(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music ends) - Hello, everyone.

So home, being the topic, about 5 days a week, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, you are at work, and it becomes the second home.

You're with new colleagues and things can be a bit more conservative.

I work in defense contracting, do software engineering, and my first job out of graduate school, I had to think: Do I put up a picture in my cubicle of the person that I love?

Currently we're 16 years together, 17 years since November, but same-sex couple; I'm bisexual.

And in a conservative kind of environment, do I want to open myself up to have people seeing that, questioning that could I not get promoted because of it?

Would a client see it and be like, ugh.

So I kind of kept that close because I didn't really wanna put myself out there, but I did put a picture up, but one more so with a whole bunch of college friends and my other half; that way they're still there with me, but it's kind of a little bit more reserved.

And this was the time period where inside the kind of like dining area that you have for your lunch, they have a big screen TV on and it's playing Fox News because if you change it to CNN, people get upset.

(audience laughing) My people.

(chuckles) So at that time it was actually on the Supreme Court about same-sex marriage.

I had a coworker who was in there, he was like: Ugh.

What next, man marrying a dog?

And I decided to push back a little bit.

I went like, "Get a dog, sign a contract."

He was silent.

Good.

Then he was like: Well, how about man marrying a child?

Legally, can they sign a contract?

No.

No problem.

Continue.

So at that job, a little bit later on I found out who kind of was like safe to talk about this.

And I told one person at lunch one time about: Oh, yeah, you know that person that comes to all the meals and the events, my friend?

Yeah, that's my other half.

And he's like, "You too?"

I'm like, "What?"

Yeah, no, I'm bi.

It's like, ah, yay.

We're both bi.

More chips for the salsa.

(audience laughs) But eventually I move on from working at that place and the next place I'm going to, I'd still have to have that thought.

I'm gonna be in the office with a few other people.

Do I wanna put up that picture?

Do I want to open up and invite that?

And I'm deciding, okay, at this workplace, I'm gonna be a bit more open about it, so I do put up that picture.

And the office place is much more, like, open than my previous job, so very supportive.

Jokes are, like, not at my expense, but with me.

So we still have an issue though.

We're like working with other people and subcontractors at points, and it just randomly in a meeting it's like: You know, there's so many gays in the media right now.

Why is there so many gays?

Not withstanding the thought of, you know, there's a lot of straight people in the media too.

A lot more of 'em.

And it's just one of those things where it's like: Man, why do I have to keep doing this?

And eventually, DEI comes into the forefront; diversity, equity, inclusion, and we're working together to like form a committee on this.

One person that I know joined up because she wanted to help to push that there are these invisible disabilities that people can have and it affects them in their workplace and their daily lives, and you may not see it, but they're having to deal with that.

And how can we make the office place more accepting for them?

Myself, I'm going up because LGBTQ-plus.

Like, we need representation in here too.

And we're having an icebreaker conversation.

And one of my coworkers that I loved, her husband had back surgery and while he was recovering I got him, like, a coloring book for adults that had swear words and flamingos.

(audience laughs) He liked that.

I got a really nice note about it and it's like, hey, recover and draw happy flamingos.

But she's on, and she's telling a story about how a friend of hers recently told her that she was starting a new job, and she had to think about whether or not to put up a picture of her other half.

And it hurt her to think that someone had to second guess doing that because to her, she never had to make that decision in her life.

She has her fiance, and she'll put up a picture.

She has her husband.

She'll put up the picture, same guy.

(audience laughs) And she says along the lines of: I can't believe that anyone has to think about doing that.

And at that moment I felt at home.

Someone else recognized something that I had experienced in each of my jobs: whether or not to put up a picture of the person that I love, and to me, it was very touching to have that moment where someone else had that thought, took that time and understood, yeah, people do have to think about that; that's sad.

They shouldn't have to.

Thank you.

(audience clapping) (gentle upbeat music begins)