo had called in and ordered that he report to them the next morning. Pierre was imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis. He was then taken to a camp named Schirmeck. He was returned home in November 1941, on the terms that the camp had ‘re-educated’ him. He was then made to serve in the German army, unarmed. Once the war was over France kept the German laws banning homosexuality, Pierre could not tell anyone what he had experienced for fear of being arrested. It was not until 1981 when Pierre was separated and living alone that he attended a book reading about the treatment of German gay men by the Nazis that he decided to stand up, speak out. He started anonymously but condemnation and modern homophobia made him decide to speak out openly. He wrote a memoir titled I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror.

Lorraine was an American playwright, activist, and writer. She was the first African American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work A Raisin in the Sun highlights the lives of Black American living in Chicago under racial segregation. The play earned her a New York Critics’ Circle award, making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman and the youngest American to do so. She moved to New York City and worked at the Pan-African newspaper Freedom, where she worked with other intellectuals like W. E. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Much of her work during this time focused on the African struggles for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry’s writings also focused on her lesbianism and the oppression of homosexuality. For much of her life Hansberry was a closeted lesbian but later wrote to several homophile publications discussing her sexuality. Shortly before she died she announced that she was committed to her identity and had built a circle of lesbian and gay friends and had taken on lovers. Unfortunately she passed away of Pancreatic cancer at age 34.

Nancy Cárdenas was a Mexican actor, poet, writer and feminist. At age 39 she became the first publicly declared lesbian in Mexico when she revealed her sexuality on the TV show 24 Horas, during an interview about the firing of a gay employee. To pursue her passion in theatre she sought a global education. She first studied in Mexico City at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, then at Yale and then in Łódź, Poland. Privileged with her ability to travel she met and discussed queerness with people around the world, weaving it into her writing as a lesbian woman and sharing and taking advice from the people she met. She founded the first gay organisation in Mexico, Frente de Liberación Homosexual Mexicano. As a feminist and sexology specialist she held numerous conferences, seminars and TV interviews on the subject. In 1975 she co-wrote the Manifesto in Defence of Homosexuals in Mexico. In 1978 she also headed the first gay pride march in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

Miss Major is an American trans woman activist and community leader for transgender rights., with a particular focus on women of colour. She served as the original Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which aims to assist transgender persons, who are disproportionately incarcerated under the prison-industrial complex. Griffin-Gracy was also a key activist in the Stonewall riots. Following the riots, she was jailed for 5 years, but met Frank “big black” Smith who helped her understand how to help her community. After prison she continued her activism is grassroots organisations supporting trans women. She also supported many organisations during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Her work has provided personalised care and support to trans women of colour facing violence and police brutality in prisons.

Johnson was an American gay liberation activist and drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights Johnson was a leading figure in the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Johnson arrived at the Stonewall Inn around 2am the day of the Stonewall uprising, the resistance movement which led to Pride month. Johnson's work is credited as having advanced the LGBTQ+ movement’s focus beyond cisgender gay men. Johnson was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). STAR was the first organisation to be led by trans women of colour which helped to uplift the voices of trans and gender non-conforming people of colour in New York City; it offered shelter, food and clothing for LGBTQ+ youth who had been disowned by their families for their identity. Johnson was also a popular figure in New York City’s gay and art scene, modelling for Andy Warhol and performing onstage with the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches. From 1987-1992 Johnson was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

Ifti Nasim gay Pakistani-American poet who moved to the United States to escape persecution for his sexual orientation. He rose to fame both locally and globally for publishing Narman, a poetry book regarded as the first open expression of homosexual themes written in Urdu, and for his activism. After experiencing homophobia in the USA, he joined the emerging gay liberation movement in the 1970s. Nasim helped found Sangat (Sanskrit for 'togetherness") in 1986, an organisation to empower LGBTQ+ South Asian youth that provided education and support for queer-identifying South Asians in the region. For such ground-breaking and impactful work, Nasim was inducted into the Chicago LGBTQ+ Hall Of Fame in 1996.

Bennet was a disability and transgender rights activist. She was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta and used a wheelchair. She is best remembered for forcing the United States Medicare system to consider covering gender affirming surgeries. In 1978, she pushed her case in front of government officials after fuelling public interest in disability rights in her favour. She left San Diego and drove to Thomas M. Tierney's headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland (who was the director of Medicare at the time) to demand that Medicare honour its agreement to reimburse payment for her sex reassignment surgery. Tierney promised Bobbie Lea that a committee was considering her issue at the meeting. Bennett got a cheque in the mail three days after the encounter. Her successful claim brought visibility to efforts to secure rights for transgender people. She dedicated her life to the pursuit of liberation. In 1985, she founded the St. Tammany Parish Organization for the Handicapped, which served the interests of wheelchair users, and other disabled persons that lived within St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.

