Let's face it: If you're famous, LGBT fans are the best. It's something pretty much every celebrity acknowledges out in the open, but has anybody ever asked why? Why is it that LGBT fans are so darn loyal, so nice and so incredibly supportive? Why are we the ones who stuck with Britney even when the rest of the world said goodbye? Why is it that LGBT people are the good neighbors, the ones who bring housing prices up, the loving parents fulfilling such incredibly positive stereotypes? How did we manage to be so awesome?
There must be some reason we ended up like this. There are so many possibilities, but maybe, just maybe, we can narrow it down to one: We go through hell.
There's something about being stigmatized from birth to death that you can't shake. We're always in the fishbowl, we're always having to come out every time we meet someone new, and we're always having to be "that gay guy," "that transgender woman" or "that lesbian" to everyone we meet. It's hard not to see ourselves as community leaders, as examples for everybody else to follow. We are forced to overcome so many obstacles that our toughness and independence are hard to match.
Moreover, going through serious life drama makes us the most compassionate people to come to. We just don't have it in us to abandon our pantheon of goddesses -- Kylie, Madonna, Britney, Cher or any of the new and emerging stars, like Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen -- because we've been there. We've all been through moments in life when we wanted to cut off our hair and run away from our problems. (For me, joining the Navy was a literal reenactment of the Britney experience.) Many of us have had to struggle with financial problems, paying for college and finding a way to do what we want in life without much support. It forces us to get smart -- fast. These experiences humble us and make us the last people to judge others for the crap they go through.
The truth of the matter is that our struggle is what makes us such great people. We should all be proud of it, too. There's no greater accomplishment than having faced hardship and overcome it. So for once, let's give ourselves a pat on the back. Yeah, we've got it rougher than everybody else, but you know what? Thanks to all the haters, we're the best.