Be the Change: Coming Out Day Speaker Urges Engagement, Activism

Venturiello’s visit was part of Rivers’ observation of National Coming Out Day, which takes place on October 11. October, as Venturiello pointed out, is also LGBT History Month—a history that has sometimes been erased, ignored, or denigrated. At Monday’s presentation, he shared a bit of that history, as well as his own. Coming out to a close friend in college, he recalled, was both a watershed moment and “not a big deal,” as his friend reassured him of her support.

“Coming out is a journey,” Venturiello noted, adding that the moment taught him two things: “One, that coming out doesn’t have to mean coming out to everyone, and two, the importance of allyship and the need to have spaces to be your authentic self.”

The personal and the political were interwoven in Venturiello’s talk. He noted that as recently as 1970—ancient history to the students, but within living memory for some professional community members in attendance—gay people could be legally subject to arrest, be fired from their jobs, and otherwise have their rights infringed. But, he noted, the seventies were also an era of social change, and he told the audience about a young gay man named Craig Rodwell, who organized the country’s first gay pride parade in 1969, in the wake of the infamous Stonewall Riots. Venturiello also shared the story of Rodney Wilson, a Missouri teacher who in 1994 successfully advocated for the creation of LGBT History Month. 

With all the strides that have been made in LGBTQ+ rights, more work remains to be done. “The fight continues,” said Venturiello. “We’re still moving forward.” 

Later, Venturiello joined two lunchtime sessions with students and professional community members to delve deeper into his history, Christopher Street Tours, and student activism. A student asked about the name “Christopher Street,” and Venturiello explained that Christopher Street, in New York’s Greenwich Village, was both the site of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, and an area that served as a sort of safe haven for LGBTQ+ people in the 1960s. The 1969 riots, he noted, were a “pivotal point that turned a moment into a movement.”

New York–based Christopher Street Tours recently expanded to the Boston area, with a LGBTQ+ walking tour in Cambridge. On October 19, a Christopher Street tour guide will lead a group of Rivers students on a Cambridge tour that will visit historically significant locations, including the site of the nation’s first same-sex marriages. 

At the all-school assembly, citing the examples of Rodwell and Wilson, Venturiello told the students that they have the power to create change now, not just in the future. He shared a Venn diagram that illustrated how students and others can start to step up and be the change. One circle of the diagram represented what they’re passionate about; the other, what they’re good at. The middle, overlapping part, said Venturiello, is “magic. That’s how you can change the world.

“You are not the leaders of tomorrow,” he concluded. “You are the leaders of today.”