(What once required a People cover declaration can now be slipped into a tweet.) But what's common throughout is that each of these stories — some told here for the first time — made it that much easier for LGBTQ people keenly watching and listening to follow in their footsteps.

THE BAD OLD DAYS: "IT JUST WASN'T AN OPTION".

It just wasn't.

And this was the '70s, so it was the time of Studio 54, and it seemed in those clubs, underneath the glitter ball, that there was an incredibly liberal world.

It took me ages to understand that being gay wasn't quite acceptable there.

I said something to her, and she was like, "Oh no, no, no, no, that's wrong, you don't think like that and don't say that again." I was like, "Oh, OK — so this is different.".

Well, [singer and LGBTQ rights opponent] Anita Bryant was in the news at the time, and I did a line, "She even quit the church because the choir insisted on singing, 'Go Down Moses.' " The next day the national news says, "Avowed lesbian Robin Tyler takes on Anita Bryant." They couldn't call you a lesbian; they called you an "avowed lesbian." You had to sign in blood you were a lesbian.

Every time I'd drive by it, I was just perplexed and would never have stepped foot in there, but I wondered what was happening inside.

A producer of the Tonys said, "And please no one repeat the embarrassment of last year." When I won, I got up and I thanked "my lover, Scott, for typing scripts and blah-blah-blah," which he really didn't do.

VICTOR GARBER, ACTOR, 71 Ian McKellen and I had dinner one night, and it was just around the time he had come out [in 1988].

FIERSTEIN I used to say if you want to know if somebody is gay, just look to see if there is a photograph of me with them — because if there is a photograph of me with them, they're not gay because people in the closet would not be photographed with me.

Well I don't really know that's true.

GARBER After playing Jesus in Godspell, the director, David Greene, said, "I'd like you to play Liberace [in 1988's Liberace: Behind the Music]." There were some people who thought it wasn't a good move [because Liberace had just died of AIDS], but I didn't care.

I remember on Sex and the City, we had an episode about bisexuality and "does bisexuality exist." They quizzed us all, and I was like, "Totally." The idea of being attracted to a woman or falling in love with a woman or having sex with a woman always seemed completely within the realm of possibility — it just had never happened to me.

CHAZ BONO, ACTOR, 51 My mom [Cher] had a hard time both times I came out to her.

It just took time.

I said, "Before you invest $5 million in me, I want you to know you're getting someone who's a lesbian in a time when being a lesbian could hurt your commerce." They all said, "Do you imagine you're going to come out?" I said, "I can't even imagine it." This was 1995 or '96, so nobody was out.

And I know I ain't nobody's lumberjack, but I wasn't quite as — whatever that is, you know.

But then the public coming-out was obviously another big step, which took me a long time to reconcile.

ZACHARY QUINTO, ACTOR, 42 I came of age during that time when the prevailing thought was that an openly gay person couldn't have as successful or flourishing a career.

"She's so supportive of the community." It wasn't until I started dating Alex [in 2006], who's my wife now, when I think my material became more personal and I started talking more about relationships and equality.

BASS In the band, I told Joey [Fatone] first, but I didn't really have to tell him.

I just felt like as a reporter, it just felt antithetical to what my job is supposed to be?

MATT BOMER, ACTOR, 42 [Coming out] was very intimidating at the time because I'd already experienced some fallout in my career just by living openly.

I do remember from certain [handlers] a certain sense of — not disappointment but like, "OK, let's see if this has any repercussions with jobs.".

for American Idol [in 2003] was the first time I ever met anyone else who was gay who didn't come across as gay.

I don't think [Ratner] did know [that I was gay] when I auditioned.

I don't think he cared — but that's not to say that there weren't people who did.

CHAMBERLAIN I was about 69 years old [in 2003], and it was almost as if an angel walked into the room — there was, of course, no angel there, at least not visibly — and put her hand on my head and said, "You know something, Richard.

If an interviewer would ask me where would you go on your perfect date, I would be gender-neutral intentionally so that I didn't feel like I was saying something that was not truthful.

But in that moment I realized, "Fuck — don't trust any of these reporters.".

By this time my manager kind of had figured things out better and she went to [publicist] Kelly Bush.

I explained the whole situation, and she said, "Why don't we just confirm?" It was like somebody telling you there's a Santa Claus.

I didn't know it was a predominantly gay town.

He's like, "Wait, you're Lance, right?" "Yeah." He goes, "Wait, so you're gay?" It was the first time I'd told a stranger, "Yeah, I'm gay.

And I am not going to say I was brave, but that is the time when my publicist and my manager finally said to me, "You've got to do it now." My People cover came out [in 2008], and I did Good Morning America that morning.

I was in Spamalot on Broadway at the time and was terrified I was going to get booed.

So I'm out in the crowd, and the speaker goes, "We have someone in the audience who's a strong ally of the community and I hate to put her on the spot …" And I'm looking around in the crowd thinking, "Is Drew Barrymore out here?" And then when she said, "Wanda Sykes, would you come up?" I was like, "Oh, oh me.

No, I'm the community!" So I go up, and I just said what was in my heart, and next thing I know I get back to the hotel room and it was on the CNN scroll.

JILL SOLOWAY, FILMMAKER/SHOWRUNNER/ACTIVIST, 54 The first kind of big moment for me was when my parent came out, and I just felt a lot of walls crumbling around what I thought I had understood about myself.

I was just really bad at being straight.

There were offers to do magazine covers and things like that, and that just didn't really interest me.

I didn't think it was going to get the sort of play that it did.

And this guy was interviewing me, and he said, "How long have you been together with [your husband] Rainer [Andreesen]?" And I said, "Oh, we've been together a number of years" and didn't really think about it.

COOPER I didn't really want to make it seem like I was doing this in any way for any kind of public attention.

So I didn't want to be on the cover of a magazine — not that there's anything wrong with that.

I thought it was very influential and just a really smart, interesting place.

And [in 2012] I thought, "Oh, you know what.

COOPER I didn't think coming out would change anything in my life because I felt like my life was already pretty out.

It changed things tremendously — just the sort of walking into a room and having that all on the table ahead of time.

Which is something I didn't really look forward to.

I mean, it's kind of a strange thing to walk into a room and have people know your sexual orientation and everything about you before you've even said anything.

PARSONS It got picked up, and it was briefly a thing just as far as like there was some news to it or whatever, but it faded away pretty damn quickly and was kind of not a big deal.

Once it was out officially, I felt a sense of ownership over it, and that was very new to me, and I felt like a more participatory member of the community.

Then I was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross [in 2017] and felt less like I had this urge to come out singing from the mountaintops and more like I wasn't being authentic if I didn't tell people that the "she/her" pronouns made me feel strange?

I was like, "First of all, you can't take that out — that's a huge laugh line and that's a huge empowerment moment for this room.".

Ever since I was 5 years old — or I guess as early as I can remember, I might have been 3 when I told my family that I felt that I was a girl — and so it wasn't, like me sitting anyone down and telling them.

COHEN In terms of [LGBTQ] exposure, I think what's going on in Hollywood is great — every color of the rainbow is represented in scenes

They were all just kind of like, "Oh, wow, we didn't know that about you."

TOTAH It wasn't until the day before I started my freshman year of college that I had posted an article — an essay that I had written for Time magazine basically telling the world that I had known and my friends and family had known my entire life

Just telling them, like, this is now

I just think everyone needs to be proud of who they are