While the meaning of diversity has morphed as much as the world around us in recent years, and some may even believe it has become a corporate buzzword, the truth of the matter is many employers are failing the LGBT community and people with disabilities by not properly defining diversity in their initiatives.

According to a 2017 report by Out and Equal Workplace Advocates, a nonprofit that tracks employment statistics for the LGBT community, 1 in 4 LGBT employees report experiencing employment discrimination in the last 5 years. Likewise, transgender people face double the rate of unemployment as the overall population, and nearly 1 in 10 LGBT employees have left a job because the environment was unwelcoming.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) states in 2015, only 17.5 percent of people with a disability were employed — a steep contrast to the 65 percent of able-bodied individuals who were employed that year.

In 2017, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Ed), the utility company that provides New York City and Westchester County with electrical and gas services, was fined $800,000 by the EEOC for not hiring applicants with disabilities.

While some industries and places struggle more with diversity, such as high tech and television writers’ rooms, there are some organizations that are definitely hitting the diversity mark at the workplace.

Miguel Castro, Global Lead for Culture and Identity at SAP, shares LGBT people have a lot to offer to employers.

“In today’s world,” he said, “we know a commitment to inclusion is much more than a cultural ‘nice to have.’ In fact, it is proven that companies that are LGBT-inclusive are 72 percent more likely to attract allies as employees and increase productivity.”

“SAP is an active member,” Castro continued, “in recruitment and technology fairs targeting the LGBT and ally community across the globe, with examples like Lesbians Who Tech in San Francisco, and Sticks & Stones and #UNIT in Berlin.”

In addition to having LGBT-focused initiatives, SAP also has a division that actively recruits and supports people with disabilities. SAP’s “Differently Abled” area is lead by Stefanie Nennstiel, and the unit runs programs such as the world renowned Autism at Work, which helps people with autism enter the workforce, as well as SAP Software Accessibility, which ensures the highest levels of access guidelines are enforced across products.

Although some organizations are thriving as a result of their diversity strategies, there are far more that are simply getting worse when it comes to integrating inclusivity into their day-to-day operations.

Tammie Stevens, Daily Living Skills Trainer and Vocational Assessor for the Center of Vision Enhancement (COVE) in Merced, CA, a training facility for blind or visually impaired people, believes companies that struggle with diversity are organizations that have an antiquated perspective on diversity.

“Businesses focus so much on race,” she said, “that they leave everyone else out of the conversation. They don’t engage the communities they want to hire from and, instead, make assumptions on what will work.”

“For people with disabilities,” she continued, “this means that companies draw to conclusions on what we can or cannot do. They don’t realize that having a disability means being creative and resourceful on a daily basis, because we constantly have to adapt ourselves to our environments.”

As the definition of diversity continues to change, organizations that routinely reposition their inclusivity goals will find themselves at the heart of innovation.

For Mia Mingus, who had polio as an infant, and has had her share of inquiries about her physical disability from the public, humor has been a way to deal with all the questioning. She tells people: “I fell out of an airplane” or “I was attacked by a tiger.”

But all laughs aside, the 37-year-old queer writer and community educator from Oakland shares that her sense of safety is probably the biggest factor in dictating how she deals with the questioning.

“I am constantly assessing my environment, the people around me, and the relationships I have to them, when navigating any kind of oppression or threat of violence. For example,” she continues, “for the ever-persistent, ‘what’s wrong with you?,’ I often reply, ‘nothing, what is wrong with you?’ Or, sometimes I just say, ‘I have a disability,’ and end it there. These are all when I am in situations where it is safe enough for me to do so, because often times it is not safe.”

Mingus explains that able-bodied people can feel entitled to the time and attention of people with disabilities, and if they don’t receive it, they can get mad, angry, or even violent. She says, “Similarly to the ways in which men and masculine people feel entitled to women, femmes and feminine people’s time, attention, and labor, when we say ‘no’ or do not comply, there are serious consequences we may face.”

Whether intentional or not, Mingus points out forced intimacy dehumanizes people with disabilities. It helps to normalize ableism — the system of oppression that gives people superiority based on physical and mental ability.

“Ableism created and depends on the binary of ‘able-bodied’ and ‘disabled.’ Ableism is connected to, and mutually dependent with, other forms of oppression and violence,” says Mingus.

