Voice for Equality: Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner sometimes known simply as Hef, is an American magazine publisher, founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises. Working as a copywriter for Esquire, he left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he pawned his furniture for $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors - including $1,000 from his mother to launch Playboy. Hefner remade himself as a sophisticated bon vivant and man about town, a lifestyle he has promoted in two TV shows he hosted and in his magazine over more than five decades.

Hugh Hefner was an early advocate for gay inclusiveness. When Esquire rejected a science-fiction short story by Charles Beaumont that depicted a world where heterosexuals were in the minority, Hefner accepted the piece and published it in a 1955 edition of Playboy, then still a relatively new publication. After letters of outrage at Beaumont's "The Crooked Man" poured in, Hefner addressed readers. "If it is wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society," he wrote in response, "then the reverse is wrong, too."

Mr. Hefner, himself twice-married, was quoted by the Daily Beast on August 27, 2009 as saying:

Without question, love in its various permutations is what we need more of in this world. The idea that the concept of marriage will be sullied by marriages of same-sex couples is ridiculous. Heterosexuals haven't been doing that well at it on their own. [Link]

Freedom to Marry salutes Hugh Hefner as a Voice for Equality!

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