Dustin Lance Black

In 2009 The Advocate made writer Dustin Lance Black the cover of its 40 Under 40 issue on the heels of his now-legendary win for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Black has continued to make good on Milk's mission, emerging as a major LGBT activist in his own right. In 2009 he became a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization behind the challengers of Prop. 8 and its eventual overturning in the Supreme Court. Along the way, Dustin Lance Black wrote 8, an acclaimed play reenacting the federal trial Hollingsworth v. Perry, and screenplay based on the life of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.