BIZ Online NGLCC

Find the Courage to Support Diversity

By Justin Nelson, NGLCC Co-Founder and President

This column is adapted from a speech delivered by Justin Nelson at the NGLCC 2008 National Dinner on November 7, 2008.

As many of you know, over the last few months the NGLCC and one of our corporate partners have been under fire from a far-right fringe group. NGLCC's advocacy agenda of supporting health care for small business owners and their employees, demanding fair treatment for LGBT employees in the workplace, opening up companies to new and diverse supplies, and backing federal aid for green energy doesn't fit the negative stereotypes this fringe organization puts out about the LGBT segment, so it decided to invent the facts.

After months of distorting the partnership and this company's support for the NGLCC as well as other LGBT organizations and causes, this right-wing organization called off its boycott. And guess what? The corporation involved had an 11 percent increase in sales in the third quarter of this year—some of the brighter news in these uncertain economic times and further proof that boycotts do not work!

You see the vocal tirades of the fringe few cannot disrupt the strength of a sometimes quiet but exceptionally supportive many.

Look around here tonight, and you see company after company after company that has been targeted by these groups for supporting the LGBT community. But you also see these companies standing strong and seated at the table next to you, here tonight, many of them for their third or fourth or fifth NGLCC National Dinner. You see them strongly supporting the NGLCC and other LGBT organizations, respecting their employees and telling their story to other companies that want to support the LGBT community. But we need some reassurance, and we want to hear what so many of you know first hand: You cannot reason with the unreasonable.

Courage does not come alone from partnering with groups that have not yet achieved equality or are considered by some to be controversial when there is a buck to be made. Courage comes from standing by those partnerships when times are tough, and when decisions are sometimes painful, because you know them to be right and just. Now, more than ever, it is important that we stand together. All of us in this room tonight—major corporations and small businesses alike, chambers of commerce, employees and customers, suppliers, organizations, families, and allies—must stand together because our cause is right and just. Together we are courageous.

I am blessed to have the job I do: To work with an amazing Board of Directors and a staff that cares deeply about the LGBT business movement. I take very seriously the trust our community has given the NGLCC to enlist those companies that are ready, willing and able to work with LGBT-owned companies for mutually beneficial results. Equally important, I take very seriously the demand that we hold companies accountable for their actions, that we correct the record when it is wrong, and that we educate and activate the legions of LGBT business owners, their employees, families and friends when we need to in order to remind the world that our community truly matters.