By Jonathan Jones

What would the world be like were it not for the contributions of LGBT people? Too many times growing up I heard at best disparaging and at worst downright hateful comments about us, about how the world would be better if we weren't in it. So just what has been our contribution? What do we bring to this world?

Imagine the world of popular music without the likes of Elton John, George Michael, Michael Stipe, Freddie Mercury, Neil Tennant, Andy Bell, Marc Almond, Dusty Springfield and Boy George. Imagine the wider musical world without Stephen Sondheim, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Ivor Novello and Cole Porter. Can you envisage the world of theatre without the likes of Noel Coward, Lionel Bart and Sir Cameron Mackintosh?

Imagine no Bessie Smith, Joan Baez or Janis Joplin. No Little Richard or Johnny Mathis. Imagine the acting world bereft of Sir Ian McKellen, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, Sir Nigel Hawthorne, Dirk Bogarde, Sal Mineo, Errol Flynn, Tallulah Banhkead, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Sir John Gielgud, Angelina Jolie, Nathan Lane, David Hyde Pierce to name just a few. Imagine the world of fashion lacking both Gianni Versace and Giorgio Armani.

Imagine the sports world without Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King and Amelie Mauresmo. Imagine the art world without Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Francis Bacon. Imagine a world without the writings of Walt Whitman, Vita Sackville-West, Truman Capote, Sappho, Gertrude Stein, Christopher Isherwood, E. M. Forster, Virgina Woolf, W.H. Auden and Oscar Wilde. Imagine no films by Gus Van Sant or Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

Can you imagine Torvill and Dean not being able to skate along to Ravel's Bolero at the 1984 Olympics? Can you imagine the team of Monty Python's Flying Circus minus Graham Chapman? Imagine how different the world would have been without the genius that was Alan Turing. And where would we be without the work of both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo? Without Brian Epstein, would The Beatles have been so successful? Can you imagine the world of dance without Rudolf Nureyev or Hitchcock's Psycho without the incredible and sinister performance by the late Anthony Perkins? Imagine Marc Shaiman never having existed and we'd be without dozens of amazing film scores.

None of this bears thinking about yet we have only touched on a small fraction of what us queers bring to this world. We haven't even got close to the real amount we bring because so many of us are still closeted. Even those who are out still have residual amounts of shame and guilt which will doubtless hold them back and there are countless more who will never live honestly and who'll remain hidden forever. Even if you take someone who is gay but celibate for whatever reason, that homosexuality will still come out in some way or other because being queer isn't just about what we do with our bodies, it's an integral part of our hearts and minds, our psyches and therefore our lives.

So I say to the hate and spite filled bigots who would be done with every last one of us "what are you going to watch when we're gone? What are you going to listen to? What are you going to wear? What are you going to read?" and they would more than likely cite an extensive list of people who aren't LGBT in their defence. But how many of these people were/are totally heterosexual? How many of them managed to make it through their lives without being influenced in some ways by someone queer? We are everywhere, impacting upon every single part of life and society.

Don't be afraid but we're here to stay.