The AfterElton "Gay List" Early Front Runners

Since Monday, when voting opened in our poll to identify your top 50 gay and bisexual male celebrities, almost 3,000 people have used the voting form, collectively casting over 20,000 name votes. Clearly, you think it's as important to recognize and validate the gay and bi men who are leading open and publicly visible lives as we do.

We've had a look at the early data, and while we can't tell you precisely who is in the lead and by how much, we can tell you the top fifteen vote-getters as of this moment.

Here they are in alphabetical order (with links to their Twitter acounts where we could find them)...

Adam Lambert

Cheyenne Jackson

Chris Colfer

Dan Savage

Gareth Thomas

Sir Ian McKellen

Jake Shears

John Barrowman

Jonathan Groff

Luke MacFarlane

Matthew Mitcham

Neil Patrick Harris

Ricky Martin

Russell Tovey

Stephen Fry

Of course, there's no guarantee that any of these men will remain in the top 15 -- or how they'll ultimately be ranked among the top 50 when the voting closes.

But all the same, the odds favor them showing up on the list somewhere, and we thought our readers would be interested in knowing who the early front runners are.

Are your favorites represented here? If not, then be sure to vote and tell others to vote as well.

And while we're happy with how the list is shaping up so far, we would very much like to see more men of color represented in the voting. 

Haven't voted yet? Do it here!