Global gay rights activist Melanie Nathan plans to use the platform she's been given as a community grand marshal for San Francisco Pride to highlight international LGBT human rights issues, particularly in Africa.
Nathan hopes that LGBT Africans and human rights defenders will join her as she rides with her family down Market Street and celebrates at the Pride parade Sunday, June 29.
"I feel like the honor really is for them. I feel like San Francisco Pride, in honoring me, is really honoring the people who are suffering," said Nathan, a 56-year-old lesbian. "I see it as a trophy for the people who are going through it. And for that I'm so grateful."
LGBT Ugandan activists praised Nathan for her work in the community.
"She has gone out of her way to support the community," wrote Ugandan lesbian activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, executive director of Freedom and Roam Uganda. "Melanie is doing all she can to support the LGBT community back home."
Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, agreed, calling Nathan a "key ally in Uganda."
New project launched
Nathan just announced a new project, the San Francisco Africa Leadership Institute, in which she plans to bring members of the LGBT community in Africa to San Francisco to celebrate Pride by marching in her contingent and participating in the festivities. The San Francisco LGBT Community Center is the fiscal sponsor of the institute.
The institute is being funded in part by a grant from the Arcus Foundation.
Nathan acknowledged that the people she has invited may not make it to the U.S. because of State Department regulations, but she hopes some who have received invitations will be granted visas.
"The U.S. State Department has set extremely onerous criteria for people seeking visas and many of the people I have invited may not be able to meet those criteria," Nathan said in a June 18 news release announcing the institute.
Bryan Simmons, vice president for communications at the Arcus Foundation, did not respond to an email seeking information about the foundation's involvement with the project.
Rebecca Rolfe, executive director of the LGBT center, also did not respond to email questions about the center's involvement with the institute.
Nathan said in an email that she would get back to the Bay Area Reporter but did not provide a follow-up response.
For the love of Africa
A former South African attorney, Nathan began her legal career during the apartheid era. Decades later she is fighting for global LGBT rights from her home in the Bay Area.
Nathan has served as a mediator and owner of Melanie Nathan Mediation since 2000. Over time, her mediation business has evolved into Private Courts International Inc., an unregistered affiliated entity she launched in 2003. It wasn't until 2008 she connected it to her international LGBT rights work, she said.
She's now working on registering PCI as a nonprofit to continue her global LGBT rights work, Nathan explained.
Nathan moved to Los Angeles from South Africa in 1985. A decade later she settled in the Bay Area, she said.
The mother of two girls now lives with her partner in the Marin. She wouldn't disclose their names to protect their privacy.
In spite of nearly 30 years living in the U.S., Nathan still considers herself, not just a South African, but an African.
"I'm a white African," said Nathan. "I was a part of the apartheid struggle."
After years of advocating for binational same-sex couples and LGBT asylum, she turned her focus in 2008 to other global LGBT rights issues, particularly African anti-gay laws and so-called corrective rape, she said, referring to the brutal practice of raping gay men and lesbians to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.
"I have a specific affinity for Africa," Nathan said. "I love Africa. There is a lot about Africa that I feel and I understand."
Controversies and new beginnings
Six years ago she began writing about international LGBT issues on what turned out to be a fake lesbian blog, Lez Get Real, which was exposed in 2011. While Nathan credits the blog for publishing her earlier works covering global LGBT issues, which led to her to launching her own blog, O-blog-dee-o-blog-da in 2009, she denounced it. The sting of feeling duped by then-Lez Get Real founder and owner Bill Graber, a straight man who posed as a lesbian named Paula Brooks, hasn't left her as she reluctantly recalled the period in her life three years ago.
"I would rather not talk about it because I was taken for a big ride back then," said Nathan. "I've slowly let go of it and I've moved on from it."
The blog was reportedly sold and is now owned by straight ally Pat Carbonell, who operates it out of Vermont, but Nathan believes Graber still has a stake in the blog. There is an "'anonymous' token straight male" contributor who handles the technology issues for the website, according to the blog's "About" page.
Carbonell didn't respond to a request for comment from the B.A.R. by press time.
