When Proposition 8 passed in California in November of 2008, eliminating the right for same-sex couples to marry, Americans were up in arms. Undeterred by the ruling, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, photographer and director of The Black List and The Latino List, and interviewer Sam McConnell decided to make a documentary on various figures from the gay community. “When we started, we were calling the project ‘Generation 8,’ which was a real strong reference to the post–Proposition 8 generation,” Greenfield-Sanders recalled. “We started to interview people and we felt it would be limiting to be just about marriage equality; there are so many other issues.” The Out List, which will be released on HBO on June 27—the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall riots—tackles marriage equality, the coming-out process, stereotypes, and what it means to be gay in America today. Vanity Fair takes a look at a selection of Greenfield-Sanders’s powerful portraits of the people who shared their experience for the movie.
