Kansas might not be the first place to come to mind when considering the home states of famous LGBTQ+ people.
Despite whatever national reputation the state may have, the fact is that Kansas has produced many LGBTQ+ people who have found success in the worlds of film, academia, sports, music, literature and beyond.
In celebration of Kansas Day, we want to share just a few of the famous Kansans who are or were part of the LGBTQ+ community. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it offers a glimpse at some of the well-known LGBTQ+ people who call Kansas home.
Scott Frantz
Originally from Lawrence, Scott Frantz played offensive lineman for Kansas State from 2015 to 2019. He made 51 straight starts at left tackle for the Wildcats, and he was a second-team All-Big 12 selection in 2019.
In an interview with ESPN’s Holly Rowe released July 13, 2017, Frantz publicly revealed that he is gay, and once that season started, he became the first openly gay man to play for an FBS program. He came out to his teammates after his redshirt season in 2015 and said, “I’ve never felt so loved and so accepted ever in my life than when I did that.”
Although he didn’t tell college recruiters about his sexual orientation, Frantz explained to Rowe he later decided to come out publicly to help others feel accepted.
Frantz went undrafted in the 2020 NFL Draft and became a special education teacher.
Cassandra Peterson
Before she was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra Peterson was a Riley Countian. Born in Manhattan in 1951, she lived in Randolph before the construction of Tuttle Creek Lake forced the town to move.
Cassandra Peterson attends the Knott’s Scary Farm Black Carpet Event Sept. 30, 2016, in Buena Park, Calif.
After graduating from high school in Colorado Springs, Colorado, she became a showgirl in Las Vegas and had a small role in the 1971 James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever.” She debuted as Elvira — her sexy goth vampire persona — in 1981 when she hosted the horror movie show “Elvira’s Movie Macabre” in 1986.
She starred in the 1988 feature film “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,” and in 1993, she filmed a CBS pilot for “The Elvira Show,” which would have been set in Manhattan had any TV network picked up the series.
In her 2021 memoir, Peterson revealed that she had a long-term relationship with a woman named Teresa “T” Wierson since 2002.
Alan L. Hart
Alan L. Hart was born in Halls Summit, an unincorporated community in Coffey County, in 1890 and became a physician and radiologist who spearheaded the use of X-rays in the detection of tuberculosis. This allowed doctors to screen for tuberculosis and treat it before patients began experiencing complications, and it also helped keep the infectious disease from spreading to others.
According to Scientific American, Hart’s method — which is still in use today — saved “countless” lives.
But when Hart was born, his name was Alberta Lucille Hart. Despite having female anatomy, he identified as male from a young age, and his grandparents’ obituaries in 1921 and 1924 listed him as a grandson. While in college, Hart had a romantic relationship with a woman named Eva Cushman.
After graduation, Hart sought psychiatric counseling and, over the winter vacation of 1917-18, became the first documented transgender person to undergo male transition in the United States. He legally changed his name, married his first wife and set up his medical practice in Gardiner, Oregon, in 1918.
Although Hart dealt with public prejudice, he eventually became the director of hospitalization and rehabilitation at the Connecticut State Tuberculosis Commission. He also published four novels and nine short stories.
He died in 1962.
Janelle Monae Robinson
Janelle Monae Robinson has been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards and won a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Children’s and Family Emmy as a singer, songwriter, rapper and actress from the Kansas side of Kansas City.
A graduate of F.L. Schlagle High School, she moved to New York to study musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, where she was the only Black woman in her class. She released a demo album in 2003 and performed guest vocals for Purple Ribbon All-Stars and Outkast.
Janelle Monae performs at the YouTube Theater Oct. 18 in Inglewood, Calif.
Sean Combs signed her to Bad Boy Records in 2006, and in 2007, she released her debut solo album, “Metropolis.” Since then, she has appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and “Dancing With the Stars,” and she has performed multiple times at the Grammy Awards and Academy Awards. She provided guest vocals on fun.’s diamond-certified single “We Are Young” in 2011.