In the LGBTQ community, Mingus believes that ableism is palpable and contributes to the exclusion of people with disabilities — especially at pride events.

“I think we have a long way to go before pride events are accessible, because it is not only the logistical access, which definitely has a long way to go, but it is also the culture of ableism as well,” she says.

To combat forced intimacy and ableism, Mingus suggests people explore their able-bodied privilege. She says, “For starters, abled queer people can do their own work to learn about and understand disability, ableism, access and, most importantly, their abled privilege and how it connects to heterosexism, the gender binary, homophobia, transphobia, and trans misogyny.”

“At this point,” Mingus adds, “there are countless resources for those who are interested in learning. There are activists you can follow on social media, who routinely share educational resources, articles and posts. There are also queer and/or other social justice groups that they can find that have not only created material on this, but also have incorporated changes into their work.”

You can learn more about Mia Mingus’ work on her website at https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/.

Photo: Courtesy of Mia Mingus (pictured)

Belo Cipriani: Where are you from and what brought you to San Francisco?

Patrick Carney: I grew up in central Washington State, and we moved to Palmdale, CA when I went into high school. I moved to the Bay Area a month after Harvey Milk was assassinated in late 1998 to attend graduate school in architecture at UC Berkeley, and moved back and forth between Berkeley and San Francisco. I graduated with a Master’s Degree in Architecture in 1980 and began my career as an architect, and finally gave up the back-and-forth commute across the bay and moved full time into San Francisco.

BC: How did the idea for the Pink Triangle come together? What was your inspiration?

PC: The display started as an attempt to add a little extra color (pink, it turns out) to the 1996 Pride Parade. We were sitting in a restaurant on Market Street wondering how we could spread the weekend’s festivities to other parts of the city and noticed a huge blank canvas right outside the window — Twin Peaks. The Pink Triangle of Twin Peaks was born three weeks later. It started out as a renegade crafts project, which went up in the dark of night, and is now appreciated enough for the community and the city’s elected officials to help celebrate.

Once we learned so many people did not know about the story of the pink triangles used in Nazi concentration camps, annual commemoration ceremonies were then established. It is great to live in a city where one can not only put an enormous pink triangle on a hill in the middle of the town, but the mayor, supervisors, senators, assemblypersons, and our congressperson have shown up and taken part.

To many people, the pink triangle is a brightly colored, graphic image that has come to represent the LGBT movement, and there is often not a connection to the tragic history of how the symbol came about. In the 1930s and 40s, the pink triangle was used by the Nazis in concentration camps to identify and shame homosexual prisoners. This symbol, which was used to differentiate one “undesirable group” from another “undesirable group,” has been embraced by the gay community as a symbol of pride.

BC: How long did it take you to get it started and who were your initial supporters?

PC: The first year it was easy.

It started with a quick trip to Home Depot and the purchase of a handful of large tarps and large containers of pink paint. The display has doubled in size many times, requiring five painting parties. It’s now about 200 feet across and nearly an acre in size. Though now large, perhaps the most gigantic aspect of the display is not its size, but how many people it has hopefully educated and inspired. We install numerous placards along the edge of the tourist overlook, which is a few feet above the top edge of the pink triangle. We like to stay back and observe people reading the signs, which describe the project, to hear how they all universally seem to say: “I didn’t know that.” That means the education process is working. Mostly friends and family were the initial supporters, and they are still supportive to this day. My sister, Colleen Hodgkins, and my husband, Hossein Carney, are long-term and consistent volunteers — they are so essential and I can’t imagine the project lasting this long without their help and unwavering support, loyalty and reliability (we can expect that from family!). My nearly 92-year-old mother will be on Twin Peaks on Saturday, June 27th handing out coffee and pastries to the volunteers helping install the 20th annual display, just like she has done for every pink triangle set up for years.

BC: Have you received funding?

PC: Yes, outside funding is necessary. I have put in lots of money over the years, but lately, as the economy improved, there have been consistent donors. The 2015 sponsors are: Toad Hall, Badlands, The Apothecarium, SF Pride, The Castro Lions Club, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, The Steamworks, Hodgkins Jewelers, Haus of StarFish, Starbucks for the coffee, tea, snacks and volunteers, Barefoot and Bubbly for the champagne used in the christening.

BC: How many people does it take to put together?

