Punks Get Doll-ed Up
 

The short-lived but widely influential New York Dolls anticipated punk rock with their fearlessly campy cross-dressing. A test case for manager Malcolm McLaren, who went on to assemble the Sex Pistols, the Dolls were a major inspiration for the likes of Morrissey and every hair-metal band.

She Kissed a Girl
 

Long before T.A.T.U. were singing about fake lesbian love, Jill Sobule was doing it for real. With a video featuring Fabio as a would-be hetero suitor, it's no wonder the pop craftswoman tried swinging the other way on her 1995 signature song 'I Kissed a Girl.'

Lance 'N Sync With His Sexuality
 

Russia nearly launched gay pride into the stratosphere when 'N Sync's Lance Bass attempted to join the Soyuz space mission. Bass officially came out in a 2006 cover article in PEOPLE magazine, though he did raise suspicions when he claimed to love watching football and drinking beer.

 

#16

Disco Queen Gets 'Real'
 

After being groomed in the Cockettes, the outlandish hippie-era drag show in anything-goes San Francisco, Sylvester became a gay icon with his 1978 disco smash 'You Make Me Feel Mighty Real.' Tall, dark and handsome in full drag, the singer brought gospel ecstasy into the realm of sequins and mirror balls.

 

#15

Night at the Rock Opera
 

Inspired by '70s glam rock, Queen and Meat Loaf's 'Bat Out of Hell,' playwright John Cameron Mitchell and songwriter Stephen Trask had an Off-Broadway smash with the transgender-rocker fairy tale 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch.' The show's songs were later covered by cool rockers like Sleater-Kinney, Rufus Wainwright and Bob Mould.

 #14

Classic Rock -- What a Drag
 

"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It's a mixed-up world." The Kinks' Ray Davies may have been dumbfounded when his 'Lola' turned out to be a man, but the song about an encounter between a naïve young man and a transvestite ranked among Rolling Stone's Top 500 Greatest Songs of All time.

 #13

Georgia Peach Gets Frutti
 

Macon-born Little Richard's explosive introduction to the pop charts was a thinly veiled song about homosexuality: 'Tutti Frutti,' in its original form, included the followup phrase 'loose booty.' We wonder who broke this news to later 'Tutti' tackler Pat Boone.

 

 #12

Melissa Says 'Yes I Am'
 

The strumming Kansan waited until the Republican '80s were officially over, coming out at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993. Later that year, she released her fourth album, 'Yes I Am,' flouting the new president's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

R.E.M. Man Reveals
 

The guarded R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe explicitly identified himself as "a queer artist" in 'Time' in 2001. For much of his career he resisted answering rumors about his sexuality, once calling himself "an equal opportunity lech."

Glad to Be Gay
 

British songwriter Tom Robinson, onetime Ray Davies disciple and future Elton John collaborator, took the punk era's urge to shock into new territory with his pride anthem 'Glad to Be Gay.' Now married with children, Robinson titled his last studio album 'Having It Both Ways.'

Universal Mother
 

Four-time mother Sinead O'Connor declared herself a lesbian in a 2000 interview. She has since revised her position, claiming to be "three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay." Ladies -- those are still better odds than one in 10.

Bowie Says He's Bi
 

Glam's crown prince outed himself as early as 1972, later explaining to Playboy that he used his bisexuality as a marketing advantage. Boys, keep swinging!

Equality Rocks!
 

k.d. lang, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, Melissa Etheridge and Rufus Wainwright were among the headliners at Equality Rocks, a football-stadium-sized concert event that took place in April 2000, on the eve of the gay-rights Millennium March on Washington.

Madonna Kisses Britney, Xtina
 

In 2003, the MTV Video Music Awards featured three of pop's most seductive divas making a case for the uselessness of men. Reprising Madonna's grindhouse performance of 'Like a Virgin' from the first VMAs, her heirs apparent, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, played the wedding-cake "groomsmen" and locked lips with her.

'Stan' by Your Man
 

Eminem made amends with critics who accused the potty-mouthed rapper of homophobia when he performed his hit 'Stan' with Elton John at the Grammy Awards, closing with a big, sloppy man-hug. Whatever the PR benefits, Em didn't exactly earn himself any genius awards when he claimed not to know that Elton is gay.

Hail to the Queen
 

Six months after the AIDS-related death of Queen's lead singer, his surviving bandmates hosted the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness. Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Elton John and Robert Plant led an all-star cast celebrating that crazy little thing called love.

Macho Men
 

Even little old ladies and truck drivers love a man in uniform. 'Y.M.C.A.,' the the "hangin' around the gym" anthem by gay icons the Village People, has endured as one of our most family-friendly singalongs, as inevitable at wedding receptions as it is as ballparks.

 

 

#2

I Want Your Sex
 

George Michael turned a PR disaster -- his 1998 arrest for a lewd act in a public bathroom in Beverly Hills -- into masterful spin with his video for the single 'Outside,' which featured kissing policemen and a line about how he'd "service the community."

 

#1