In honor of today being the Human Rights Campaign’s Come Out For Equality Day, I thought I’d compile a list of some prominent LGBT characters in animation. Like all of these animated race/gender lists, they are certainly not thorough in the sense that every character that fits the bill is listed, but this gives a nice overview as to how diverse the cartoon world is, and hopefully helps further the message of teaching equality through entertainment. Check it:
Brainiac 5 (Legion of Superheroes)
Element Lad (Legion of Superheroes) (no screencap found)
Shrinking Violet (Legion of Superheroes)
Richie Osgood Foley/Gear (Static Shock)
The Ugly Stepsister (Shrek series)
Stewie (Family Guy)
The Sailor Starlights/"male" pop group "The Three Lights" (Sailor Moon)
Sailor Neptune (left) and Sailor Uranus (right) (Sailor Moon)
Fred Luo (Outlaw Star)
Renee Montoya (Batman: The Animated Series)
Waylon Smithers (The Simpsons)
Andrew Legustambos (Sit Down, Shut Up)
Honorable Mention–since it’s not stated that they’re gay in the manga or cartoon show, but the creator said he would and should’ve made them gay:
Hiei (left)and Kurama (right) (Yu Yu Hakusho)
Another couple never totally outed but surrounded by a lot of subtext:
Harley Quinn (left) and Poison Ivy(right) (Batman: The Animated Series)
For more information about the Human Rights Campaign, click here. And for more about gay characters in anime and American cartoons, click here and here for the Wikipedia listings and here to visit The Gay League, a website dedicated to highlighting LGBT characters in cartoons and comics.
Lol! This is awesome! I hadn’t actually realized there were so many. I mean, the japanese anime characters don’t surprise me, but its really refreshing to see the more western animations and comic characters, which hopefully will reach more mainstream (not anime/manga americans) kids.
I’m glad you liked the article!