Sylvia Rivera was a gay liberation activist and transgender rights activist. Rivera was homeless from age 11 and was forced to do sex work. She was taken in by the local community of drag queens who gave her the name Sylvia. Rivera was also a noted community work and drag queen based in New York. She participated in multiple demonstration with the Gay Liberation Front. Together with Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). This group helped young homeless drag queens, gay youth and trans women; it provided them with shelter, food and clothing. STAR also provided services and advocacy for homeless queer youth, and fought for the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York.

After a 1976 uprising in his homeland Simon Tseko Nkoli became an activist against Apartheid. He founded the Vaal Civic Association and became regional secretary of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) in 1981. Nkoli joined the predominantly white Gay Association of South Africa (GASA) in 1983, but he refused to accept the racism he experienced there, just as he had previously refused to accept the homophobia he had faced when participating in action against Apartheid. Subsequently, he established the Saturday Group, the first Black gay group in Africa. He was detained in 1984 together with 21 other political activists, and he was sentenced to death for treason. While imprisoned, Nkoli continued to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, which influenced the African National Congress to adopt new views. In he was found not guilty and released. He established the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand (GLOW), the group was responsible for planning South Africa's first Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade in 1990. He also served as the African region's representative on the board of the International Lesbian and Gay Association and pushed to get protection against anti-gay discrimination in the Bill of Rights in the 1994 South African constitution. One of the first openly HIV+ homosexual men in Africa, he founded "Positive African Men," a peer support group in central Johannesburg, in 1996.

Jazzie Collins was an American trans woman activist and community activist for transgender rights, disability rights and economic equality in San Francisco. Her activism spanned a decade and a wide variety of community organisations, boards and initiatives focusing on fighting for the rights of minority communities. In 2002, she started to organise and advocate for social and economic justice through a range of initiatives, organizations, and communities. She was a persistent trans activist who helped San Francisco experience significant social transformation. Collins organised for Senior and Disability Action, and was vice chair of the LGBT Aging Policy Task Force, and was a member of the board of directors for the San Francisco Trans March. She sat on the board of the San Francisco Trans March, a celebration of the lives of transgender individuals that took place during Pride Month, and was a founding member of the group Queers for Economic Equality Now (QUEEN) and assisted in planning various protests. In 2003, she was a member of the Prop L Committee, successfully directing effort to raise the minimum wage in San Francisco.

Fashanu was an English footballer who played for a variety of clubs between 1978 and 1997. He was known by his early clubs to be gay and came out publicly later in his career. Fashanu was the first professional footballer to be openly gay. Although 30 years have passed he remains the only male footballer to reveal his sexuality while playing professionally in the top tiers. Fashanu was also one of the first footballers to command a £1 million transfer fee, with his transfer from Norwich City to Nottingham Forest in 1981. After moving to the US in 1998 he was charged with sexual assault. Sadly, Fashanu fled to England where he committed suicide worried that he would not receive a fair trial as a gay man.

Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBTQ+ advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. She became the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category. Cox was one of fifteen women to be chosen by guest editor Meghan (Duchess of Sussex) to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issues of British Vogue. She became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of British Vogue. She has been noted by her LGBTQ+ peers and many others for being a trailblazer for the transgender community and has won numerous awards for her activist approach in spreading awareness. She uses her platform to openly discuss and educate on LGBTQ+ issues, and has succeeded in pushing IMDB to change their birth name policy. Cox has earned multiple awards and honours, including an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in NYC for her work in progressing gender equality.

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, better known as Lady Phyll, is a British LGBTQ+ rights activist and anti-racism campaigner. She is the co-founder of UK Black Pride which “promotes unity and co-operation among all Black people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and Latin American descents, as well as their friends and family, who identify as LGBTQ+. Phyll is also the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust. She works for the Public and Commercial Services Trade Union as their Head of Equality & Learning. Constantly vocal on issues of race, gender, and sexuality, Phyll has proven herself to be a formidable voice in the fight for equality for queer people of colour. Phyll was appointed as a trustee of Stonewall in 2015, but resigned three years later. In 2016 she publicly refused an MBE in the 2016 New Years Honours. Phyll is the editor of Sista! An anthology of writings by LGBTQ+ women of African and/or Caribbean descent with a connection to the UK.

Charlie Craggs is a British transgender actress, activist and author from London. In 2013, Craggs launched her “Nail Transphobia” campaign which provided free manicures to people, allowing them to chat with a trans person about their experiences, in an attempt to minimalize transphobia. The campaign work started as a university project and grew to become a pop-up salon that appeared at different events and locations. In 2017, Craggs published her first book, To My Trans Sisters, a collection of letters by successful trans women. In 2018, the book was a finalist in the 30th Lambada Literary Awards. Craggs also started a campaign in 2018 for inclusion of a transgender rainbow flag emoji in Unicode – which was subsequently included in 2020. In 2021, Craggs fronted the BBC Three documentary Transitioning Teens about transgender teenagers waiting to be seen by the NHS regarding their transitions.