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

As anyone who has watched the hit television series, Brothers and Sisters knows, if you get invited to dine with the Walkers, politely decline. You will otherwise get pulled into a donnybrook of quarreling. But what if you were invited to have dinner with a handful of the people you most admire? Would you go, and what would you want to discuss? Read more…

We didn’t stay up until the end of this year’s Academy Awards, and haven’t since we lived in San Francisco (where we could do so and still be in bed by 9 p.m.,) but Ray and I were intent on seeing Neil Patrick Harris mesmerize the crowd in the award show’s opening number. As must have been true for most women viewers when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win the Oscar for Best Director, Ray and I take extra-special pleasure and pride in the accomplishments of other gay people.

That’s not so hard to do today, especially in the arts. Think of Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Merv Griffin, Paul Lynd, Tennessee Williams, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, Rosie O’Donnell, and Stephen Sondheim, to name just a few. Fran Leibovitz once wrote that "…if you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with Let’s Make a Deal." Read more…

There is a resolution being proposed by a single Disney stockholder to amend the company’s non-discrimination policy to explicitly include the prohibition of discrimination based on "ex-gay" status. Disney has wisely and predictably advised its stockholders to vote "no". It is the first such resolution of its kind that I’ve heard of, but given the overblown proselytizing nature of the so-called Religious Right’s "Ex-Gay Movement", it probably won’t be the last. Bring it on. Read more…