American journalist and activist Michelangelo Signorile was BOTD in 1960. Born in Brooklyn to an Italian-American family, he studied journalism aat Syracuse University, moving to New York City in the mid-1980s where he worked for an entertainment public relations firm. He became involved in HIV/AIDS activist group ACT-UP, and was arrested after protesting at a speech given by Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) in 1998. He rose to wider public attention as the co-founder and editor of OutWeek magazine, launched with fellow journalist Sarah Pettit, controversially outing a number of public figures including Hollywood producer David Geffen, gossip columnist Liz Smith and publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes. In 1990, he and three ACT-UP members co-founded Queer Nation, a radical protest group focusing on anti-gay violence and increasing queer visibility. He joined The Advocate magazine in 1991, outing Assistant Secretary of Defense Pete Williams, reporting on the culture of homophobia at the New York Times, and regularly locking heads with conservative gay commentator Andrew Sullivan. He offered a defence of outing in his 1993 book Queer in America: Sex, Media and the Closets of Power, which became a national bestseller. He worked briefly for Out magazine, attracting considerable publicity with his article Unsafe Like Me, relating a past one-night stand involving unprotected sex. The article, and his 1997 book Life Outside provoked debate among gay activists, many of whom accused Signorile of adopting a puritanical approach to safe sex campaigning. He left Out in 1998 after an infamous clash with newly-appointed editor James Collard (who unwisely asked him to tone down his activism) and returned to The Advocate, where he blasted Collard’s notion of a “post-gay” consumerist model of gay masculinity. In 2003, he began hosting The Michelangelo Signorile Show, a news and current affair programme on the Sirius XM satellite radio network. Moving to Sirius XM Progress in 2013, the show has a daily listenership of 8.5 million households. His most recent book, It’s Not Over, was published in 2015. He also worked as editor-at-large at the Huffington Post until 2019. Signorile lives in New York City with his husband, the academic and filmmaker David Gerstner.