Laurence Watts, a freelance journalist, and founder of the advocacy group
Servicemembers United’s Campaign for Military Partners, published a list at
The Huffington Post that he called “
The Most Powerful LGBT People on Twitter.”
Fortunately there is way we can compile a list of influential LGBT people that transcends national boundaries: we can use Twitter. Unlike a panel of judges, it’s democratic and allows easy comparison between individuals. While not a measure of wealth, it’s certainly a measure of voice, and while certain LGBT celebrities don’t have Twitter accounts, it could be argued they are less influential because of it.
Here then is a list I’ve compiled of whom I believe to be the world’s 30 most powerful LGBT people, ranked by their number of Twitter followers at the time of writing.
Laurence left some people off of his list, so I added to his list and then re-sorted the spread sheet. Some of the obvious omissions (obvious to me) included
Kara Swisher,
Ross Matthews.
Christian Siriano,
Billie Joe Armstrong, and
Louie Spence. I also added some of our straight allies that are honorary gays(from Eddie Izzard to Joan Rivers and Kylie Minogue etc). This list is totally subjective, and the additions I made to Laurence’s list were my opinion, and I scrambled to find one more person to make it a list of 50 - but failed to think of one more.
If you can think of a glaring omission of someone I left out, who has a twitter account and a huge following, please let me know in the comments!
If you have a blog and want to use the graphics, feel free. Just give proper credit s.v.p.
Here is Laurence’s original List.
Laurence’s List
Roy's List
This is my list, with my subjective additions and the total number of followers as of November 6, 2011.
- Lady GaGa United States 15,478,402
- Ellen DeGeneres United States 8,090,539
- Ricky Martin United States 4,321,521
- Chelsea Handler United States 4,153,498
- Perez Hilton United States 4,069,951
- Stephen Fry United Kingdom 3,346,205
- Lindsay Lohan United States 2,643,426
- Kevin Spacey United States 2,158,774
- Eddie Izzard United Kingdom 2,107,340
- Neil Patrick Harris United States 2,047,774
- Rachel Maddow United States 1,963,033
- Anderson Cooper United States 1,758,672
- Alan Carr United Kingdom 1,422,914
- Jessie J. United Kingdom 1,389,703
- Gavin Newsom United States 1,297,438
- Adam Lambert United States 1,241,768
- Suze Orman United States 1,214,313
- Kathy Griffin United States 1,151,815
- Chris Colfer United States1,098,398
- Derren Brown United Kingdom 922,614
- Kylie Minogue United Kingdom 882,357
- Karl Lagerfeld France 788,238
- Kara Swisher United States 787,963
- Joan Rivers United States 691,455
- Gok Wan United Kingdom 543,406
- Andy Cohen United States 526,491
- Scott Mills United Kingdom 512,116
- Matt Lucas United Kingdom 459,126
- Louie Spence United Kingdom 455,870
- Kristin Chenoweth United States 436,416
- Cher United States 413,738
- Jane Lynch United States 400,331
- Zachary Quinto United States 389,313
- Michael Kors United States 364,236
- Ross Matthews United States 287,571
- Rosie O’Donnell United States 281,277
- George Michael United Kingdom 273,326
- Christian Siriano United States 261,320
- Joe McElderry United Kingdom 258,850
- George Takei United States 234,581
- Billie Joe Armstrong United States 197,151
- Antony Cotton United Kingdom 159,859
- Boy George United Kingdom 152,855
- Margaret Cho United States 150,183
- Christian Louboutin France 147,848
- Donna Brazile United States 144,191
- Lance Bass United States 137,195
- Nate Berkus United States 124,499
- Don Lemon United States 117,267

What do you think?
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