PC: It takes about 125 people to install it on Saturday, and 50 to take it down Sunday, after the parade. The outline is installed by my husband, my sister and I the day before the public installation. We found that having the outline up makes it much easier once the volunteers arrive. The volunteers then fill in between the pink lines with 175 bright pink tarps and over 4,000 12” long steel spikes.

This is a true “community-building project” and volunteers are needed. See below for information on how you can help.

BC: Is the Pink Triangle the only one of its kind?

PC: Yes, it is a one of a kind as far as I know. I am pretty sure it is the only one. Several have contacted me about the logistics of doing one in other areas (one was even in Europe from someone who found my website). However, no one has actually create a giant Pink Triangle for another city.

BC: Where do you see this project in the future?

PC: Still going up on Twin Peaks every year, and hopefully in other cities too. A big inspiration for keeping the annual San Francisco Pink Triangle display going was learning that after the camps were liberated, and all of the other prisoners were let go, gays were put back in prison.  The discrimination and dehumanization continued — simply because they were homosexual.  It was amazing to me that after all of the carnage and horror of the camps was revealed to the world via newsreels, and people around the globe were unified in shock and disbelief, somehow it was still okay to throw the gays back in prison. That kind of hatred and discrimination certainly doesn’t exist here, but there are still plenty of places in the world where it is not only alright to discriminate against homosexuals, some even look the other way when we are killed.

It is through the display that we hope to educate others of the lessons of the Pink Triangle; the lesson being: what can happen when hatred and bigotry become law. There are certainly numerous recent examples covered well in the media such as in Uganda, Nigeria, Iran, Jamaica, Brunei and many others. Unfortunately, there are currently 77 countries where homosexual activity is illegal. While it isn’t illegal in Russia anymore, President Putin signed an anti-gay propaganda law. There is still much discrimination toward the LGBTQ community. The gigantic display is a visible yet mute reminder of man’s inhumanity to man.

BC: How can people support this cause and get involved?

PC: Volunteering to help install it or take it down are great ways to support the cause and contribute. Also, educating others about the Pink Triangle is the ideal way to support the cause. The goal is to remember the hatred of the past to help prevent it from happening again.  Also, the message we are trying to teach is “what can happen when hatred and bigotry are allowed to become law.” For those who want to contribute financially, they can contribute via SF Pride. The pink triangle project is too small to spend money on lawyers to draw up documents to create a 501c3. About 18 years ago, Pride agreed to be the fiscal sponsor (money is run through them). Donation checks can be written to SF Pride with “for Pink Triangle” in the memo line.

If you’re interested in volunteering to help install and/or break down the Pink Triangle this year, here’s some helpful info:

Installation: Saturday, June 27th, from 7am-10am, with ceremony at 10:30am

De-installation: Sunday, June 28th, from 4:30pm-8pm (after the parade)

(One need not stay the entire time — even an hour of help on either day is a huge help!)

• Bring a HAMMER and Gloves!!!
• Wear closed-shoes. Sandals are not recommended. Wear sunscreen.
• Fashionable Pink Triangle t-shirts will be provided to all who help.

More info at www.thepinktriangle.com 

Since its inception in 1991, Aguilas has impacted the life of over one thousand members, and given Latino men alternate hang-outs to bars and nightclubs. Originally, most of the events were BBQs or camping trips. However, as the AIDS epidemic spread in San Francisco, Aguilas saw a need for services outside the social umbrella.

El Ambiente is Aguilas’ HIV prevention service, which offers individual and couples counseling to both HIV positive and negative men in English and Spanish. Volunteer Coordinator Eric Arguello says, “We’ve all heard that condoms are a must in our day in age, but the numbers of infected Latinos are alarming.” In his fifteen year of involvement with the agency, Eric noticed that the practice of unsafe sex in many cases is a sign of low self-esteem. “Our self-empowerment model is key in helping our members overcome feelings of doubt and inferiority,” states Eric.

The quaint and welcoming Aguilas office at 1800 Market Street also houses their Skill Building workshops, which include dance classes, career development, technology training, and even mask making. Most of their workshops are produced by their volunteers and sometimes exceed thirty members in attendance.

Although the agency’s earlier members were mainly second, or later generation Latinos, the increase of Spanish speaking immigrants created a demand for bilingual services. Eric says, “The English and Spanish groups have different concerns, but at Aguilas, they can learn how much they share in common.”

