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
- 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?