Twenty years ago this past April, Ellen DeGeneres stepped up to a conveniently-placed airport intercom microphone and told an expectant Laura Dern, “I’m gay.” It was a watershed moment in terms of gay representation on TV, garnering media attention, controversy, a boycott (driven by homophobia), and jubilant celebration. But it also didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ellen Morgan was a pioneering figure, one of the first main characters on TV to come out as gay, but she wasn’t the first and certainly not the last.

The struggle for LGBTQ representation on TV has been an evolution marked by slow progress. Starting with scandalous villain-of-the-week characters on crime dramas in the ’60s and one-off gays-of-the-week in sitcoms of the ’70s, the journey to today’s diverse LGBTQ landscape has been marked by momentum and setbacks. But with each of those lurches forward and steps back came a story. Each imperfect vessel found its way to someone — likely many someones — in the viewing audience starving for some sliver they could identify with. “Problematic” doesn’t begin to describe, say, Billy Crystal’s Jodie Dallas on Soap, but he was a boot planted on the soil of a popular TV series, and from there we could begin to march forward.

As is inevitable in the case of an underrepresented minority, no one character ever seemed to satisfy all requirements. Sassy queens were stereotypes; buttoned-up gays were assimilationist eunuchs; gay villains were a field of land mines; lesbian characters were already fighting an uphill battle when it came to good roles for women in the first place; and trans characters were nearly invisible. Progress was slow — is slow — but out of the the bricks of each of these imperfect characters has been built a foundation. A history. A canon. These are our characters, who we’ve grown up with, struggled with, identified with, secretly pined for, quietly cried for, and all too infrequently were able to cheer for as well.

Over 60 years after the first identifiably gay character appeared (in the TV musical Lady in the Dark), television is moving ever closer to representing the rainbow of identities that constitute the LGBTQ spectrum. We thought it was time to mark where we are and where we’ve come from.

Over the last several weeks, Decider polled over 40 LGBTQ entertainment professionals — writers, directors, showrunners, actors, journalists — and asked them to list their picks for the most important LGBTQ TV characters of all time. We let “important” be defined in the eye of the beholder; these characters all meant something to us in our own personal ways. Then from these individual lists, we compiled an expert ranking of the top 50 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender TV characters (narrative only; reality-TV characters could comprise a whole list of their own), ranging from the primetime soaps of the 1980s to the streaming series of today. What follows is a list chosen by a community of peers, selecting the 50 TV characters who made their mark most prominently. It’s both a nod to the past and a hopeful gaze into the future. It’s a celebration of the characters who have helped, in whatever small or significant ways, to tell our stories.

Over the next few days, look out for essays on the top 10 characters on our list, in recognition of their particularly significant place in LGBTQ entertainment.

Decider’s 50 Most Important LGBTQ TV Characters

1. Rickie Vasquez, My So-Called Life

2. Willow Rosenberg, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3. Ellen Morgan, Ellen

4. Sophia Bursett, Orange Is the New Black

5. Maura Pfefferman, Transparent

6. Jack McFarland, Will & Grace

7. Titus Andromedon, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

8. Will Truman, Will & Grace

9. David Fisher, Six Feet Under

10. Omar Little, The Wire

11. Kurt Hummel,Glee

12. Jodie Dallas, Soap

13. Poussey Washington, Orange Is the New Black

14. Lafayette Reynolds, True Blood

15. Max Blum, Happy Endings

16. Marshall Gregson, United States of Tara

17. Jamal Lyon, Empire

18. Justin Suarez, Ugly Betty

19. Bianca Montgomery, All My Children

20. Jack McPhee, Dawson’s Creek

21. Salvatore Romano, Mad Men

22. Keith Charles, Six Feet Under

23. Elijah Krantz,Girls

24. Mitchell Pritchett, Modern Family

25. Brian Kinney, Queer As Folk

26. Josh, Please Like Me

27. Shane McCutcheon, The L Word

28. Dr. Kerry Weaver, E.R.

29. Callie Torres,Grey’s Anatomy

30. Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

31. Richie Donado Ventura, Looking

32. Michael Novotny, Queer As Folk

33. Jack Harkness, Torchwood

34. Alice Pieszecki, The L Word

35. Bette Porter, The L Word

36. Patrick Murray, Looking

37. Anna Madrigal, Tales of the City

38. Santana Lopaz, Glee

39. Noah Nicholson, Noah’s Arc

40. Marco Del Rossi, Degrassi: The Next Generation

41. Marc St. James, Ugly Betty

42. Kalinda Sharma, The Good Wife

43. Nancy Bartlett, Roseanne

44. Steven Carrington, Dynasty

45. Emily Fields, Pretty Little Liars

46. Alex Danvers, Supergirl

47. Kima Greggs, The Wire

48. Nomi Marks, Sense8

49. Cameron Tucker, Modern Family

50. Ilana Wexler, Broad City

Contributors

Michael Arbeiter, Nerdist

Kate Aurthur, Buzzfeed

Jamie Babbitt, film and TV director (But I’m a Cheerleader; Girls)

Manuel Betancourt, entertainment writer

Julia Bicknell, writer (13 Reasons Why)

Joel Kim Booster, comedian

Ron Carlivati, head writer (Days of Our Lives)

Tyler Coates, Esquire

Ian Carlos Crawford, GeeksOUT

Matthew D’Ambrosio, writer (The Vampire Diaries)

Murtada Elfadl, entertainment writer

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast

Nolan Feeney, Entertainment Weekly

Jamey Giddens, Daytime Confidential

Drew Z. Greenberg, writer (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Fran Hoepfner, ClickHole

Dave Holmes, Esquire

Zac Hug, writer (Shadowhunters)

Matt Jacobs, Huffington Post

Max Jenkins, actor (The Mysteries of Laura)

Nanatchka Khan, showrunner (Fresh Off the Boat)

Gabe Liedman, writer (Transparent; Broad City)

Ira Madison III, Daily Beast

Matt McConkey, TV writer (Heathers)

Lane Moore, comedian/host of Tinder Live

Brian Moylan, entertainment writer

Jesse Murray, SyFy.com

Kevin O’Keeffe, Mic.com

Rory O’Malley, actor (Hamilton)

Louis Peitzman, Buzzfeed

Price Peterson, TV Guide

Dana Piccoli, Bella Books, After Ellen

Kristy Puchko, Pajiba

Joe Reid, Decider.com

Angela Robinson, director (D.E.B.S.)

Matthew Rodriguez, Mic.com

Daniel Rogge, VH1

Chris Schleicher, writer (The Mindy Project)

Ari Shapiro, NPR

Riley Silverman, comedian/writer

David Smithyman, writer (Fresh Off the Boat)

Glen Weldon, NPR

Brett White, Decider.com

Erin Whitney, Screencrush

Jarett Wieselman, Buzzfeed

Bowen Yang, comedian/actor (The Outs, Broad City)