I Woke Up This Gay

*A podcast by Stuart Merrill: LGBTQ+ rights activist, lobbyist, historian, and survivor.*I Woke Up This Gay is a firsthand journey through LGBTQ+ history—the history they never taught you—and the stories of heroes they want you to forget. These are stories from someone who knew, loved, and witnessed many of them change the world. The journey begins with "Russia Doesn't Have Gay Heroes," the story of Kostya, Stuart's boyfriend, a hero of the 1991 revolution that brought down Soviet communism. Two days after that victory, he was assasinated by the new government he help establish—a victim of a society unwilling to accept a gay hero. Born into a prominent Mormon family, Stuart Merrill survived anti-gay violence, came out during the height of the AIDS epidemic, worked for U.S. intelligence agencies in the Soviet Union, East and West Germany, was the first American in history allowed to keep his top secret security clearance after coming out as gay, lived and worked openly as a gay man in