Gay man to lead national disability group

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http://www.washingtonblade.com/2011/07/07/gay-man-to-lead-national-disability-group/

For many, coming out as LGBT after growing up Catholic would be challenging enough. Yet for former Obama administration aide Mark Perriello, 36, who grew up in Chelmsford, Mass., outside Boston, that was only one of the challenges that he had to face. Visually impaired since he was a child, he had to come out not only as gay but as a person with a disability.

Today, Perriello, known in the LGBT community as a political strategist, is the new president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, the country’s largest cross-disability membership group. Perriello’s well-regarded grassroots development and political strategizing in the LGBT community played a key role in his appointment to this position, said AAPD board members, who believe these skills will empower the bi-partisan, disability advocacy organization. He took the helm of AAPD on June 6.

In an interview the with Blade in his K Street office in Washington, D.C., Perriello discussed the parallels between the LGBT and disability civil rights movements and his goals for AAPD. (This month, in commemoration of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990, is Disability Pride Month.)

In his boyhood, he was taught that being gay was a sin, Perriello said. In his youth, he became involved with the ex-gay movement.

“I thought that if I just prayed hard enough, that I would be able to change,” Perriello said.

Perriello didn’t come out until he was a student at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies. “I had a lot of positive role models,” he said, “they helped me to be comfortable with the fact that I’m gay.”