Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Mitchell Gold, founder of Faith in America, will speak about faith and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community from 6-8 p.m. Sunday, March 6, at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Part of Faith and Sexuality Week, the event will be held in the Burney Center, with a dessert reception and book signing after Gold's talk.

Sponsored by UNCW's LGBTQIA Resource Office, the event is designed to create dialogue to increase understanding and find common ground.

Mitchell Gold is a nationally recognized author, corporate leader and philanthropist is a major figure in the national discussion of gay rights. In 2005, he established Faith in America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating people about how religion can be used to justify discrimination against gay individuals. In 2008, he edited the book Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. Like the contributors to this book, Gold has lived its subject matter.

In 1989, Gold co-founded a residential furniture manufacturing company called Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, in Taylorsville, N.C. Just nine years later, Inc. magazine positioned the company at number 57 on its list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies. In April 2005, Inc. magazine named Gold one of the 26 "Entrepreneurs We Love." Today, the $100 million company employs more than 750 people and features its own on-site education-based daycare center.

Gold has a long history of supporting grassroots organizations and national nonprofits, including the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Leukemia Society, Human Rights Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda, Design Industries Foundation for AIDS, Friend in Deed, and AIDS Leadership Foothills-Area Alliance. He has been recognized as a leader in the movement for gay rights by numerous organizations, including The Human Rights Campaign, the National Black Justice Coalition and Out magazine, which placed him on its 2007 list of the "Top 50 Most Powerful Gay People in America."

More information about Gold and the Faith in America organization is available online at www.faithinamerica.org.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu