Is Sam Smith the first openly gay man to win an Oscar (2016)? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Mark Hughes, Screenwriter, Film Critic at Forbes, on Quora.
I'm going to define "openly gay" for our purposes here as meaning "having publicly acknowledged being gay, and/or living openly as gay and acknowledging it when asked," as opposed to "being generally presumed to be gay and/or having come out to family and friends, but avoiding discussing it publicly or otherwise keeping it private and avoiding living openly and publicly as gay."
I see some names being cited in the press and elsewhere as supposed Oscar winners who were "out" when they won, but many of them were simply assumed to be gay or were out only to friends and family, and so I don't feel those names fairly qualify as "openly gay" in the way we're talking about for this question.
John Gielgud for example was never "openly gay" and did his best to avoid discussing it or acknowledging it publicly. He told friends he admired those performers who were brave enough to come out publicly but that he personally couldn't do it. Linda Hunt is the only Oscar-winning performer who was really publicly "out" as homosexual at the time of her win (during the Oscar ceremony in 1984).
Likewise, George Cukor was not publicly out, even though within the film business a lot of people were aware of his sexuality. He, like most other homosexuals working in the industry, kept that part of his life private and avoided discussing it or acknowledging it publicly.
However, there were many openly gay people to win Oscars prior to Sam Smith's win at the 88th Academy Awards, for his song "Writing's On the Wall" from the movie Spectre.
The most obvious would be Dustin Lance Black, who publicly scolded Sam Smith (via social media) for claiming to be the first openly gay Oscar winner. Black won an Oscar for his original screenplay for the movie Milk.
Elton John has been "out" as a gay man since 1988, after initially coming out as bisexual in the mid-1970s. John won an Oscar for Best Original Song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" for the movie The Lion King.
Other singers/songwriters and directors have won Oscars while being openly gay, too, and many of them can be found in other answers here.