For a man whose work may be often overlooked, not counted among the public face of the LGBT rights movement, Robert Bray's influence is immeasurable.
Many of today's LGBT activists can draw a line back to Bray, likely in less than six degrees of separation due to his efforts on both the national and local level. But despite the lack of credit often reserved for the celebrities and speech-givers, Bray could be described as jovial and grounded, even without receiving the credit due. Perhaps this is for reasons unrelated to his work at all.
Bray acknowledged that yoga has kept him physically and mentally grounded through it all. He discovered yoga in the early 1990s while on the road traveling from state to state to conduct media trainings for local activists.
"At one point I even integrated yoga into our trainings," Bray recalled. "Nothing like Downward Facing Dog and High Cobra to loosen up stressed out activists and get them back in their bodies." Bray joked that many folks didn't know how to react to mediation breathing, "But that's happens when you move to California from the nation's capital."
The seeds for Bray's beginnings were planted on the steps leading to the U.S. Supreme Court, a romantic backdrop for any activist starting at the nation's pulse. He was among the hundreds of thousands that poured into Washington, D.C. in early October 1987 for the Second National March on Washington for LGBT rights. The march was a series of events intended to shift the limelight on the unfair treatment of LGBT Americans. Crowds of activists from all over the country stormed the Supreme Court on the first anniversary of Bowers v. Hardick. The ruling upheld a Georgia sodomy law, which criminalized consenting same-sex relations.
At the time of the march, Bray was still in the closet. "My boss and my family did not know I was gay," Bray said. He had been working as a junior public relations executive for IBM. It was a time when the HIV/AIDS crisis stigmatized the American psyche and tarnished the social acceptance of the gay community. But Bray's interest was piqued when he saw a flyer in Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood ( the District's equivalent to Chicago's Boystown ) calling for volunteers to help facilitate a large-scale demonstration condemning the infamous Supreme Court ruling.
Bray immediately answered the call to arms and began attending meetings in the basement of a local church. "Amidst all the chaos of the meeting, I found a lesbian who appeared to be in charge," Bray recalled, "I introduced myself … said I was a trained corporate PR practitioner, knew how to work the media, [ and ] did the event organizers need help with the press?" That's how Bray and Urvashi Vaid first met. Bray described Vaid as, "one of my great progressive inspirations and movement goddesses to this day." ( Vaid, a long-time LGBT rights activist, has led organizations such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and was named among the most influential LGBT activists in the U.S. by OUT magazine in 2009. )
Almost instantly, Vaid pressed Bray into service. "I was given the responsibility of setting up, detailing and working the media event [ for the march ] ," said Bray. Bray's duties ranged from "writing messages for speakers, crafting the press release, decorating the podium, [ and ] spinning the reporters."
Volunteering for the March on Washington events prompted a major seismic shift in Bray's career. "Suddenly I found myself using professional skills for something very different and exciting than marketing computer products," Bray joked. " [ But ] there was only one little problem: I was not out of the closet!"
Despite that detail, Bray's hard work paid off: "The media turnout at the event was phenomenal!" The late 1980s was a time when the American public was just starting to pay more attention to LGBT issues. As the spotlight shifted from a purely negative portrayal onto a community ready ( and prepared ) to fight back, Bray stood witness to the events. "TV producers could count on visually well-staged events," Bray said. "I recall one cameraman saying, 'You gays really know how to make a picture!'" Bray recalled that as more gay and lesbian reporters came out in the newsroom, there was more pressure to cover LGBT issues.
"The topic itself was hugely controversial as LGBT people and people with HIV/AIDS were taking their story directly to the government, often getting arrested in the process," said Bray. But living in an era when the American public fed off of controversy, it was not hard to get coverage.
"There was a phalanx of TV cameras at the press conference," Bray remembered. "A nest of microphones covered the podium. Behind us, queers were being arrested in waves … 'Arrest bigotry, not Gay People!' was one chant I remember well," said Bray. Bray recalled the press conference going off perfectly.
