Working toward acceptance inside and out

Lindsay Melsen won’t stop short of her goal for equality. She’s a social justice leader and owner of Include Equality Consulting company. To her, being part of a movement that is working toward equality is much more powerful than getting wrapped up in political rhetoric.

Along with her work as a consultant at an agency that works to incorporate LGBT people into the workplace, Melsen is also a strong community leader and motivator. If you get the chance to watch Melsen in action when educating and addressing a business group on equality, you will be as convinced as I that she has a deep-rooted passion for our community with her number one goal being equality.

“I’m a people person,” Melsen said. “My work with Include allows me to do what I do best: talk with people about the hard stuff.”
It is clear that Melsen is an advocate for change.

“It’s easy for me to find creative ways to talk about inclusion as opposed to diversity,” she admitted.

As much as Melsen advocates and represents the LGBT community through her consulting, she realizes that it’s not always easy for LGBT people in the workplace. “Even though Colorado law protects a person based on their sexual and gender identity, it doesn’t mean that people have to be nice to them,” Melsen said. “On paper we’re protected but that doesn’t mean that gay and trans people don’t get fired all the time. The business simply comes up with other reasons.”

Identifying as a married lesbian, Melsen finds that she continues to get a lot of interest in the topic.

“I often joke that I come out to the community every day, that’s my job,” she said. “Inevitably, people ask about my own personal experiences. It’s amazing to me, almost all of the questions I get are ‘what’s it like to be gay?’”

Yet she revealed that she prefers not to make a big point of bringing up issues surrounding her personal orientation.

In our interview, Melsen admitted that she still finds a lot of shame in the LGBT community based primarily around how the LGBT community is treated by the rest of society.

“Shame is different than guilt,” she said. “Guilt is something we feel based on something we have done or possibly thought. Shame is very powerful; it keeps us from living our lives fully or really thriving.”

Because these commonalities exist in the community, Melsen works to educate the community through workshops.
Her first Shame workshop was held for the lesbians in the community but she’s not stopping there, as plans for workshops dedicated to the trans and bi communities are in the works for early spring.