Happy New Year – My Top 7 Blogs of 2013

Happy 2014
As we end 2013 and enter the new year, 2014, I would like to quickly recap my “top 7” blogs of the year based on number of hits. I average about 30 blog entries per year, mostly around my two areas of consulting expertise: Diversity with a specialization in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) workplace and marketplace; and career and skills development based on my innovative Total Engagement Career Mapping process.


Top 7 in reverse order:


Number 7: This blog, actually published in April 2012, was still number 7 this year, “I Was a Victim of Stereotyping … and It Hurt!” As a white man in the US, I do not often experience the horrors of stereotyping that many minority communities do in this country, but in one case I was judged and stereotyped, and it really did hurt.


Number 6: From May of this year, “Five Important Ramifications of NBA Pro Basketball Player Jason Collins’ Coming Out” as a gay man. After the media hype died down, I shared some long lasting implications of Jason Collins coming out. I also shout out to this year’s WNBA’s first draft pick, out lesbian Brittany Griner.


Number 5: A special satire piece I wrote for Labor Day in early September, “The Largest Threat to the American Economy and Entrepreneurism!” What I share from personal experience as the largest threat may surprise you.


Number 4: Actually this was a blog originally published in 2011 and I am very glad to see it still getting a lot of readers, “Three Components of Diversity Training.” When I was asked to submit a bid to a Fortune 500 firm for design and delivery of a one-day diversity and inclusion workshop for middle managers, I studied my past material and prepared my bid, and realized that successful diversity training needs to contain three major components. You will need to click and read to see what they are!


Number 3: “Five Heroes of the Early US Gay Rights Movement.” And it truly a diverse group that includes women, men, transgender, an African-American and a religious leader.


Number 2: After seeing an article called “5 Things to Never Say to Black People” on the Diversity Inc. website – I was inspired to write my own blog – “5 Things to Never Say to Gay People.” This was the first blog that I ever wrote that got 200 hits within 24 hours of being published!


… and my Number 1 most read blog in 2013: “Five Common Misconceptions about Gay People.”


Thanks to all the readers who enjoy and share my blogs. In 2014, if you want to be notified each time I do publish, you can like my business facebook page (Link), or if you subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter, I include a short summary and links to the past month’s writings.


Wishing all my readers a wonderful 2014 filled with much contentment and success!

Five Heroes of the early US Gay Rights Movement

This is my third and final installment of my “lists of five” as we approach June and LGBT Pride Month. Please do link to and read my first two installments:
• LINK: Five things to never say to gay people
• LINK: Five common misconceptions about gay people

In this third and final installment here is my list of five heroes of the early LGBT rights movement in the USA:

Photo:  Lesbian pioneer activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who were partners for 56 years before Del passed away in 2008.

Photo: Lesbian pioneer activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who were partners for 56 years before Del passed away in 2008.


1. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. These two lesbians met at work in 1950 and began their relationship two years later. They were active in the Council of Religion and the Homosexual, National Organization for Women (NOW) and helped form the early lesbian group and publication “Daughters of Bilitis” in 1955. Del and Phyllis realized their life-long dream of legally marrying on June 16, 2008 as soon as California permitted same-gender marriage, and Del died two months later at the age of 87.

2. Dr. Frank Kameny. Frank was an out open gay man who was fired simply for being gay from his job as an astronomer for the US Army Map Service. His court case proceeded all the way to the

I got to meet Dr. Frank Kameny in October, 2009, two years before he passed.

I got to meet Dr. Frank Kameny in October, 2009, two years before he passed.

US Supreme Court (he lost), but Frank continued to be a leading gay-rights activist and lead and won the battle to have homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of mental disorders. Frank passed away in October 2011 at the age of 86.

3. Bayard Rustin. Bayard was an African-American civil rights leader who was the main organizer of Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 March of Washington. He was a long-time key figure working behind the scenes in the Black Civil Rights movement and in the later part of his career in the 1970s and 1980s shifted his focus to gay rights work, mostly in New York state.

4. The drag queens of Stonewall. On June 27-28, 1969, several patrons (a hand full of drag queens) of the Stonewall gay bar got fed up with the unfair police harassment at the bar and fought back, leading the “Stonewall Rebellion” which is considered by most people the beginning of the US’s Gay Rights Movement. Many cities now celebrate LGBT pride the last weekend of June each year to commemorate these brave members of our community.

5. Rev. Troy Perry. As a gay minister, Troy was forced out of his pastorate. Having the strong call to minister to the LGBT community, Troy held a worship service in his home with 12 people in October, 1968, and from this humble beginnings, Troy lead the Metropolitan Community Churches to become a dynamic global movement of approximately 15,000 members of over 200 churches across 40 different countries.

We should all remember and honor these leaders who paved the way for all us to continue in the journey for full equality of all LGBT people across the globe.