Silence can protect, but it can also provide a potent and despicable weapon. In the shadow of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," whenever gay servicemen did face any kind of homophobic harassment, they were powerless to draw attention to it without potentially triggering the end of their military career. The rule itself became the very tool of their oppression: "The ’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy," says Joseph Rocha (navy, 2004–7), "punishes homosexuals who comply, and it protects bigots." Marines #1:"The problem for me a lot of times is my buddies’ wives. They think, ’He’s got a great house, he’s nice, he’s wonderful,’ and they want to set me up and set me up. And I’m demur...demur...demur...and finally you don’t do stuff with them, because, come on, girl, get over it. Drop it already."

Aside from his iconic role in Mean Girls, Franzese has had a few TV appearances here and there, including GLOW on Netflix, S.W.A.T., Besties and Falling for Angels. Norton, who has spent many years recovering, now lives in Portland with his partner, a man who happens to be Vietnamese and grew up there during the war. "It is quite ironic," Norton reflects. "You never know where life is going to lead you. He struggled so much with growing up gay in Vietnam and being ostracized for his sexuality, just wanting to be loved and cared for with the war going on around him. He’s never really asked me about the war, and I’ve never really talked to him about it." He’s happily married to David Burtka, and they have two children together. You can catch him as Count Olaf in the Netflix family-friendly series A Series of Unfortunate Events. Or you can bring him home with you — kind of — in the form of playing cards he created, sold in Target stores everywhere. As far as he was concerned, this meant that he no longer had to hide his sexuality, and in an era when no such category of person was supposed to exist, he started to live as an out soldier in the U.S. military. When he returned to Iraq, it was on that basis. "I was open, and my colleagues knew and my bosses knew. The generals knew. I looked at everybody else’s desks and they had pictures of their wives, husbands, or boyfriends or girlfriends, so I had pictures of my boyfriend up."

We may know him from the OG 2003 Queer Eye, but Jai Rodriguez is also a seriously talented actor and performed in the Broadway musical Rent. Charlie Carver came out in 2016 and has been a big advocate for changing LGBTQ+ stereotypes on screen.

Adam Lambert says he’s not here for our entertainment, but with those pipes and a face like that, we wish he were. For that matter, could you handle something massive going deep inside without whimpering like a woosy? If you are the type who likes to bottom shame, I bet you totally can’t! Many servicemen serving under "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" decided that their only option was literally to tell no one for the length of their military career. Others, inevitably, concluded that the only way to survive was to take some people into their trust. Given the potential implications, the decision of whether—and whom—to trust is an enormous one. But he’s done plenty of things since, including short drama film Raceland and crime comedy Easy Does It.

Nyle DiMarco

I wish it wouldn’t have happened the way it did,” he added, both of his own coming out and his relationship with Randolph. “I wish that I would have been courageous enough to fix myself before I broke anybody else.” Aside from his Glee character, real-life Jonathan Groff is a sweetheart and is making his way through Hollywood. He’s the star of Netflix drama Mindhunter. It’s true. The Tony winner was in the cast of The Great Leap. According to Playbill, “ The Great Leap weaves a tale of history and personal identity. Set in San Francisco in 1989, the play follows Manford Lum, a basketball player who talks his way onto a college team just before they travel to Beijing for a ‘friendship’ game.”