signorile_savage.jpgOn Monday, May 11, I had the privilege of moderating a conversation between Michelangelo Signorile and Dan Savage. The talk was engaging (if I do say so myself, but others have told me the same!), which was not unexpected. After all, both men have been at the forefront of LGBT issues for decades.


The event was co-hosted by the New York chapter of NLGJA: The Association of LGBT Journalists and its student chapter at The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism (CUNY J School). Full disclosure: I’m a longtime member of NLGJA, so many thanks to them for the opportunity.

The conversation was prompted by the publication of Signorile’s new book titled It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality. We discussed the premise of the book (extremely briefly: victory blindness is dangerous), as well as the themes in Savage’s most recent book titled American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics.

In addition to many of the issues you might think of -- like fighting for full civil rights, combating violence, challenging media coverage, confronting deep-seated homophobia -- we do get into other issues, such as the idea of HIV interrupting the victory narrative.

If you have some time, please click here to watch. The first half is the conversation, the last half is the Q&A session with questions from Twitter and from the live audience. We had some audio trouble in the first few minutes, but the audio is mostly fine after that. Enjoy!