Brian McNaught's Gay & Transgender Issues in the Workplace Blog

Over the Fourth of July, we’ll be baptizing our grandnephew, Easton, at low tide in Provincetown. We’ll do so in the same area in front of our house where we scattered his grandfather’s ashes six years ago. Easton’s father and mother, his two uncles and their partners, and Ray and I will "adopt" the infant into our lives. Read more…

An Australian university student in Brisbane wrote asking for a perspective on his research project. Specifically, he had four questions for which he wanted answers. There was a day when such a message from Down Under would have been as startling as retrieving a message in a bottle. But in today’s world, there’s nothing shocking about how global the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights movement has become. Read more…

Is there a person who has never been abused in some way by others, or a person who has never participated in the abuse of another person? It would make it easier for all of us to empathize if we could recall the moments when our bodies or our spirits were roughly handled. When we are abused, it leaves a wound that never fully heals. Abuse creates fear, anger, and other destructive feelings. When we abuse others, we’re fully responsible for the damage we do.

To "abuse" means to "use wrongly or improperly; to injure by maltreatment." Some abuse is major, such as being tortured. Other abuse, such as being shoved as others exit the subway car, has less long-lasting impact. Both, however, are an assault on our sense of safety and wellbeing.

I have both been abused, and have been an abuser. I’ve been physically beaten, sexually mistreated, threatened with death, and bullied with hate mail. I’ve also repeated or cultivated negative stories about others when it served my selfish purposes. Read more…

"My name is Sydney… I am 15 years old… and need help. Although I am not gay, I am helping to try to make a difference at my school. I go to a sports school, and the whole ‘tough guy’ attitude is a big problem here. The kids at my school are very homophobic, and I am outraged because I am constantly hearing the word ‘fag’ used by kids that don’t really understand who they are hurting by saying it. We have many assemblies about the subject but everyone takes it as a joke, and then, the next day, it’s back to the same problem. If there is a gay person at my school, then they are keeping it very hidden. My biggest fear is that they will hear the hateful word spoken by their peers, and end up going into depression or worse. I would love to hear about what you think I should do."

You’re a terrific straight ally, Sydney, and your loving, thoughtful life is going to have a very positive impact on the happiness of many people. Read more…

My friend Bob Bauman asked me if I knew the name "Archibald Butt." It sounded familiar, and since Bob and I are from the same gay civil rights era, I said, "I think so." I was wrong. Butt was the confirmed bachelor military advisor to President William Howard Taft. The president wept when it was confirmed that Butt and Frank Millet, the "artist friend who lives with me," had died when the Titanic cast its passengers into the icy Atlantic Ocean.

When Bob dropped off the book, Voyagers of the Titanic, and the research he had done on housemates Butt and Millet, who had nearby, but separate, rooms on the doomed ship, he, Ray, and I reminisced about Bob’s time in Washington, and the night he had Harvey Milk’s ashes in his closet. Lenny Matlovich, who was staying with Bob, wanted them buried in the historic Congressional Cemetery near Capitol Hill. Read more…

Thirty years ago, Mike Wallace told me that he had been attracted to a handsome male co-worker at a broadcast station in Detroit. He speculated that every man had homosexual feelings. Both my father and Ray’s father thought the same thing. We think our dads had male crushes in their lives, too. Why else would they make such an observation?

In today’s parlance, male-male, non-sexual relations are called "bromances." This refers to when guys, regardless of their sexual orientations, have intimate relationships with other men. They want to spend their free time with each other. For instance, they might go fishing together every weekend, just not at Brokeback Mountain.

But Mike Wallace, the recently deceased CBS veteran newsman, never courted a close friendship with the handsome man with whom he worked. Yet, he seemed fascinated by the recollections of his feelings, and wanted to share them with me at a conference at which I spoke about gay issues. He wondered what I thought about his belief that every man has such feelings.

