Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance shines light on LGBTQ issues

Melissa Tabak didn’t expect to come out to in front of 2,000 of her high school peers. It just… Melissa Tabak didn’t expect to come out to in front of 2,000 of her high school peers. It just sort of happened.

Tabak, the political action chair for the Rainbow Alliance, came out during an LGBTQ discussion in front of her peers when she sat on a panel with other students and teachers.

“It never occurred to me I’d be coming out,” she said. “It was terrifying, but then it was beautiful. My friends congratulated me, and people I never really talked to congratulated me.”

When Tabak came to Pitt in 2009, she started to hang around Rainbow Alliance, the only LGBTQ student organization on campus. But Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance is more than just a place for the LGBTQ community to come together and promote its interests. It is a club for all people, and Tricia Doughtery, the organization’s president, wants to make that apparent.

“It’s more of an environment where everyone feels comfortable,” Doughtery said. “I like to think we are a family, or at least a really tight-knit group of friends.”

Over the past week, the group celebrated National Coming Out Week with various events such as a movie night, a speak-out night about coming out experiences, a lecture from Lt. Dan Choi, a gay rights activist discharged from the Army under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and a free semi-formal dance open to the public tonight in the William Pitt Union Ballroom.

“I think it’s really a week to reflect on your personal story,” Doughtery said. “[It’s] a week to reflect on how far you’ve come and see where you are going.”

For Doughtery, coming out is a lifelong process.

“I definitely think that we come out every day of our lives, but it’s not a big thing for me anymore,” she said.

Rainbow Alliance helps to ease whatever difficulties LGBTQ people might face in society by educating the public.

Throughout the year, Rainbow Alliance hosts many events and discussions such as safer sex workshops, a transgender 101 workshop and the group’s annual drag show that takes place during Rainbow Alliance’s Gay Pride Week near the end of the spring semester. The drag show raises funds for the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force.

The student group not only holds events but also conducts discussions on various issues such as civil rights and LGBTQ discrimination.

Junior Hannah Solkowitz joined Rainbow Alliance her freshman year and said that same-sex marriage is an issue often discussed at its events.

“It’s more about the rights that come with marriage than the idea of marriage,” she said. “If your loved ones are in the hospital, you want to visit them.”

Before federal regulations enacted this January, hospital visitation rights did not extend to gay and lesbian couples.

Solkowitz elaborated that the group fights for the idea of equality for all people regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

“If civil rights are meant to be for people, lesbian, gay and transgendered are people too,” she said. “It is something everyone should have regardless of sexual orientation.”

Rainbow Alliance also works to combat discrimination and harassment, as well as draw attention to language that offends the LGBTQ community.

“A lot of people didn’t know that ‘tranny’ was offensive. Once they understood it was an issue, they stopped using it,” Solkowitz said. “The only way that we can raise the issue is by shining a light on it.”

Darren Pifer, a junior and the business manager for Rainbow Alliance, said that most people are accepting of his sexual orientation.

“They know me as me. They don’t know me as that gay kid,” he said. “This is me. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.”

Pifer looks forward to keeping up the group’s strong presence on campus.

“It is the only undergraduate LGBT [group on campus], so it is important that we keep it up,” Pifer said. “We can’t slow down. We have to be the voice because we are the only voice.”