Celebrate National Coming Out Day with our "Top 25" Best of the Best LGBT Favorites! These artists, entertainers, speakers educate, enlighten and entertain at colleges and universities across the country.

Campus Pride officially releases the 2011 HOT LIST! The list represents our "Top 25 LGBT Favorites" -- lecturers, comedians, musicians. poets, artists, researchers, activists and more. Every year Campus Pride picks the most diverse, provocative, inspiring and enlightening artists/speakers as a resource for your LGBT student organization. The purpose is to provide a recommendation of the BEST OF THE BEST in planning your campus events and activities.

The artists/speakers listed are not only our SIZZLING HOT PICKS but they also rate highly among recommendations from LGBT young adults at colleges and universities across the country. If you want to create change -- PICK FROM OUR TOP 25 LGBT FAVORITES!

Sir Ari Gold 
Mia Mingus
Ben Cohen, MBE
Lava Love Dance
Divas of Diversity
Randi Driscoll
Vidur Kapur
Sue Rankin, Ph.D.
Jonathan D. Lovitz
Kit Yan
Hudson Taylor
Judy Shepard
BeBe Zahara Benet
LZ Granderson
Ben Lerman
Brian Sims
Shane L. Windmeyer
Robyn Ochs
Mara Kiessling
Geri Jewell
Cathy Renna
Michael Holtz
Emanuel Xavier 
Daniel Hernandez Jr.
Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington

More information online at www.CampusPride.org/HotList

National LGBT civil rights leader, Campus Pride founder Shane Windmeyer kicks off his LGBT History Month National Campus Tour as IUPUI keynote and spreads his message against "bullying and harassment" to over a dozen colleges and universities across the country this Fall

(Indianapolis, Ind.) – Shane Windmeyer, founder and executive director of Campus Pride, the leading national non-profit working to build future LGBT and straight ally student leaders, is scheduled to keynote IUPUI’s Inaugural Harvey Milk Dinner on National Coming Out Day, Oct. 11, 2010, 6:30 p.m., IUPUI Campus Center, Room 450C. The engagement kicks off Windmeyer's LGBT History Month National Campus Tour to over twelve colleges and universities this Fall.

Windmeyer’s visit to the university comes on the heels of a local bakery’s refusal to fill a special order for IUPUI’s LGBT student organization. What outrageous sweet tooth-soothing delight did the students request? Rainbow cookies and cupcakes. Despite the natural impulse to laugh at this confectionary controversy, Windmeyer says the discrimination doled out by this local business is no joking matter.

“LGBT people experience harassment and discrimination every day,” he says. “Sometimes the discrimination is outright, other times it is subtle. Either way, the discrimination is serious and always indicative of the hostile environments in which LGBT people must live, grow, learn and work.”

What can clearly be referred to as an epidemic, within only the past few weeks, a number of gay young men have taken their lives by all indications as a result of the unrelenting homophobic taunts, harassment, and attacks they had to endure by their peers: Seth Walsh, 13, hung himself from a tree outside his California home; Billy Lucas, 15, hung himself in Indiana; Asher Brown, 13, from Texas shot himself in the head; Tyler Clementi, 18, first-year student from Rutgers University took his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. And though we are not yet certain of the precipitating factors, now we hear of the tragic suicide of gay student, Raymond Chase, 19, from Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.

All this comes on the heels of the news from Michigan, where Assistant District Attorney, Andrew Shirvell, has been targeting University of Michigan's gay student-assembly president, Chris Armstrong, for the past six months with abusive and highly inflammatory epithets and images on his internet blog site. For example, Shirvell displayed a photo of a swastika placed over a gay-pride rainbow flag with an arrow pointing to Armstrong's face.

Also on the blog, Shirvell accused Armstrong of seducing "a previously conservative" student until he "morphed into a proponent of the radical homosexual agenda." He also has protested outside Armstrong's house, loudly shouting that Armstrong is "Satan's representative on the student assembly."

Read the rest of Shane Windmeyer's post at Bilerico.com...

Photo courtesy RawStory.com

Last Thursday, Campus Pride was proud to join with Campus Progress and the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus to present a special Capitol Hill policy briefing on our new report, The 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People.

The report, authored by Campus Pride’s Q Research Institute for Higher Education (Rankin, Blumenfeld, Weber & Frazer), gathers data on the experiences of over 5,000 respondents, uncovering the persistent harassment and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBQ) students, faculty, and staff on college campuses across the United States, and pointing to the need for more inclusive campus policies, programs and practices. At the briefing, a panel of academics, national leaders and students will discuss the findings of the report and offer national policy solutions to address these critical findings.

Some photos, news round-up and transcript of the event after the jump...

Yeah, it's HOT!

Campus Pride officially releases the 2009 HOT LIST! The list represents our "Top 25 LGBT Favorites" -- lecturers, comedians, musicians. poets, artists, researchers, activists and more. Every year Campus Pride will pick the most diverse, provocative, inspiring and enlightening artists/speakers as a resource for your LGBT student organization. The purpose is to provide a recommendation of the BEST OF THE BEST in planning your campus events and activities.

Peaches Christ
Pauline Park
Martin Manalansan
Marga Gomez
The Kinsey Sicks
Randi Driscoll
Vidur Kapur
Sue Rankin, Ph.D.
Sharon Bridgforth
Roderick A. Ferguson
Mia Mingus
Judy Shepard
Jessica Pettitt
LZ Granderson
Ian Harvie
Hanifah Walidah
Shane L. Windmeyer, MS. Ed.
Emi Koyama
John Corvino, Ph.D.
DRED
Deep-Dickollective
Lt. Dan Choi
Cherrie L. Moraga
Andrea Gibson
Adelina Anthony

The artists/speakers listed are not only our SIZZLING HOT PICKS but they also rate highly among recommendations from LGBT young adults at colleges and universities across the country. If you want to create change -- PICK FROM OUR TOP 25 LGBT FAVORITES!

BURNING HOT -- CLICK HERE
Learn more about each artist/speaker and don't forget to mention the Campus Pride HOT LIST!

NOMINATE YOUR LGBT FAVORITE FOR THE 2010 HOT LIST