If it’s true that every male has had, or will have, a male crush in his life, we have to accept that this is true for Pope Benedict XVI, Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Chuck Norris, Rick Santorum, George W. Bush, and Mark Wahlberg. How we men react to our male crushes depends upon a great many factors, including how often the crushes occur, our religion, our politics, our culture, and even our DNA. Read more…

There’s a new television series called Touch. It’s about a small boy who sees connections between people and global events. He can’t speak, so his father’s task is to figure out the boy’s numerical clue to save other people’s lives. I believe all of us can see patterns if we pay attention, and we can save lives, too.

Over the weekend, Ray and I hosted two happy transgender people, one of whom is a very self-confident, transsexual woman, and the other is an exceedingly grateful, cross-dressing, husband and father. While sitting with them in the living room one morning, two stories jumped out at me from the newspapers we were reading. The first was about a 49-year-old, charismatic and inspiring, gay, male therapist in New York City who committed suicide after completing his prophetic manuscript, The Right Side of Forty: The Complete Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond. The second article focused on the objections of animal-rights activists to farmers injecting dye into incubating eggs, which is often done so that children at Easter can have their choice of colored chicks, including ones in dayglo green.

So, what are the connections between our transgender guests, the suicide of the gay man, and the dyed chickens? I see the common denominators of "false feathers," and the toxicity of social whims. But what other patterns can be found, and could a life have been saved? Read more…

Ray and I are on the wagon. He’s been sober for 25 years. I quit drinking a few years later. There are a lot of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who are clean and sober, but we’re invisible, and when we come to the celebrations of our friends, we are often handed a glass of champagne for a toast. Just as it is assumed that a person is straight unless he or she says otherwise, it is assumed that people drink alcohol unless they say otherwise. We live in a world that esteems booze, and questions the normalcy of those who don’t.

On cruise ships, gay people gather the first night at a publicized meeting for the "Friends of Dorothy," a reference to Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz. She wasn’t gay, but she believed in a place where dreams really do come true. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts meet as "Friends of Bill," a reference to the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. On a straight cruise, there are a lot of gay people who have to decide which meeting to go to. It’s a lot easier to decide if you’re on a gay cruise, but most recovering alcoholics I know avoid gay cruises, where the captain of the ship is the designated driver.

I feel that people who don’t drink make most drinking people as uncomfortable as do atheists among theists. In the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, this can make life particularly difficult, especially if you are single. Read more…

Four gay men in their forties and sixties, from the United States and France, sang in our living room with Kermit the Frog, "Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me."

Jean-Marc and Patrice had watched the Muppets as children 30 years ago in eastern and southern France. As they sat with Ray and me, with bowls of homemade popcorn, they excitedly named the characters as they appeared in the film, The Muppets: Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Animal, and Swedish Chef. Ray and I were delighted to share that experience, which transcended language and culture.

Patrice, being a song and dance man, knew all of the lyrics to Kermit’s closing song: "I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it. There’s something that I’m supposed to be. Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me."

That morning, Patrice was horrified to learn that a gunman had killed Jewish children near the town in which he had watched Sesame Street. He had been on the telephone with his mother and sister who still live in the area. At the same time, I received a request for help from a friend who had been asked to testify against a coach who openly harassed gay athletes and students. Immediately after watching the film, I got another e-mail regarding a gay man who was being discriminated against at work because he made others feel "uncomfortable."

Where is the disconnect between children across the world singing The Rainbow Connection, but not seeing that the black, Jewish, gay, Latino, and transgender people who upset them are just Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Animal, the Swedish Chef, Kermit, and Miss Piggy, all hoping to find in life what they’re supposed to be? Read more…

Yesterday, I met a gay superstar. He’s a young, very handsome, muscled, stage and cable television entertainer and educator on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. He stopped by the Stonewall Museum booth at Pride Fest, and gave me his card. He had no awareness of my work, nor that that I was just like him 37 years ago, although much-less muscled. When I told him, it didn’t seem to register.

"The messenger is the message," I said quickly, as he eyed other people he felt drawn to see. "Take good care of yourself, and don’t feel you always have to be ‘on.’ Tell your story. And be ready to let go." And then he was gone. Read more…