For donations or to get involved, visit www.sfaguilas.org.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the award-winning author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the career expert for the Ed Baxter Show on Talk Radio San Francisco 910AM. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Logo from SFAguilas.org

Adopted as an infant by her mom Pam, and later co-raised by Pam’s partner Christine, Rachael grew up in an all woman cooperative. Rachael says, “Some kids called me names like faggot and dyke, but as I got older, that changed.” Slowly, other kids whose parents came out of the closet later in life started to appear in her Duboce Triangle neighborhood.

Both of Rachael’s moms were heavily involved in gay politics and community events. One of her fondest childhood memories is sewing panels together for the AIDS Memorial Quilt that was first displayed in Washington D.C. on October 11, 1987.  “Christine used to take me to the shop and together we’d patch panels with items belonging to the AIDS victims,” Rachel adds.

Rachael is straight and works as a nurse at a Bay Area hospital. Her moms are no longer together but she feels fortunate for having such a great upbringing. She still wonders how Pam made her adoption happen and thanks Pam’s friends for supporting her during the adoption phase.

Last June, during Pride weekend, Rachael was driving on the freeway and caught a glimpse of the pink triangle over Twin Peaks. Her eyes watered as images of her early male role models who died from AIDS, and memories of the whistle she and everyone else in the Castro had to carry filled her mind. For Rachael, San Francisco symbolizes family and overcoming intolerance.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is a staffing professional, the award-winning author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the career expert for the Ed Baxter Show on Talk Radio San Francisco 910AM. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Photo: “Castro, San Francisco” by torbakhopper is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Susan’s first book, The Mirror Dance, captures the fears of a lesbian community in a Midwestern town. Susan says, “I interviewed about sixty women and almost all feared being outed at work.”  This is a concern she admits may be less common in our modern society, but was definitely a big part of the Lesbian community not so long ago.

In a more recent book, Things No Longer There, Susan vividly relives her experience at a camp she attended as a teenage girl that was run by two lesbians. Although she did not know about their sexuality then, in retrospect she could remember Ms. Sandy’s unused bed, which was always cluttered with papers and projects. In the first chapter, she dives deeper into the dynamics and idiosyncrasies that made up the camp organizer’s relationship. She writes, “They never arrived together as if to insist they came from different lives.” The camp had such great impact on her that Susan wishes she could have been able to see the camp owners as an adult to tell them how much she loved the place and that she was lesbian too.

Susan also analyzes her own fears, what she calls “lesbo-phobias,” in another piece called The Family Silver. In this narrative, Susan discusses the lesbo-phobias pertaining to being a lesbian teacher. She writes, “I was aware of the consequences of touching students to say ‘great work’ or ‘nice,’ and always kept my hands to my sides.” The world that existed outside the “heterosexual veneer,” as Susan refers to it, was to be protected and kept a secret in those times.

Being out of the closet was risky and Susan experienced some taunting, yet it did yield some good as well. When Susan arrived at Stanford and asked if there were any other lesbian faculty members, the answer was, “just one other.” Later, Susan found herself knocking at professor Estelle Frieddman’s door. The two soon became partners, and they now have been together for 30 years.

When Susan began to lose her sight in the mid 90s to a condition called birdshot retinochoroidopathy, it was Estelle who helped Susan through the transition. “Hannah,” as Estelle is known in Susan’s books, encouraged her partner to write and served as her first editor. This wonderful display of support resulted in Things No Longer There, and her latest book, Traveling Blind, in which “Hannah,” Susan, and her guide dog Teela travel to many parts of the country.

In the GLBT community, labels come naturally and words like “bottom,” “butch” or “fem” are casually exchanged, yet Susan discovered that the blind label was easier to go public with. When she was sighted, hearing occasional name calling while walking down the street was not uncommon. However, once she started to carry a white cane and later to walk with a guide dog, people treated her more kindly. “Blindness definitely has its own set of problems, but it is easier for people to accept,” says Susan. While doing a radio interview for Things No Longer There, which is mostly about lesbianism and touches lightly on vision loss, Susan was not surprised that the radio program focused entirely on her blindness.

In a statement that illustrates the fearlessness embodied in the colorful GLBT community, Susan proudly claims herself as both Lesbian and blind.

Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer, teaches in the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. Her books include Things No Longer There: A Memoir of Losing Sight and Finding Vision; The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women; Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form; The Mirror Dance: Identity in a Women’s Community; and Hip Capitalism. Click here to learn more about Susan Krieger.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is a staffing professional, the award-winning author of Blind: A Memoir and Midday Dreams, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the career expert for the Ed Baxter Show on Talk Radio San Francisco 910AM. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

In the spring of 2013, when Jason Collins came out as a gay man (the first in the U.S. to do so while actively playing a professional team sport), he wasn’t mocked or shunned. Instead, Collins was embraced by fellow athletes, the NBA, and sports fans worldwide. Even Nike, his corporate sponsor, had his back. Collins’ coming-out experience is likely to show closeted business leaders that being openly gay does not spell certain career doom, nor does it threaten a company’s bottom line.

From the Court to the Corner Office
Jason Collins has admirable leadership qualities, which have earned him the respect of the media and his peers. He’s busted the effeminate stereotype surrounding gays, proving that sexual orientation does not impact the quality of one’s work. At the same time, Collins’ coming out has debunked the myth that an industry steeped in testosterone would reject one of its own simply for being gay.

If we shift the focus to closeted industry leaders, Collins offers an encouraging glimpse into what it’s like for a prominent leader to come out today. Unfortunately, many still associate coming out with scaring business away. Ellen DeGeneres was highly watched when her eponymous character on “Ellen” came out of the closet. Her show tanked, and she effectively had to build a new career from scratch — that’s what people remember. But that was 16 years ago; these days, Ellen is arguably one of the most successful people on the planet.

The Advantages of a Corporate Coming Out
Affirmative action was put in place to assure that minority groups were hired, thereby developing staffs with various backgrounds, experiences, and skills. By this same token, openly gay executives would be a major boon for company diversity. If more leaders were out, more employees would come out. This would lead to better benefits for domestic partnerships. Most importantly, having visible, openly gay leaders would send a message of zero tolerance for unjust behavior.

More specifically, if top executives were comfortable being open about their sexuality, they would likely see the following positive results:

• Peace of mind: Keeping secrets is draining and stressful. If you’re comfortable with yourself, you’ll have a better quality of life. This will undoubtedly spill over into your professional life.
• Role models: Openly gay execs would be great role models for queer youth interested in the corporate world. Trust me — there’s a great need for gay business mentors.
• Efficiency: Hiding things is distracting. If you don’t have to live a double life, you’ll be far more productive and focused.

The negative impacts of remaining in the closet are disheartening. As a systems engineer in Silicon Valley in the late ‘90s, I met many closeted managers. I would occasionally run into them at gay events, where they would beg me not to tell anyone they were gay. Because they were so terrified of ruining their careers, I followed their lead and reluctantly stepped back into the closet.

This was a major step backward for my personal life. I’d come out in high school to a very accepting family, and it was baffling to have entered a world where being myself was unacceptable. I was grateful when I met a manager who helped me; eventually, I came out professionally while working at a very progressive staffing company.

Even with recent progress, these fears are not totally unfounded. Some executives might experience backlash from other partners or lose clients. However, the potential productivity that closeted staff would unleash if they worked in a tolerant atmosphere outweighs any perceived benefits of staying closeted.

What Employers Can Do
If you want your company to be queer-friendly, these three tips will get you on your way:

1. Sponsor local gay charities: This tells closeted employees that you support the GLBT community.
2. Run GLBT-friendly ads: If you use same-gender couples when running employment ads, you will attract “out” employees and provide support for those who want to come out.
3. Provide manager training: Offer seminars to help managers understand employees who don’t feel comfortable coming out. Support at the corporate level makes queer employees feel safe and valued, whether their corporate leadership is gay or not.

The tide of public sentiment toward the GLBT community is shifting. Being out no longer carries the shame it once did. Thanks to Jason Collins, business leaders who are still closeted now have a positive, high-profile coming-out experience to reference. That can lead to a multitude of opportunities for gay employees — and their companies.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, the “Get to Work” columnist for SFGate.com, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and  YouTube.

