Born in Davenport, Iowa, on August 8, 1951, he was educated at the University of Oregon, where he received a B.S. in 1975. After a stint with the gay newsmagazine The Advocate, he worked as a correspondent for several San Francisco television stations and newspapers.

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By the time of his death of complications from AIDS on February 17, 1994, he had become by far the most successful openly gay journalist in the country, an astute interpreter of the various issues affecting American gay men and lesbians, especially gay and lesbian politics, the AIDS epidemic, and discrimination in the military, the subjects of his three highly acclaimed books.

Shilts's first book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), is a biography of the first openly gay elected official in the country, the charismatic San Francisco Supervisor, who was assassinated in 1978 and became a martyr for the burgeoning gay rights movement.

As the title indicates, the book is a history of a turbulent era as well as a chronicle of a particular life. Shilts tells the story of how San Francisco became the vortex of the national gay rights movement and how Milk came to personify the aspirations of a diverse constituency.

The book analyzes San Francisco city politics in illuminating detail; provides fascinating accounts of the various political campaigns waged by Milk, including the successful struggle to defeat a statewide initiative that would have banned gay men and lesbians from teaching school in California; and recounts the aftermath of Milk's murder, including the trial of his assassin, Dan White, and the riots that flared after White's so-called Twinkie defense allowed him to escape conviction for first-degree murder.

In And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1987), Shilts tells the always fascinating, frequently depressing, and sometimes exhilarating story of the emergence of the disease that decimated gay communities throughout the country as it spread almost unchecked for the first five years after its appearance. Gripping and richly detailed, the book is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism.

Seeking to explain why American medical and political institutions did so little for so long, Shilts documents the petty bickerings, turf disputes, scientific rivalries, and failures of political vision that exacerbated the crisis, even as he also chronicles the heroism of individuals who struggled mightily to contain it.

Shilts's final book is another massive work that combines history and investigative journalism, Conduct Unbecoming: Gay and Lesbians in the U.S. Military: Vietnam to the Persian Gulf (1993). Influenced by Allan Bérubé's account of gays in World War II, Coming Out Under Fire (1990), Conduct Unbecoming brilliantly uncovers the scandalous mistreatment suffered by gay men and lesbians in the military.

While documenting the fact that many of the most celebrated American soldiers have been gay, the book also traces the development of a gay subculture within the ranks. Like Shilts's other two books, Conduct Unbecoming focuses on the stories of a host of individuals.

These stories, many of which are as compelling as finely crafted suspense fiction, function to humanize and render personal an important public issue. Beyond that, the stories mirror the that gay men and lesbians encounter in all sectors of society.

Perhaps Shilts's greatest achievement as a writer was that he brought novelistic skills to the practice of journalism. All three of his books are distinguished by compelling narratives and vividly detailed character portrayals.

In the twenty years since its first appearance in the West, AIDS has been the subject of a large body of literature, most of it written by gay men and much of it designed to expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of affected individuals.

The gay and lesbian press is of prime importance in sustaining a frequently embattled minority and has been crucial in the development of a national mass movement for gay rights.

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black has quickly established himself as both an accomplished filmmaker and a committed activist.

Award-winning television journalist Anderson Cooper, famous for his reporting from war zones and scenes of natural and man-made disasters, ended years of speculation by confirming his homosexuality in 2012.

Publisher David Goodstein transformed The Advocate into the leading American gay newsmagazine.

Los Angeles activist Morris Kight, a determined and courageous--if sometimes eccentric--fighter for glbtq rights, worked for decades in the struggle for equality.

Harvey Milk, among the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States, was assassinated in San Francisco's City Hall, making him the American gay liberation movement's most visible martyr.

Historian and journalist Neil Miller has attempted to widen the understanding of gay and lesbian life by moving away from the major metropolitan areas, focusing instead on small cities and rural areas.

One of only a few openly gay anchors on national television news, Thomas Roberts has emerged as a visible symbol of new opportunities for openly gay people in society generally, as well as in journalism in particular.

Film director and producer Bryan Singer overturns standard narrative formulae and develops complex characters; he consistently emphasizes the fluidity and ambiguity of identity categories, including those pertaining to gender and sexuality.

Prolific film, television, and stage producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have created a diverse body of work, including a number of theatrical films and television features with glbtq themes.