I was doing an interview about the history of the GLBT rights movement with John Kavanaugh a few years back when he made a comment that eventually gave me a new pair of eyes.  This was about the time he was writing his book, “Welcome to the Gay Age,” and he made a comment about what we see around us as GLBT leaders.  His comment was that in every aspect of the world around you, you can find a direct correlation between it and the GLBT community.

As he was telling me this I was thinking “well duh, GLBT people live on this planet so in some cosmic out there sense that true…but that’s stretching it a bit far.”  However, the more time I’ve spent being “gay for pay” (and not in that stand by the corner sense) the more I realize he’s absolutely right.  Now don’t worry, this isn’t about to turn into a “Queer Philosophy” essay, but allow me to point out what I’m talking about and then I promise you – it will come full circle and you’ll understand why this idea of seeing through a new pair of eyes is important to you as a campus leader.

To explain, I’ll need to take you back in time once again.  About a year ago I was meeting with a group of GLBT students at my alma mater (GO EAGLES!) when it occurred to me that they were being affected by the annual tuition increases more than many of the non-GLBT students I was talking to.  Don’t get me wrong, it was affecting a lot of people, these were the highest increases in the school’s history and kept occurring year after year.  However, when I considered that this was a pretty diverse group when you consider socioeconomic status, gender and race, it occurred to me that they had some unique circumstances to being GLBT that made it just that much worse.

Having recently been hired at Triangle Foundation I figured I might as well try to put to use the access to legislative resources I had been granted.  So I went to work, walked into my boss’s office, and told him that I’d like us to take a public position on tuition increases and higher education state appropriations.  As I was telling the Executive Director of a GLBT civil rights, advocacy and anti-violence organization about college tuition, it occurred to me how strange it sounded.  To my delight, it made perfect sense to him, and to our Director of Policy.  By the end of the week a position was written and letters were sent to our Governor and various elected officials and university administrators.

In the weeks to follow we received replies indicating how surprised people were that a GLBT rights organization was getting involved with this issue.  We were told that we were the first civil rights organization, GLBT or otherwise, in the state to do so in the manner that we did.  However, we were also told how much sense it made and why they understand exactly why we were getting involved.

So what did we see in this issue that inspired us to act?  We saw the gayness in it…  Upon checking census data we discovered that people who identified as GLBT in our state were more likely to be paid less than those who did not identify as GLBT.  Having worked with individuals who had been discriminated against in the workplace, this seemed to match up with their experiences.  We also knew that firing someone in Michigan simply because they are GLBT is still legal.  Therefore we concluded that GLBT college students may be getting paid less than their non-GLBT counterparts and that they are more at risk for losing their job.

We also noted that there are many institutions with few or no scholarships for GLBT students compared to the sometimes vast number of scholarships available for other minorities.  Over the history of our organization we have had a number of GLBT youth tell us stories of being cut off from their family and having difficulties getting status as an independent or cooperation from their families in filing out financial aid paperwork.  This resulted in their inability to apply for student loans or many other forms of financial aid.  With all of this in mind, it made sense to say that GLBT youth had less financial aid available.

When you explain to people that GLBT students are making less money, more at risk of being fired, have less financial aid available and have a harder time accessing student loans, it makes a lot of sense why a GLBT organization would be concerned.  It certainly made a lot of sense to the people we contacted.

You can take almost any major issue on your campus and find a GLBT angle to it.  Is there a lot of discussion about student health insurance?  Consider the previous remarks about available funding to GLBT students, or that if they are in a relationship how they may not have access to domestic partnership benefits.  Applying for Medicaid (government funded health insurance) could be an issue for the same reason applying for student loans might be an issue.  So student health insurance is an issue with an important GLBT angle and it’s important to speak out about that angle.

So now that you’ve started to train your eye to find the gayness around you...what now?  Well, getting involved with these issues is a great way to build visibility and credibility for the GLBT community on campus.  Once people start to hear how GLBT student leaders or GLBT student groups are getting involved in issues that are not typically seen as “gay issues” they may also learn to see the gayness around them.  Even if they don’t, having that visibility and credibility will come in handy when a major GLBT issue, such as nondiscrimination policies or domestic partnership benefits, comes up.  You’ll also have made some helpful contacts and connections with other leaders on campus and important decision makers.

An important lesson that the GLBT community has learned is that we need strong allies.  We’ll never get fair workplace practices, marriage equality or adoption rights if we don’t have some allies there to help us.  They’ll be a lot more apt to help us if we’ve helped them.  Plus when you learn to see the gayness around you, you’ll realize that helping them is ultimately helping you too.  So enjoy your new eyes and good luck tackling all of those new GLBT issues you now see.

Greg Varnum is the Executive Assistant and Youth Initiatives Coordinator at Triangle Foundation.  Triangle Foundation is Michigan’s statewide civil rights, advocacy and anti-violence organization serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and allied communities.