She has appeared in 11 movies, including “Hidden Figures” in 2016.
Monae identifies as bisexual, pansexual and non-binary, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2022 that her pronouns are “free-a** mother****er — and they/them, her/she.”
She has released four albums. Her most recent release is “The Age of Pleasure,” which came out in 2023.
Mary Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks was a film actress in the 1920s and 1930s who, like “I Love Lucy” actress Vivian Vance, was born in Cherryvale in 1906. She helped to popularize the bob hairstyle, an icon of the flapper culture.
After living with her family in Independence and Wichita, Brooks joined the Los Angeles-based Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts at age 15 in 1922. She was dismissed from the company two years later, and her subsequent work as a chorus girl and semi-nude dancer caught the attention of Paramount Pictures producer Walter Wanger.
She signed a five-year contract with Paramount in 1925 and made her on-screen debut by way of an uncredited role in “The Street of Forgotten Men.” That same year, she had a two-month affair with silent film star Charlie Chaplin.
The distinctive bob haircut she wore in the 1928 film “A Girl in Every Port” caught on with viewers, particularly in Europe. She became jaded with the Hollywood scene and filmed a few movies across the Atlantic before returning to the US.
She starred opposite John Wayne in the 1938 western “Overland Stage Raiders,” but by 1940, her acting career had significantly declined.
Brooks was married twice and had a series of romantic affairs with men and women, including an alleged one-night stand with Greta Garbo. She claimed she was neither a lesbian nor bisexual, and her biographer, Barry Paris wrote, “The operative rule with Louise was neither heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality. It was just sexuality.”
Following her film career, Brooks briefly returned to Wichita. She died in 1985 in Rochester, New York.
Gilbert Baker
Gilbert Baker was an artist and designer who created the LGBTQ+ community’s emblematic rainbow flag in 1978. He was born in Chanute in 1951 and grew up in Parsons before moving to San Francisco as an Army medic in 1970, right when the gay rights movement was beginning.
He lived openly as a gay man and put his sewing and design skills to work making banners for gay rights and anti-war protests. He also became friends with San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the first known gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. as a non-incumbent.
Gilbert Baker, designer of the rainbow flag, is draped with the flag while protesting at the St. Patrick’s Day parade March 17, 2014, in New York.
Baker sought to invent a new symbol for the LGBTQ+ community to replace the pink triangle, which fell out of vogue because of its association with the Nazis’ persecution of LGBTQ+ people. He unveiled his rainbow flag at San Francisco Pride on June 25, 1978. His original version included eight colors, though the most common iteration of the flag comprises six colors because of practical manufacturing reasons.
He went on to design displays for the Democratic National Convention, the Premier of China, the presidents of France and the Philippines, and the King of Spain among others.
He moved to New York in 1994 and died in 2017.
Katie Sowers
Katie Sowers, a native of Hesston, broke two different barriers when the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers played in Super Bowl LIV in 2017. As an offensive assistant, not only was she the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl, but she was also the first openly LGBTQ+ coach to do so.
Sowers began playing football at age 8 and was a member of the West Michigan Mayhem and Kansas City Titans in the Women’s Football Alliance. She retired in 2016 because of a hip injury, and that year, she joined the NFL as a training camp assistant with the Atlanta Falcons.
Katie Sowers after an NFL preseason football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs in Santa Clara, Calif., Aug. 14, 2021.
In 2017 and 2018, she was a seasonal offensive assistant with the 49ers and became a full-time coach in 2019. She joined the Kansas City Chiefs coaching staff in 2021, but in October of that year, she returned to Kansas as the director of strategic initiatives at Ottawa University.
She is also the defensive coordinator and director of operations for the women’s flag football team.
Sowers came out publicly as a lesbian in 2017, which made her the first openly LGBTQ+ coach in the NFL.
