Thanks, All You Awesome Faggots and Dykes

It's not often that I get earnest on this blog, but, sorry suckers, I'm about to. Jimmy and I just got home from watching Milk, the biopic about slain gay right activist Harvey Milk, and I'm all verklempt. I feel the overwhelming need to take this opportunity--right here, in front of all three of my readers--to thank all of those courageous gays who came before us, who put their asses on the line, who lived or have lived lives full of balls out honesty. Some of them were nuts, some of them still are. What's not to love about that? And courage is what I want to pay tribute to right now—displayed by both real and honorary gays—so, without further cringeworthy emoting....[updated with names from readers!]

Thank you to Oscar Wilde
Merci to Quentin Crisp
Arigato to the Stonewall drag queens and gay boys and girls
Gracias to Busby Berkley,
Andy Warhol,
Wanda Sykes,
Rosie O'Donnell,
Tony Kushner,
Derek Jarman,
Martina Navratalova,
Gus Van Sant,
Francis Bacon,
KD Lang,
Melissa Etheridge,
Susan Sontag,
James Baldwin,
Gore Vidal,
Langston Hughes,
Karen Finley,
Boy George,
Gertrude Stein,
Phranc,
Keith Haring,
Dan Savage,
Pedro Almodovar,
John Waters
Rainer Fassbinder,
Sandra Bernhard,
Larry Kramer,
Klaus Nomi,
River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves,
Rachel Maddow,
Margaret Cho,
Divine,
Todd Haynes,
Sir John Gielgud,
Tennesse Williams,
Ellen Degeneres,
Andrew Sullivan,
Truman Capote,
Barney Frank,
David Sedaris,
Debbie Googe,
Edmund White,
Neal Patrick Harris,
Jimmy Sommerville,
Neil Tenant,
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal,
Walt Whitman
Sean Penn, James Franco, Diego Luna, Emile Hersh
Harvey Milk

Each of you (and the tons of folks I've forgotten), in your own way, has stomped your foot down and kicked up some dust in the fight for gays to be left alone to go about living their lives. We are the last minority it is ok to hate on in this country. And the above people have done their part to make it safer for a 13-year-old gay boy in Nowheresville, Idaho in 2008 to go to sleep and dream of waking up next to James Franco stripped bare, smiling, and sporting a hell of a hot '70s perm in the morning.

That is all.