In New Era, U.S. Minority Journalism Group Finally Joins Forces With Gay Media

TWENTY-ONE YEARS ago in Editor & Publisher magazine, I wrote one of the first big stories on the then-new National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, a revolutionary media group that made some U.S. minority journalists uncomfortable. Gays at the time were not widely accepted by the mainstream or minority media. A powerful industry coalition of minority journalism groups called UNITY flat-out refused to let gays join the coalition, with critics believing that gays did not face the same media and workplace issues as racial minorities.

That stance always disturbed me. During UNITY's landmark 1994 convention in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., I was part of a policy-making board and the main organizer of several diversity-related workshops that preached inclusion and community. Given the absence of gay journalists, I hoped that minority journalists saw the irony and double-standard in their treatment of the NLGJA. In a painful conversation with late NLGJA founder Leroy Aarons (Prayers for Bobby), an editor and mentor of mine when I was a young reporter, I apologized that UNITY did not officially welcome gay journalists. He thanked me and grimaced, saying he wished things were different.

Times have changed. To its credit, UNITY's board voted recently to recognize the NLGJA as part of UNITY, and gays will join minorities as equal partners at UNITY's convention next year in Las Vegas. The move comes as the number of minority journalists falls in U.S. newsrooms, while the U.S. and global minority populations rise.

No doubt, Aarons -- and another pioneering gay journalist, Randy Shilts (The Mayor of Castro Street, And the Band Played On, Conduct Unbecoming) -- would be proud of UNITY's actions. Both were kind, generous men who welcomed and supported everyone. And both were bold visionaries, decades ahead of others who claim to be diversity leaders. During interviews and casual talks, Aarons and Shilts predicted that gays in America would achieve greater legal equality, and that gay and minority journalists would merge forces one day. They were right.

Good news. Now it's time to move on, toward more urgent issues.

(Photo, above) Leroy Aarons, founder of the NLGJA and author of Prayers for Bobby, later made into an acclaimed film starring Sigourney Weaver. Photo courtesy of Joshamotz from Wikimedia Commons.