Serving With Pride | Prominent Figures

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John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential of the 20th-century British economist, known as the father of Keynesian economics. His theories of Keynesian economics addressed, among other things, the causes of long-term unemployment. In a paper titled "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," Keynes became an outspoken proponent of full employment and government intervention as a way to stop economic recession. His career spanned academic roles and government service.

Keynes was a bisexual man, his orientation was towards other men, but at the age of 38 he began a mutually satisfying affair with the ballerina Lydia Lopokova, a dancer with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The two married in 1925.

In 1917, on the King's Birthday Honours, John Maynard Keynes was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath for his wartime work.

In June 1942, he was rewarded with a hereditary peerage in the King's Birthday Honours for his services. On July 7 the same year, he was gazetted as ‘Baron Keynes of Tilton, in the County of Sussex.

Prominent Figures: 2SLGBTQ+

Rights & Freedoms

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Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician and pioneer of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. During WW2, he was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code, leading to Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

In 1952, Turing reported a burglary to the police, where it emerged that the perpetrator Arnold Murray was in a sexual relationship with him. As a result of anti-homosexuality laws in the UK in the 1950s, Alan was charged with gross indecency (overturned in 2013). He avoided prison by accepting chemical castration, which eventually left him impotent.

Turing's security clearance was also removed and he was barred from continuing his work with cryptography at the GCHQ.

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Bayard Rustin was an American civil rights activist who was a key adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., he was widely credited for the pacifist strategies and bringing of Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence. Rustin was the main organizer of the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" in 1963. It was there where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.

Due to criticism over his sexuality, he usually acted as an influential adviser behind the scenes to civil-rights leaders. In the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes.

On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Pioneer. Trailblazer. Activist. These titles are usually reserved for those who effect lasting changes on people’s lives. They also describe Ruth Charlotte Ellis.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was almost unheard of for an African-American woman to graduate from high school or publicly come out as a lesbian, much more change people’s lives.

But change people’s lives is exactly what Ruth did, quietly at first and then loudly when she became an activist in her later years.

In the 1920s, she met the only woman she ever lived with, Ceciline "Babe" Franklin. They were together for over 35 years.

In 1937 Ellis became the first American woman to own a printing business in Detroit. Ellis and Franklin's house was also known in the African American community as the "gay spot". It was a central location for gay and lesbian parties, and also served as a refuge for African American gays and lesbians.

She became become an advocate for African-Americans, senior citizens, gay and lesbian communities.

Ruth passed away in her home on October 5, 2009 at 101 years old.

But before she died, filmmaker Yvonne Welbon traced her life and the history of the African-American gay rights movement in the 1999 documentary Living with Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @100.

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Jane Addams was called the "beloved lady" of American reform. She was known as the mother of social work. She was a social worker, reformer, and pacifist. One of her most important accomplishments was to create a settlement house, a center that provides services to members of a poor community. Addams founded the most famous settlement house in American history, Hull House, in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1920, she was a co-founder for the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of philosophy, and is known by many as the first woman "public philosopher in the history of the United States".

Jane and her partner Mary Rozet Smith lived in Maine for over 40 years.

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Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBTQ+ advocate. She became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in any acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award 1990.

In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first openly transgender woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.

Cox 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. Her impact and prominence in the media has led to a growing conversation about transgender culture, specifically transgender women, and how being transgender intersects with one's race.

She is the first openly transgender person to be on the cover of Time magazine, be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, and have a wax work in Madame Tussauds, In May 2016, Cox was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in New York City for her progressive work in the fight for gender equality.

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Joyita Mondal is the first transgender judge of a Lok Adalat and a social worker from West Bengal, India. Mondal comes from a traditional Hindu household and suffered a lot of discrimination in her childhood because of her gender identity. She dropped out of school after grade 10, slept at bus stands and begged on streets.

She moved to Islampur in Uttar Dinajpur district and worked for the upliftment of the transgender community. Simultaneously, she also completed her studies through correspondence and got a degree in law. In 2010, she was the first trans person from her district to get a voter ID.

Mondal also started her own organisation, Dinajpur Notun Alo (Dinajpur New Light) that is currently reaching out to and helping thousands of people in her district.

2017 has marked a wave of evolution for transgender people in India. Joyita‘s appointment is a step in the right direction.

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Daayiee Abdullah is an African American, gay Imam in Washington, D.C. Abdullah is said to be one of four openly gay Imams in the world (the others being Muhsin Hendricks of South Africa, Ludovic Mohamed-Zahed of France and El-Farouk Khaki of Toronto's el-Tawhid Juma Circle/The Unity Mosque).

Abdullah graduated from the David A. Clarke School of Law in Washington, D.C. in 1995 as a juris doctor. He attended the Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences in Ashburn, Virginia from 2000 to 2003, but was kicked out when the school discovered he was gay.

Abdullah is the imam and religious director of Masjid Nur Al-Isslaah (English: "Mosque for Enlightenment and Reformation" or "Light of Reform Mosque"), an LGBT-welcoming mosque. He is on the Advisory Board of Muslims for Progressive Values. He also holds a position in Oslo, Norway at Skeiv Verden ("Gay World").

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Harvey Milk, a native of Long Island, New York, served in the U.S. Navy before working at a Wall Street investment firm. He was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, where he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11-1 and was signed into law by Mayor Moscone.

On November 27, 1978, Milk was shot to death in City Hall by Dan White, a former city supervisor who had quit the board to protest the passage of the city's gay rights law.

In 2009, the activist’s May 22 birthday was formally recognized in California as Harvey Milk Day, and he was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Milk’s name is attached to a series of schools, buildings and public centers throughout California.

The United States Navy, in recognition of Milk’s years with the Navy and his civil-rights activism, announced that a naval fleet oiler would be christened the USNS Harvey Milk.