Mike Rogers - Portrait of a Friend and Activist Mentor

Between starting to blog in 2007 and unanticipated involvement in situations involving the exposure of hypocrites harmful to the rights of of other gay citizens in 2003 and 2004 - i.e., ex-gay fraud Michael Johnston and former Congressman Ed Schrock - I unexpectedly was fortunate enough to get to know two activists who are never ceasing in their efforts to win full legal equality for LGBT Americans. One was Mike Rogers with whom I collaborated on the Ed Schrock story. While there are those who do not agree with Mike's campaign to "out" closeted politic ans who vote against their fellow LGBT citizens even as they solicit secret trysts for gay sex. I on the other hand applaud Mike's effort. If someone wants to remain in the closet, that's their decision - UNLESS they are actively seeking to impair my rights as a citizen and the rights of other gay Americans. Metro Weekly has a profile piece on Mike Rogers that looks at the many other things Mike does for the LGBT community in our struggle. The piece also looks at how Mike has mentored budding activists and helped create an amazing network for communications between activist, journalists and others via the invitation only list-serv that he maintains. Between putting together the 2008 LGBT Blogger Summit in Washington, D.C., which I was lucky enough to attend, and inviting me to the list-serv, Mike has helped me and my desire to make things better for our community to a huge extent. I hope everyone will read the full Metro Weekly piece. Here are some highlights:
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He's not much of a grandstander. In person, he's unassuming. He can laugh heartily, but he's otherwise fairly soft-spoken. His roots are in suburban New York, where he was raised in a two-parent household with two older siblings. And this is the guy the Washington Post dubbed ''the most feared man on the Hill?''
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Blow the whistle on a few closeted gay politicians and political operatives who are working to counter LGBT equality, and the title sticks. But while some corners of Washington may hate Rogers, he in turn loves the city.
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METRO WEEKLY: What's your involvement with Netroots Nation, exactly?
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MICHAEL ROGERS: I've been involved in Netroots Nation now going on my fourth year. The short of it is it's the national convention of new media, bloggers, activists – kind of the whole progressive left has been coming together at this convention that started out as more of an online blogger kind of thing. I do a number of things related to it. I run the LGBT caucus.
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I'm the director of the [independent] National Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative. We raise money and send LGBT bloggers to these conferences. On this one, we're doing $16,000 in scholarships. I'm also running the first pre-convention day for the LGBT community. The 25 recipients of our scholarships will be there. Representatives of LGBT organizations are coming in – everyone from Get Equal to HRC, across the spectrum.
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In 2008, with Netroots and bloggers, I brought together 60 bloggers here in D.C. for a long weekend of training, support, education, networking. We also did some joint events with the Victory Fund conference that coincided with it. We took that and said, ''We have this whole bunch of people who've been reading each other.'' But nobody knew each other. What's key here is taking ''online'' and bringing it ''offline,'' bringing that connection.
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There's a great gain in that. Look at voices like Pam Spaulding. Where would Pam be without the blogosphere? Here's a woman in the Raleigh-Durham [N.C.] area, working at a university, and now she's a really important voice in the community.
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MW: Although the outings can get pretty nasty – McKelway's interview, for example – there's another platform you're involved with that I've also seen get pretty nasty. You manage a listserv with hundreds of LGBT activists, journalists, movement leaders, etc. Sometimes that list gets pretty contentious.
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ROGERS: The reason I created the list was because no one knew who I was. I was looked at as, ''Who the hell is this? Who is this guy, showing up and dragging people out of the closet?'' I realized that in the movement there were so many people that don't understand what they're doing, where they come from.
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[The list] is a wonderful thing for the various parts of our community. . . . When I founded the list, my goal was to bring together all of these different viewpoints and perspectives. You have some viewpoints that are more liberal, some are relatively conservative. But I'm more interested in perspectives. What makes the list really unique is not only does it have activists and leaders of professional things, but it also reaches into every state. . . . It's really a response to a need to have a rapid-fire communication system.
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MW: So you're an organizer at heart?
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ROGERS: I'm a change agent at heart. Yes, organizing is a huge piece of that, but so is reporting and telling the truth. So is fundraising.

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Mike, thanks for all you have done to help me do more to try to make things better. Keep up the great work that you do.