After the press conference ended, one reporter, recognizing Bray from IBM ( "she normally covered the Beltway business beat," Bray noted ) approached him for a follow-up. For Bray, what happened next was pivotal: "She told the camera to roll, thrust the microphone in my face, and asked, 'Why are you here at this protest?'" Without much thought about the consequence, Bray answered dutifully, "I responded something like, 'I'm here because I'm gay. We demand an end to discrimination and sodomy laws that criminalize our sexuality. The police should not be in our bedrooms. Every person has the right to live openly and freely and free of fear and discrimination because of who they are or whom they love.'"
Not really realizing what he had just done the reporter complimented Bray before moving on, "'Good soundbite,' she said, then walked off to get B-roll of the riot police," remembered Bray.
That evening, Bray was scanning coverage from the press conference and the day's events. That's when he saw himself, his face pixilated and projected through thousands of tiny mirrors on televisions broadcasting nationwide. "Suddenly on the TV screen was my talking head, outing myself," Bray said, "Back at home in Arizona my dad and other relatives were watching the news and saw me on TV. My boss at IBM saw it. I outed myself to several million people at once."
Looking back, Bray attributes everything to the timing of events, "the ferocious and thrilling combination of queer direct action, media spotlights, the headline-seizing news of AIDS and gay rights, the exploding controversy of government inaction in the face of one of the worst epidemics in history … all of which converged in D.C. at that moment."
Hard part taken care of, Bray decided there was no better time for a change. "I found myself directly in its centrifugal center, whirling myself right out of the closet and onto a course of social justice."
Shortly after outing himself, Bray resigned from IBM ( what he called his "yuppie job" ) and decided to make working for the LGBT and HIV/AIDS movements his full-time job. Initially, Vaid roped Bray in as communications director at the Human Rights Campaign Fund. He later became communications director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, where Vaid served as the executive director.
In 1993, Bray moved from Washington to San Francisco to continue work for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. By then, Bray had been working for NGLTF for several years and he was ready for change. Bray started the "Fight the Right Project" for the Task Force with his colleague Scot Nakagawa. At the time, many anti-gay ballot measures all argued under the umbrella that there be no special rights for gays, " [ they ] were popping up in states around the nation, particularly out west," said Bray.
With the "Fight the Right Project," Bray and Nakagawa traveled to several "hot spots" around the nation conducting trainings for the grassroots. The idea was to provide local activists on the frontlines the tools necessary for pushing back against the radical/religious right-wing.
Bray pointed out that it was not just the LGBT community that was being targeted by these different groups but also people of different races and even genders. "Our approach was progressive in nature, grounded not only in LGBT equality, but also racial and gender justice," said Bray. "We helped LGBT activists from Cortez, Colorado to Bend, Oregon to Rapid City, South Dakota and many other places, urban and rural, understand the interconnected agenda of the Far Right."
Being on the road showed Bray the gritty reality many faced fighting for social justice. "I met amazingly courageous queers along the way," Bray recalled, "especially in small towns." Aside from meeting with local activists and dodging homophobic extremists, Bray laughed that he also "ate a lot of country food on the road those days."
By the late 1990s, Bray's influence continued to expand. He founded the SPIN Project in 1997 to give social justice activists the tools they needed to sharpen their relationships with the media. Bray recognized that his experience both in the corporate world and the LGBT movement were applicable to other movements as well. "LGBT activists are very savvy and skilled when it comes to telling our stories, staging impactful media events and photo ops, and communicating strategic messages," Bray said. "I felt activists from other movements could benefit from our experiences." With the SPIN Project, Bray and his staff conducted media trainings all over the country. Bray described the SPIN Academy as a "multi-day media boot camp," which is still going strong, though Bray no longer works with the project.
Today, Bray continues to support social activist movements primarily through philanthropy. He funds media training as well as other communications capacity building resources to bolster the ability of immigrant rights and other activists so they may communicate their messages more clearly.
Robert Bray's legacy is a testament to the often under-appreciated and perhaps less glamorous parts of the greater LGBT movement. Often working behind-the-scenes to foster positive relationships with the media, Bray may be credited with influencing hundreds, and quite possibly thousands of social justice activists nationwide. This is, of course, aside from detailing the credit due for his bringing a message of equality and fairness for all Americans through his work as an ambassador between activism and the media. His efforts to sharpen the media tools of grassroots movements across the states have provided activists the necessary confidence to shed a positive light on the LGBT movement.
This story is part of the Local Reporting Initiative, supported in part by The Chicago Community Trust.