On a mission
Nathan has continued advocating, blogging, and speaking out about global gay rights issues as a part of her work as founding executive director at PCI.
"It's been organic," she said about the evolution of her international LGBT rights work. "It's never been a part of the plan."
She finances her work herself, except for a crowdfunding campaign earlier this year for her new Rescue Fund. That campaign raised $14,025 to provide direct support to LGBT Africans who are living in hiding after being persecuted and losing everything. The money has paid for housing, food, and other basic necessities for 37 LGBT Ugandans in hiding, she said.
Nathan wouldn't reveal her verification process for selecting the beneficiaries of her campaign when the B.A.R. asked. She also did not respond to a request to speak with Africans she says she has helped.
"I do have a protocol, which is not something that I don't want to reveal because I don't want to breach any security of how I do things," said Nathan. "It's a very, very sensitive issue."
Nathan isn't certain about the actual figures for how much she's personally invested in her work for LGBT global rights. She figures that she's sent upward of $30,000 of her own money to LGBT Africans who have lost jobs, homes, and communities simply for being gay, and roughly $100,000 a year worth of labor and lost pay working 40 to 60 hours a week on international LGBT rights for the past six years.
Nathan said that she's only recently started receiving help from volunteers.
Her goal with PCI is to incorporate it as a nonprofit so she can continue her work and raise money to help LGBT Africans in need with the Rescue Fund, she said.
"Nobody is funding individuals directly to survive in hiding. That doesn't exist," said Nathan, adding that she's motivated by her own family's history; her Jewish ancestors escaped from Eastern Europe and were rescued.
"I kind of feel like it's somewhere in my DNA. That this is just the right thing to do," said Nathan, who fields dozens of emails and requests for help daily.
"Imagine if Anne Frank had the Internet and could reach out to people in other countries. Would we turn our back on her because we were not Jewish?" asked Nathan, pointing out that Jewish Americans were among the first to help Jews in Germany during the Nazi era and the Diaspora.
Nathan said that LGBTs in the U.S. and elsewhere should help their counterparts in hostile or developing countries.
"I think that every single LGBT person ... has a duty to help other LGBT people and it doesn't matter what our colors are if they are African, Russian, or they are Saudi Arabian, the point is that we are all LGBT," said Nathan, who expressed disappointment in the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for what she claimed was the organizations' leaderships' lack of response to global LGBT rights issues.
"I think that we are falling short as a global community. I don't think that we are being supportive enough in changing laws, especially regarding the refuge situation and the asylum laws," said Nathan. "You have one life to live. Can you imagine living it in hiding, not even in the closet by choice but literally hiding and fear?
"I'm just very disappointed," said Nathan, pointing to a much-criticized $3 million launch of HRC's Global Engagement Program announced last November. She feels HRC is just "sitting" on the money while there's a major crisis occurring in Africa. "None of our organizations have come forward to do anything."
Representatives of the LGBT rights organizations disagree. Officials with HRC and the Task Force both pointed to the work they do supporting organizations whose mission is working on global LGBT rights.
Jason Rahlan, global engagement press secretary of HRC, pointed to the research and publications focused on global LGBT rights the organization recently published and its work with American policymakers, faith-based communities, LGBT advocacy organizations, and other agents of change to expose American religious extremists exporting hate and influencing discriminatory laws abroad.
For its part, Task Force officials said the agency has partnered with various international groups.
"We care deeply about the LGBTQ community across the world," said the Reverend Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the Task Force, citing various international LGBT rights organizations that have partnered with the Task Force, including the Council on Global Equality and the Global Transgender Research and Advocacy Project.
"They place a particular emphasis on tailoring help and assistance based on listening to and working with local activists across the world, addressing their specific needs not on what we might presume," Nipper said. "In this way the activists can have a bigger impact on creating lost lasting change in their respective nations."
Nathan is far from done with her work. After the cheering of the Pride crowd fades she will continue working on behalf of LGBT Africans and others around the world.
"I will feel very proud when we find ways to change, when we find ways to empower people so there is change," said Nathan.