Pride Power List: Sir Ian McKellen and Munroe Bergdorf among top 100 celebrated LGBT+ people

On Saturday 6 July, the capital commemorates Pride in London – celebrating the lives, achievements, history and future of the LGBT+ community.

To coincide with the jubilant occasion, the Pride Power List 2019 has been released, revealing the members of the LGBT+ community in the UK who have made the greatest positive impact in the past year in the fight for the equality and inclusion of LGBT+ individuals.

Published exclusively in The Independent, this year's list received a staggering 50,000 nominations from the general public, a far cry from the small number of nominations received during its inaugural year in 2012.

"The list celebrates all that is good and great in the LGBT+ community and has a unique mix of celebrity, community, celebrity and business leaders," says Linda Riley, GLAAD board director, publisher of DIVA magazine and founder of the Pride Power List.

Individuals included in this year's list include Ruth Hunt, chief executive of LGBT+ charity Stonewall; Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue; and Liz Carr, an actor, comedian and disability rights campaigner.

One of the individuals on the list whom Riley finds the most inspirational is actor and Stonewall co-founder Sir Ian McKellen, who came out via a radio broadcast in 1988.

"When he came out it was such a difficult time for him and he was actually risking his career," Riley says.

"By co-founding Stonewall, Sir Ian helped pave the way for the LGBT+ equality we have here now (aside from Northern Ireland where same-sex couples shockingly still cannot get married)."

In addition to the Pride Power List, which initially launched in 2012 as the "World Pride Power List", other lists also released include the Pride Allies Top 10 list, which pays tribute to notable allies of the LGBT+ community; and the Pride Power Couples Top 10 List, which honours distinguished LGBT+ couples.

Riley explains that Pride is both a "celebration" and a "protest", providing the world with a stark reminder of the suffering the LGBT+ community has faced over the years.

"We need certain mainstream media to take a lead and to stop running homophobic and transphobic articles, and we need schools to stop caving into homophobic pressure about the teaching of LGBTQ history," Riley states.

The founder of the European Diversity Awards adds that more allies are needed to help the voices of the LGBT+ community be "amplified to a wider reaching audience".

Click through the gallery above to read about a selection of the individuals listed in Pride Power List 2019's Top 100 individuals from the LGBT+ community.

Scroll down for the Pride Power List, Pride Allies List and Pride Power Couples List in full.

For all the latest news on Pride, click here.

Source: Independent

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