"No one has done a better job of chronicling what it is like to be gay in America."
– U.S. Representative Barney Frank
More Programs Move to Halt Bias Against Gays, Chubb, Other Employers Train Managers on How To Foster Inclusiveness
By Sarah E. Needleman – The Wall Street Journal (November 26, 2007)
Valorie Gilmore, a specialty-insurance manager at Chubb Corp., was meeting with a client two months ago when participants began discussing a local women's basketball team. One person blurted, "You mean the lady lesbians?" Ms. Gilmore recalls.
"Let's not go down that road," Ms. Gilmore quickly replied. She says she felt compelled to speak "to set the right example here at Chubb in the way we conduct business."
Ms. Gilmore later attended a training program for Chubb managers on dealing with bias against gays in the workplace and learned that she'd acted appropriately. "You want to redirect the conversation to make it clear you are uncomfortable with it," says Kevin Hannan, a senior performance specialist at the insurer who helped start and design the training.
Corporate Diversity on DVD
By Christopher Lisotta – The Advocate (March 13, 2007)
For 33 years Brian McNaught has been training corporate executives and the general public how to handles gay and transgender issues in the workplace. The author of four books, McNaught, who himself was once fired for being gay, has become one of the most sought-after corporate trainers in the world. But the intense amount of travel was wearing heavy on McNaught, so he decided to offer his gay diversity training through a four-part DVD series that seeks to build bridges of understanding at work.
One-time Catholic columnist now pioneer for gays in workplace
By Renée LaReau – National Catholic Reporter
It is the end of the workday at a Manhattan-based corporation, and nearly 100 senior-level investment bankers and managers drift into a posh meeting room for an after-hours presentation. Hints of trepidation and curiosity fill the air as well-dressed men and women take their seats, many of them paging through the paperback book that has been placed on each of their chairs. They look expectantly toward the front of the room as guest speaker Brian McNaught introduces himself, promising strategies to help the company improve its productivity and retain the best and brightest personnel. McNaught, however, begins his workshop with a surprising confession. "I know nothing about finance," he said. While McNaught may know nothing about finance, he knows more than a thing or two about how workplace dynamics affect a corporation’s productivity, specifically, the interpersonal dynamics between coworkers with diverse sexual orientations.
Fort Lauderdale man has become 'godfather of gay diversity'
By Margo Harakas – Staff Writer for Sun-Sentinel
He was a good kid, a mother's dream -- altar boy, patrol boy, Boy Scout, athlete, senior class president, recipient of his high school's Christian Leadership Award. The middle of seven children in an Irish-Catholic, Detroit family, Brian McNaught's overriding ambition as a small boy was to be God's best friend.
But in 1974, then a 26-year-old Catholic newspaper columnist and cable TV talk show host, McNaught drank a bottle of paint thinner, downed a vial of pills and sat down to die. "I'm going home to God," he thought. He'd be free at last from the pain of pretending to be someone he could not be.