Notable American gay men


 * John Ashbery, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
 * James Baldwin, African American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.
 * Matt Bomer, an American film, stage and television actor, best known from his role on White Collar, which premiered in 2009. He first publicly acknowledged that he was gay in 2012 saying, "I never hid the fact that I'm gay". He thanked his partner Simon Halls and their children during an acceptance speech for his Steve Chase Humanitarian Award.
 * J. P. Calderon, an American professional volleyball player, model and reality television participant. He began his professional volleyball career in 2004 and became a nationally ranked Association of Volleyball Professionals player.
 * Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc., and the first Chief Executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly identify as gay. Cook also serves on the boards of directors of Nike, Inc. and the National Football Foundation.
 * Anderson Cooper, an American journalist, author and television personality. He is the primary news anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. Cooper is openly gay; according to The New York Times, he is "the most prominent openly gay journalist on American television." For years, Cooper avoided discussing his private life in interviews.
 * Matt Dallas, an American actor, best known for playing the title character on the ABC Family series Kyle XY.
 * Lee Daniels, film director, best known for his film Precious.
 * Tom Ford, fashion designer, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He gained fame as the creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. In 2006, Ford launched his own "Tom Ford" label. Ford directed the films A Single Man (2009; based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood) and Nocturnal Animals (2016), which were Oscar-nominated.
 * Barney Frank is the former U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district from 1981 until 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he is also the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2007–2011) and is considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States. In 1987 he was the first member of the U.S. Congress to come out as gay of his own volition. On July 7, 2012, Frank married his long-time partner, James Ready, becoming the first member of the U.S. Congress to marry someone of the same sex while in office.
 * Darrin P. Gayles is the U.S. District Judge-Designate of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. He is the first openly gay African-American man to be confirmed as a U.S. federal judge.
 * David Geffen, an American business magnate, producer, film studio executive, and philanthropist, who created or co-created Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, DGC Records in 1990, and DreamWorks SKG in 1994. His donations to the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and other educational and research donations have widened his fame beyond the entertainment industry.
 * Allen Ginsberg an American poet of Jewish origin, and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow.
 * Neil Patrick Harris, an American actor, comedian and singer. He is best known for the title role in Doogie Howser, M.D. and as the womanizing Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother. He also had roles on Broadway. Harris was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2010, and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2011.
 * J. Edgar Hoover, the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.
 * Rock Hudson was an American actor widely known as a leading man in the 1950s and 1960s, often starring in romantic comedies opposite Doris Day. Hudson was voted Star of the Year, Favorite Leading Man, and similar titles by numerous film magazines. The 6 ft 5in (1.95) tall actor was one of the most popular and well-known movie stars of his time. Hudson died in 1985, becoming the first major celebrity to die from an AIDS-related illness.
 * Marc Jacobs, fashion designer and businessman.
 * Langston Hughes, an American poet, novelist and playwright, best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s in New York City.
 * Adam Lambert is an American singer-songwriter and stage actor, and the first openly gay mainstream pop artist to launch a career on a major label in the U.S.
 * Don Lemon, news anchor.
 * Liberace, an American pianist, singer, and actor.
 * Sean Maher, an American actor, best known for his role as Simon Tam in the science fiction television series Firefly and follow-up movie Serenity.
 * Barry Manilow, best-selling singer-songwriter, arranger, musician, and producer.
 * Johnny Mathis, singer of popular music and jazz, selling over 100 million records worldwide.
 * Frank Ocean, critically acclaimed singer, songwriter, and rapper.
 * Jim Parsons, an American television and film actor. He has won, among other awards, two consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Musical or Comedy.
 * Jared Polis, an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the U.S. Representative for Colorado's 2nd congressional district, serving since 2009. He is the first male U.S. congressperson to be openly gay when first elected to office.
 * Cole Porter, composer and songwriter of musicals.
 * Zachary Quinto, an American actor and producer. He grew up in Pennsylvania and was active in high school musical theater. He is mostly known for his roles as Spock in the 2009 reboot Star Trek, and its 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. Quinto publicly came out as gay in October 2011.
 * Bayard Rustin, civil rights activist, organizer of the very first Freedom Rides, and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
 * Michael Stipe, lead singer and main lyricist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.
 * George Takei, actor, director and activist, particularly known for his role as Sulu in the TV series Star Trek.
 * Peter Thiel, influential entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal, worth 2.2 billion in 2016.
 * Andy Warhol, artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art, and best known for works including the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
 * Walt Whitman, a 19th-Century poet, essayist, and journalist, and among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
 * Tennessee Williams, an American playwright, author of A Streetcar Named Desire, considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th-century American drama.