Photo: “Jason Collins” by Keith Allison is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Belo Cipriani: Who was the first gay person you looked up to and why?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Quentin Crisp. Born in England in 1908, Crisp coined the phrase “coming out of the closet” in 1931. His exact words were,”I wish to live in the world and not in a closet,” and he proceeded to be open about his identity as an effeminate gay man. For decades he was the lone out gay man in all of the UK. He endured numerous beatings, false arrests for prostitution while waiting for the bus, and denial of many public accommodations, but he stood his ground. That took amazing courage. He recounted these experiences in his 1966 memoir The Naked Civil Servant, which was filmed ten years later with John Hurt as Crisp. That film, and Crisp’s personal appearances in New York to promote it, were awe-inspiring to me when I was 20 and 21 years old. Years later, I produced a film called Red Ribbons in which Mr. Crisp, then living in New York, consented to star in. I can’t even begin to impress upon you how honored I was to get to know him and work with him. A few years ago, Irish author Nigel Kelly wrote a biography of Mr. Crisp titled Quentin Crisp: The Profession of Being. I was stunned when Kelly asked me to contribute a chapter, which I did.

Belo Cipriani: Do you have any other gay role models?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Other gay role models would be the 19th century author Oscar Wilde, and authors Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, who were a lesbian couple in the early part of the 20th Century. All of them lived honest and authentic lives before it was socially acceptable to do so. This took the same kind of courage we saw in Mr. Crisp. Also Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in U.S. history. He literally sacrificed his life. He knew that someone would try to kill him, and someone did. The drag queens and others who rioted against police brutality at the Stonewall Bar in New York in 1969, and the transgenders who did the same at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier were also ground-breakers, worthy of our respect and deserving of our thanks.

Belo Cipriani: What do you think makes a role model?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Honesty and sincerity. Be authentic in everything you do, and do it with good intentions.

Belo Cipriani: Who are positive gay role models now?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Unfortunately, many of our activists don’t cut the muster. They’re more interested in celebrity than in social change, and they lack compassion for others. I’ve seen a lot of gay bloggers express hate and mean-spiritedness towards other LGBT people in recent years, and this is very saddening to me.

But we do have gay actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Groff, Zachary Pinto, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, and personalities like Rosie O’Donnell, Chaz Bono, and Ellen DeGeneres who live their lives openly as who they are, and they do a lot of good. I find that TV shows like Glee, Modern Family and Days of Our Lives, with their wonderfully gay positive storylines and characters, offer our kids ongoing role models to look up to, which my generation never had. I also take inspiration from straight allies like Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Madonna, Whoopi Goldberg and Dolly Parton. Their support for LGBT people has always been unconditional and absolute. Dolly especially, who was raised as a conservative Christian in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, yet embraces everyone. I love Dolly’s quote: “I don’t have an affinity for anyone in particular, I just believe in the Lord and love everyone.” And now, with the emergence of Lady Gaga, bisexual kids have someone to look up to. That’s great! If I can go back to the 1980s and 90s, then the stand Elizabeth Taylor took for people with AIDS was extraordinary and unforgettable, something that must never be forgotten.

Belo Cipriani: What is the difference between gay role models from the past and the ones we have today?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Role models from the distant past didn’t have equality laws to fall back on. There was no LGBT community center or a city like San Francisco/West Hollywood, etc, for them to go to. They were on their own, and faced loss of jobs, evictions from their homes and police brutality for being who they were. Their courage in opening doors and laying the groundwork for what we’re seeing today cannot be overestimated. On the other hand, though she wasn’t going to be arrested for it, it took a lot of courage for Ellen to say the words “I’m gay” on TV in 1997. She reached 39 million people all at once with those two words. And for Chaz Bono to go on Dancing With the Stars so soon after his transition, yeah, that was pretty gutsy, and he, too, reached millions.  I also find inspiration from you and from Thom Bierdz, another gay author. Both of you have written books about healing and forgiveness, issues I struggle with daily, as I’ve been subjected to hate from the gay and anti-gay alike. I plan on rereading both of your books shortly as a kind of healing therapy for myself.

Belo Cipriani: Anyone who you consider a positive role model who often gets over looked?

David-Elijah Nahmod: You. You have a huge following outside of the gay community, but the gay community should be embracing you. I imagine that you offer a lot of hope to disabled LGBT people. Also Joel Crothers, an actor who was on soap operas from the mid-1960s until his death from AIDS in 1985. I had watched two of the shows he was on. He never hid the truth about who he was, and co-starred in the original production of the groundbreaking gay play Torch Song Trilogy without concern of whether or not this would affect his conservative soap opera fan base. He’s another example of someone who broke new ground.

Belo Cipriani: Do you think there is a lack of positive role models in the gay community?

