It was in that world, as Signorile describes in his book Queer in America, where he saw a double standard regarding how the media glamorized heterosexuality among celebrities while covering up homosexuality.

In his book Queer in America and in numerous articles and interviews, Signorile has discussed how he began to see that many in the media, among his circles as well, were either sensationalizing AIDS in the 1980s or running away from it.

"Suddenly," Signorile wrote in Queer in America about the protest, "I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could.

Signorile soon became the chair of the media committee of ACT UP, organizing publicity for major, theatrical AIDS activist protests of the time, and taking on the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, New York's City Hall and other government agencies in the media, criticizing them for what AIDS activists saw as their foot-dragging while people were dying.

Though controversial, ACT UP and its tactics have been credited with bringing more attention to AIDS among politicians and the media, and speeding the development and approval of HIV drugs in the 1990s.

[7] Signorile has been considered a pioneer of outing (though he believes the discussion has often been distorted by the media, and he opposes using a violent, active verb to define the phenomenon).

[8] Signorile has argued in favor of outing from a journalistic perspective, calling for the "equalization" of reporting on gay and straight public figures.

Geffen, as a record producer, was promoting Guns N' Roses, a rock group which had been attacked for antigay lyrics ("...faggots...spread some fuckin' disease"[10]) and other performers, such as comedian Andrew Dice Clay, whose comedy routines in the late 1980s were seen by many as homophobic and misogynistic.

Clay has also mocked pleas for AIDS funding ("get a job, buttfucka"), and used antigay slurs; "they don't know if they want to be called gays, homosexuals, fairies," he has said.

Signorile also outed the gossip columnist Liz Smith (who also eventually acknowledged her bisexuality), whom he maintained helped celebrities and others to present themselves as heterosexual when they were in fact gay.

New York Post columnist Amy Pagnozzi compared him to the right-wing, anti-communist 1950s senator, Joseph McCarthy, in a column headlined "Magazine Drags Gays Out of the Closet" (Queer in America, p. 73).

"[14] In a subsequent article in The Village Voice, Signorile charged a media cover-up of his Forbes story, claiming that various news outlets were going to report on it, but later decided against it.

[17] Signorile wrote columns and feature stories for The Advocate for several years, including the groundbreaking two-part cover story "Out at The New York Times"—in which the paper's gay and lesbian staffers, its top editors and its then-new publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., spoke for the first time, to Signorile, about years of homophobia at the paper of record and how they were charting a new course.

The column was adapted to the op-ed page of The New York Times and inspired a CBS "60 Minutes" treatment of the issue in which Signorile was profiled.

He covered the controversy surrounding the Millennium March on Washington for LGBT Rights, which divided many in the community regarding its time and purpose and at which a theft occurred at the festival.

During that time Signorile also pioneered Internet radio, webcasting a weekly show on GAYBC.com beginning in 2000, covering the global LGBT community.

In an interview, he has described a machine called a "vector" that he would plug into a phone outlet and which allowed him to webcast live via Gaybc's studios in Seattle.

OutQ, as the only 24/7 LGBT radio channel, broke new ground and Signorile's interviews and monologues often made news Archived June 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.

The show airs on satellite radio across North America and is streamed worldwide on the Internet and to the Android, BlackBerry, and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) handheld devices to over 25 million Sirius XM subscribers.

[23] Signorile interviews politicians, activists, journalists, authors and other public figures, analyzes news and cultural events, and takes calls from listeners from coast-to-coast.

Signorile's show is one of the highest rated programs on the Sirius XM network with an average daily listenership of more than 8.5 million households.

Signorile and much of his work over the years were featured prominently in the film Outrage, directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick and which focused on closeted antigay politicians, making a case for why media should report on their sexual orientation.