Voice for Equality: Hugh Hefner
September 04, 2009
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!
**Make your NOMINATION for a Voice for Equality today!