Wednesday, October 05, 2005

WILMINGTON, NC – Wayne Besen, author of Anything but Straight, will speak about the ex-gay ministries in America at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct.11 in Cameron Hall Auditorium, as part of UNCW PRIDE’s recognition of National Coming Out Day. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Besen was nominated this year for two Lambda Literary Awards for Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth. He is a former spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian advocacy group. He has appeared as a guest on leading news and political talk shows including: the NBC Nightly News, The Roseanne Show, CNN’s Talk Back Live and The Point, Fox’s O’Reilly Factor and Hannity and Colmes, Hard Copy, MSNBC News and PAX’s Faith Under Fire.

UNCW PRIDE, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and allied student group, annually plans events aimed at raising awareness of the issues regarding LGBT and allied citizens. National Coming Out Day commemorates Oct. 11, 1987, when 500,000 people marched on Washington for gay and lesbian equality.

The lecture is sponsored by UNCW PRIDE, the Office of Campus Diversity, the Office of the Dean of Students, the Women’s Resource Center, the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, and the OutWilmington Community Center.

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