On Monday, Wayne Besen and John Becker of Truth Wins Out joined representatives from GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, Lambda Legal, and People for the American Way, along with LGBT luminaries including Ted Snowdon, Sean Eldridge, and Henry van Ameringen, at an event celebrating the trailblazing legacy of In the Life Media.
Receiving awards at the event, titled “Celebrating Our Legacy, Envisioning Our Future,” were leading philanthropist and activist Tim Gill, HLN broadcaster Jane Velez-Mitchell, and inspirational power couple Paris and Christopher Barclay. MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts hosted.
In the Life, the monthly PBS newsmagazine that exposes social injustice by chronicling the lives and experiences of LGBT people, is an institution in the LGBT community, the longest-running LGBT program in television history, and in many ways the archive of the LGBT civil rights movement in America. Monday’s gala marked the 21st anniversary of In the Life, and also the start of a new era for the In the Life Media group — the final episode of this pioneering program will air in December, and In the Life Media will focus on creating an online hub containing its entire archive of episodes as well as thousands of hours of never-before-seen footage, creating the premier resource for video documentation of the evolution of LGBT rights in the United States.
You may recall that last month’s episode of In the Life contained a segment (which you can view below) that focused on Truth Wins Out and the dangerous “ex-gay” industry, using my personal journey and my experience going undercover for TWO in the Bachmann clinic last year as a springboard from which to tell the story. TWO Founder and Executive Director Wayne Besen, the architect of the Bachmann undercover operation and one of the nation’s foremost experts on “pray away the gay” groups, was also prominently featured in the piece.
At Truth Wins Out we are honored to have been a part of the final season of In the Life. We commend this venerable program for its invaluable service to the LGBT community, and look forward to an exciting future for In the Life Media.
