The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, has released two videos to
help celebrate the 25th anniversary of National Coming Out
Day.
Founders Robert Eichberg and Jean
O'Leary chose the date of October 11 for National Coming Out Day
because it is the anniversary of the 1987 National March on
Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
In one of the videos, released on
Thursday, HRC takes a look at the public coming outs of celebrities,
including Ellen DeGeneres, Pedro Zamora, k.d. lang, Lance Bass, Clay
Aiken, Adam Lambert, Wanda Sykes, Ricky Martin, Lana Wachowski and
Chaz Bono, as well as everyday folks on YouTube.
In one clip, ABC News' George
Stephanopoulos is seen asking NBA free agent Jason Collins: “You
always knew that you were gay?”
“Yeah,” Collins answered. “I
sort of describe it as you know that the sky is blue but you keep
telling yourself that it's red. But when you finally get to that
point of acceptance, there's nothing more beautiful.” (The video
is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)