A Taylorsville furniture manufacturer told an audience at Lenoir-Rhyne University on Thursday to "stop being complicit" in allowing prejudice against homosexuals.
Mitchell Gold said it is important to get people, including parents and clergy, to understand the harm they can do in failing to understand that homosexuality is not a matter of choice.
He was interviewed by CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien, as part of Lenoir-Rhyne University's Visiting Writers series. She is working on a "Gay in America" special report for her network.
Gold is the co-founder of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, a Taylorsville-based furniture manufacturer. He is also the founder of Faith in America, an organization crusading against religion-based prejudice against gays.
Speaking before an audience of mostly college students, Gold talked about growing up in the 1960s, when homosexuality "was considered a mental disorder." He didn't tell his mother he was gay until he was 24. It was another two years, he said, before he told his father.
He said it is important to elect politicians who will protect the civil rights of gay people.
Gold is the editor of "Crisis," a book of essays on growing up gay in America. Forty people from all walks of life authored the essays.
Contributors to the book include actor Richard Chamberlain, Congressman Barney Frank and political analyst Hilary Rosen. Martina Navratilova wrote the forward.
Gold said that "People are good, and have the capacity to change." But, he conceded, there are others who have spoken with him and read his book "who refuse to change."
O'Brien, who is of mixed race, compared the current attitudes towards gays with the prejudice against mixed-race people a generation ago.
During a question-and-answer segment with the audience, Gold heard some dissenting points of view.
The first person to speak said, "God did not create people the way you said he did. You created yourself." He called on Gold "to receive Christ as your personal savior."
Another speaker asked, "Since you choose to disregard what the Bible says, where do you get your truth?"
But most of the audience was supportive, including a woman who described her son as "one of the first people in Hickory to put a face on AIDS."
Gold got the last word of the evening when, after the audience participation segment was over, a Lenoir-Rhyne student insisted on asking him where to find the "scientific evidence" that gay people are born gay.
"Google it," said Gold.
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