Publication Type: Symposium Paper
Abstract: Very little is known about gay elementary school principals and their challenges with coming out to their students and families. My paper would focus on the experiences of a gay elementary school principal that came out to his district and school on national television. This paper would include the politics of coming out as an elementary school principal, and would capture the entire coming out process, including fears, lows, challenges, reprimands, and celebrations. It would also include a brief life history about his childhood experiences how he made sense of being gay. The paper would also include the ways in which being a gay principal has influenced his leadership practice. It will highlight the experiences of the coming out process of an elementary school principal and capture the influence that being an openly gay principal has on leadership practices.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: No abstract available.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article reviews literature on the coming-out process for gay men in general and gay black men in particular. The article examines how gay men come to accept their homosexuality and some of the factors that influence, or prohibit gay black men from coming-out. Although there is no consensus on one way that gay men come to accept their homosexuality, there is largely agreement among scholars that the coming-out process happens in stages. I propose that with current changes in societal acceptance of homosexuality, further research be done to determine how and if the coming-out process for gay black men has become easier and if the stages have changed. In addition, further research is needed to study the time in which gay black men take to go from realizing their same-sex attraction to fully coming-out as gay men.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study investigates the relationship between privacy management behaviors and self-disclosure among online dating participants, drawing on Petronio’s (2002) Communication Privacy Management Theory (CPM). We propose a conceptual model integrating individual decision criteria, privacy rules (as manifest in strategies for verifying disclosures made by communication partners), and self-disclosure which is tested on a nationwide sample of online dating participants (N=562). Our findings confirm that verification strategies are predicted by three sets of online dating concerns - personal security, misrepresentation, and recognition – as well as self-efficacy and Internet experience. In turn, those who engage in more frequent verification strategies report greater amounts of self-disclosure with potential online dating partners. Implications for CPM theory and the warranting principle in online contexts (Walther & Parks, 2002) are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: After witnessing various kinds of resistance to the National Coming Out Day festival I helped organize this fall at USC Upstate, I propose that Women’s Studies should emerge as a leader in the process of integrating GLBTQ issues into the curriculum and cultural events on campuses in the U.S. Southeast. It is up to the directors and professors of Women’s Studies to claim this antihomophobic work, and to produce a rhetoric of sexual diversity that can intervene in the culture of shame, stigma, and sexual repression that continues to characterize the dominant ideology of the Bible Belt.