Come Out and Win: Organizing Yourself, Your Community, and Your World

By Sue Hyde

From starting a gay-straight alliance in your high school to effectively lobbying your state representative face-to-face, Come Out and Win explains in a clear and user-friendly manner how to organize and become politically active. It will educate, engage, and agitate LGBT people and allies of all ages to become involved in the political movement to win full equality under the law and sexual/gender freedom. Sue Hyde tells the history of gay liberation but also offers firsthand guidance and practical advice for building organizations and taking concrete action to eradicate homophobia.

Praise and Reviews

“Sue Hyde’s book answers the plaint, ‘What are we gonna do?’  So quit whining, get her book, pick a chapter, do the workbook.  Repeat.  Create change.  Badges not included.”
—Kate Clinton, humorist and author of What the L?

 

 “Sue Hyde has demonstrated in her own life that winning equal rights for LGBT people is not a spectator sport.  Now she has taken this one step further and provided a manual for other LGBT people so that they can join her in this effort.”
—Congressman Barney Frank

 

“Unique and invaluable, this is the essential guide for anyone wanting to advance equal rights for LGBT people.”
—Matt Foreman, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

 

“An invitation to change the world can’t be taken lightly, unless it’s delivered with the sure and light touch of an engaging, dedicated organizer like Sue Hyde.  Turn the pages and be the new world.”
—Jewelle Gomez, author and activist

 

 “In this richly detailed and well-organized book, she offers a stirring course in gay activism with step-by-step-how-to-advice . . . Designed to outrage, inspire, encourage and anger readers, and give them the tools to spring into action, this is an indispensable resource for anyone looking for a little guidance and a little push.”

—Publisher’s Weekly Review, April 23, 2007

 

“Hyde presents activism as an organized method for gaining self-acceptance as well as societal and political change . . . This book fills a niche that heretofore has lacked a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of the topic . . . This book has staying power for the reader and as a library collection staple.”

—Voice of Youth Advocates Review, August 1, 2007

 

Excerpt from Chapter One

Download chapter one of Come Out and Win 

About the Author

Sue Hyde has been an activist organizing around LGBT issues for over 25 years.  She served as news editor at Gay Community News in Boston from 1983 to 1985, and was a leader in the community-based campaign to defend lesbian and gay families in Massachusetts when state lawmakers banned the placement of foster children with lesbian and gay parents.  Since 1986, Hyde has served on the staff of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, helping to lead the fights to repeal sodomy laws, to rescind the military’s ban on openly lesbian, gay and bisexual service members, and to pass non-discrimination laws in cities and states.  Hyde has been director of The Task Force’s Creating Change Conference, the LGBT movement’s activist training conference, for eight years.  She received the prestigious Stonewall Award in 2002, recognizing her for a lifetime of dedication and service to the social movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender freedom, justice and equality.  Hyde lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her girlfriend and two children.