David-Elijah Nahmod: Today we have many positive role models in popular culture, so the current generation have many they can look up to.

Belo Cipriani: Are there any organizations that you feel are doing a good job in fostering future gay role models?

David-Elijah Nahmod: I think the national gay organizations are a big disappointment. They’re unresponsive to the community’s needs and seem more interested in throwing cocktail parties than in getting anything done. They’ve become part of the problem. But if you go into the local communities, smaller localized organizations are doing amazing things: like Project Open Hand in San Francisco or God’s Love We Deliver in New York City, both of whom deliver hundreds, if not more, of cooked meals to the homes of people with AIDS at no charge every day. The SF LGBT Community Center is also a terrific place, offering the welcome mat to seniors, transgenders and kids, and they offer specific programs like job training and other kinds of counseling to help them help themselves. The Center has a weekly meal night for homeless LGBT youth. I know one of those kids. With the Center’s help, he went from being broke and homeless to having a well paying job at Ebay and his own apartment. He also serves as San Francisco’s Youth Commissioner at City Hall. It was the programs at the LGBT Center that helped him achieve this. He now works towards doing the same for others.

Thank you for having me, Belo. You do great work

David-Elijah Nahmod is a film critic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles appear regularly in The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.

Belo Cipriani: What made you want to start donating part of your book sales to LGBT youth?

Brandon Shire: I wanted to give something back to the LGBT community and realized that the best way to make an impact was to help those organizations helping the most vulnerable in our community, homeless LGBT kids. Estimates place almost 350,000 homeless LGBT kids on the street, but under 1,000 safe beds nationwide. This is insanity. While you’re reading this, check the temperature outside. Right now there’s a 14-year-old gay kid shivering in the cold just because he’s gay. No other reason. How much more impetus do we need to know that this reality has to change?

Belo: Which agency or agencies do you work with?

Brandon: I donate to two charities – Lost n Found Youth and Free2Be. They’re both great, local charities making a substantial impact in their communities.

Belo: What made you pick these particular agencies to work with?

Brandon: We did a lot of research before we chose, but the commitment I saw with these two organizations and the zealousness of the two founders, Rick Westbrook and James Robertson respectively, made the choice easy. Both of them have made a substantial impact with the organizations they created and it’s something I am very happy to donate to.

Belo: Do you use any special program to help you track the money you are donating? For example, an application tool through Amazon or other venders?

Brandon: We’ve run various charity drives through different fundraising services, like Razoo, and fans have aided the organizations through promotions and drives they set up in our Goodreads group, but most of the time we donate directly through PayPal, so we know that the funds go directly to the charities without any fees taken out. J, my biz partner, keeps the records.

Belo: Are all of your books donating to non profits?

Brandon: Yes, 10% of the sales of all my books are donated.

Belo: Will you continue to donate to non profits with future books?

Brandon: That’s a commitment we made from the start. Anything I publish in the future will also have a portion of the proceeds donated to LGBT youth charities.

Belo: What is your next book about?

Brandon: I’m taking a break right now. I have several works in progress, but nothing will be forthcoming until well into next year. The next book will look at a relationship between two gay musicians in Croatia. I’m also developing a story about a same-sex attraction with a youth who is also dealing with an N-Parent* and all the complications those two factors hold when combined. (*Narcissistic Personality Disorder)

Award-winning writer Brandon Shire is a distinct voice in contemporary gay fiction. A Buddhist and a gay parent, Mr. Shire has been writing for 15 years and has only recently begun to publish his work. Genres include contemporary gay fiction, m/m romance, horror, and science fiction. You can find him at brandonshire.com.

Who is Belo Cipriani?

Belo Cipriani is the Writer-in-Residence at Holy Names University, a spokesperson for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. You are invited to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

Logo courtesy of @TheBrandonShire

One of the fun aspects of being a writer is meeting other writers. This past August while at Lambda, I met Allison Moon whose novel Lunatic Fringe about lesbian werewolves is being released today, September 29th 2011. She read excerpts while at Lambda and I have been eager to read the book ever since. Growing up in San Jose, I never imagined I would be attending a release party for a book that combined two of my favorite topics – queer life and werewolves. It is so cool to know the writers behind all the new kinds of literature that is surfacing today.

***Belo Cipriani is a freelance writer, speaker, and the author of Blind: A Memoir. Learn more at belocipriani.com.
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