Michael Rogers (activist)

Michael Rogers

Mike Rogers (* 1964 ) is a fundraiser, blogger, and gay rights activist from the United States . He lives in Washington, DC and outlines bigoted politicians who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians, but who maintain secret same-sex relationships themselves.

Rogers grew up in New York City and came out as a student and has been openly gay since 1986.

He began his fundraising career in 1988 with Communicating The Future , a four-station broadcaster fundraising campaign . At the station, he also worked with the programming department on a five-part television series to celebrate the city's first month of Gay Pride .

He then worked as a development coordinator at the Hetrick-Martin Institute and its Harvey Milk High School . There he developed their first fundraising campaigns, directed two film premieres, started a direct mailing program, expanded the annual award ceremonies and wrote the first “corporate solicitation grants”. From 1992 to 1996, Rogers managed the projects and fundraising of the Funding Exchange , a network of 15 foundations based in the lesbian and gay movement that support social change. In 1996 he relocated to Washington, DC, and became head of development for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force , America's oldest surviving organization advocating LGBT rights. In addition to his work there, he managed the marketing, fundraising and sponsorship of the Gala Choruses Festival 2000 , an eight-day event with 5,500 singers from 200 choirs. At Greenpeace he looked after the group of major donors who donated $ 5,000 or more.

He has been a human rights activist since the mid-1980s when he was involved in campaigns advocating separation from South Africa as a tactic to bring about an end to apartheid . At times he was also an activist for the Act Up , Queer Nation and Lambda Independent Democrats . He is currently also involved in neighborhood help and as a “tenant organizer”.

On the Internet, Rogers operates the LGBT news site PageOneQ and BlogACTIVE . He is also a co-founder of the Proud Of Who We Are initiative and the Gay Politics Blogads network , which among other things jointly strives for advertising income.

BlogACTIVE reports an average of 3,000 to 4,000 hits per day and if there is a new scandal in the media, it can be up to 100,000 hits a day. On the left side all people who have already been outed are listed. The website is ad-supported, but not profitable.

The trigger to start this blog was in June 2004, when the then Republican-dominated Senate was considering a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage nationwide in order to mobilize the Christian party base. Rogers found this unacceptable and began distributing leaflets and placing an ad on Gay.com asking for anonymous references to gay Republicans. The feedback was very numerous and Rogers verified the information. The first release was for MP Ed Schrock and contained audio files of calls to a sex phone service. Two weeks later the man gave up his campaign.

He publishes his information after verification and as soon as he has a good feeling about it. He is also aware that a false report would permanently undermine his credibility and would therefore be counterproductive. He doesn't care if a politician is gay and he hates outing people, but he thinks it's necessary. Rogers finds the term outing rather negative, as it means for him the indiscriminate publication of the sexual orientation of famous people, such as actors. Rogers prefers reporting to label his work; he only reports on "politicians who make life difficult for gays and who are gay themselves." By September 2007 he had outed 30 Republican and 3 Democratic politicians and there is still material about other people from all over the country that has not yet been published has been. In his opinion, the imbalance in the number of politicians he outed between the parties has nothing to do with his own sympathy for the Democrats, but with the phenomenon that many gays prefer to hide in their conservative cloak in their self-denial. Many of the politicians denied it, others later declared themselves publicly. So far, however, his statements have never been refuted in court. He encounters negative criticism not only from his mostly conservative opponents, who sometimes refer to him as “Satan”, “criminal” and “blackmailer”, but his forced outing is also controversial in the LGBT community and its organizations, albeit its narrow ones Criteria are most likely to find approval and are seen by many as a legitimate weapon against hypocrites .

Within the LGBT scene, his outings have made him something of a star and his work is a focal point in the discussion about the ethics of outings. Because of this, several nationally significant US and German-speaking media have repeatedly reported about him and his work since 2004.

One planned project is the establishment of an organization called The National Association of Lesbian and Gay Fundraisers , which will offer education, training and grants.

Web links

• www.blogactive.com - Michael Rogers Blog
• www.pageonenewsmedia.com
• Brokeback Hill

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1. ^ ^{A b} Rebecca Dana and Jose Antonio Vargas: Capitol Hill Insiders Irked By Campaign To 'Out' Them , Washington Post, Jul 15, 2004, C01
2. ↑ Biography Michael Rogers ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , pageonenewsmedia.com, seen on September 18, 2007
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Marc Pitzke: Schwulen-Outer Rogers - Blogger Against the Bigots , September 17, 2007, Spiegel Online
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Richard J. Rosendall: Mike Rogers and the Ethics of Outing ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Bay Windows, September 13, 2007, published by Indegayforum
5. ↑ Page One News Media: Media Archive ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Max Böhnel: Forced Outing of Republican Gays , Telepolis , October 17, 2006