The Gay Vegans: Social media for your cause

By Dan Hanley

Wikipedia's definition of social media: Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue.

Before I even begin with this post I must let you know that I am in no way a pro at social media. I have a basic understanding of it and have used it for many purposes including my day job (as a professional fundraiser) and promoting causes and groups that are near and dear to me.

Social media enables you to make your world larger than it is. From wherever you are. It has enabled me to create this blog and build bridges with communities of people all over the world, some who agree with my posts and some that don't. It allows me to connect with other activists, other vegans, other fundraisers, other passionate people, most of whom I would have never been able to connect with.

It's easy to start. If you have a Facebook page you can create a page that is all about your group or cause. I have a page for The Gay Vegans Cruelty Free World and for Coloradans for Marriage Equality. They each serve a different purpose but many times I will post one of my blog posts on both pages. Facebook pages include very large animal rights or human rights groups as well as very small shelters around the country. Some groups are for a specific area and others for anyone who is interested in their cause.

And it's certainly not just about Facebook. There are a ton of ways to engage with social media and I'll cover other ways later.

Engage the world and check it out. I realize many of you reading this might already use social media a lot, yet for those who don't I highly recommend.

More to come, including our experience on Twitter (we love it) and learning about new social media opportunities (like Pinterest, which we just started).

Thanks for reading!

This post originally appeared on Dan Hanley's website The Gay Vegans. Republished with permission.

The Gay Vegans: Building Bridges

by Dan Hanley

In 1993 a group of Baptist churches in southeast Virginia paid for a full-page ad in the Virginian Pilot, the largest paper in southeast Virginia, to make it clear that they believed homosexuality was an abomination and that all practicing homosexuals were going to hell. They paid for this ad because there had been some confusion as to whether all of their churches were on the same page regarding homosexuality based on an article the week prior in the same newspaper.

Gay, but not completely out of the closet, I joined several dozen protesters one Sunday morning in front of Norfolk Baptist Church to speak out against the ad and against spending so much money on an ad like that when the money could have been used to serve the less fortunate (or something like that). It was a bitter cold day and the church invited us in to get warm. The press interviewed me and that evening and all the next day I was all over the news with my comments.

Comments based on love in my heart for all people and a conversation I had just had with a family from the church. We chatted as they were leaving and the father said something that has stuck with me ever since: "We all have more in common than not".

How true, and part of our mission at The Gay Vegans and at Cruelty-Free World is to promote that idea. It is the opposite idea of trying to demonize someone with whom you disagree.

Many people disagree with what I write, whether it's animal rights activists saying I don't write strongly enough against non-vegans, people who have to clarify that they are not anti-gay because they believe I am going to hell (yet think I'm a great guy otherwise), or people who get mad for writing against something they have lived with their entire lives.

I came face to face with that idea with reaction to my recent blog post about the rodeo.

Take away their one or two opinions to which we disagree and then we can start the bigger list of things we can agree on, and in the even bigger picture, work together to make the world a better place for all living beings. And in the end, I believe most people support equality, condemn cruelty to animals, and are against discrimination in any form.

We all have more in common than not.

Thanks for reading.

This post originally appeared on Dan Hanley's website The Gay Vegans. Republished with permission.