For any potential employer the most important matter - from my perspective - is that they recognize my relationship with Dale as the primary one in my life. We regard ourselves as committed one to the other for the rest of our lives and whatever ambitions we may hold for the future are subservient to this over-riding issue of remaining together.

For all intentioned purposes we should be regarded as "married" and utterly committed to each other. Any unequal treatment that would serve to devalue or insult this relationship cannot - and will not - be accepted by us. It is that simple.

This relationship is both a pleasure to be celebrated and a gift to be thankful for. It provides us with each others strengths - strengths that support one another when times are tough and also round off the personality of each of us as individuals. We are unable to think of anyone familiar with us who does not hold our relationship in a positive light, and our long-time friends easily accepted how "right" we are together as a couple.

For any gay individual their sexuality holds the potential to either support or destroy their career. Regardless of whatever the gay individual wishes in this matter their sexuality will almost certainly be a focus of interest in any workplace dominated by heterosexuals. This must simply be accepted as fact.

Having faced this fact each and every gay man or woman must then work from this point. Bitterness has no place in our lives, it is a poison that will spread throughout every aspect of your life - into your relationship, into your friendships and eventually into yourself.

We are open about the fact we are a couple. This is not to score some point or an attempt at martyrdom but a realistic acknowledgement that we cannot be contented and that we cannot build our lives together in any other circumstances. Our openness; far from being something shocking or outrageous, will appear as natural as that between any heterosexual couple - even if this is difficult for some people to appreciate without having met us.

Openly gay means just that and we feel no great need to wear our sexuality on our sleeve. It is simply obvious to all but the most naive and we are more than content with that situation. Frankly, we have both had so many occasions of "coming out" to people that we often now cannot be bothered doing anything more than simply introducing the other as our partner.

In the workplace this means that any employer of myself can expect to be hiring the services of a well-educated and stable man who is simply too well bought up to stray into unacceptable and unprofessional behaviour.

At the same time his fellow workers are unlikely to be ignorant of that fact that he is in a committed relationship with another man and that this, of course, means he is gay. What they make of this varies, but any employer can rest assured we rarely fail to "convert" anyone to thinking well of us either as individuals or as a couple. That's just the type of people we are.

This sidenote will conclude by noting that too often discussion about gay employees focuses of the perceived downsides - even if they are only infrequently realised. Not often enough does discussion focus on the great assets that any intelligent gay man or woman has acquired through their life experiences, and how valuable such assets are in the modern workplace.

A constant need to be "on guard", to be empathetic, to look to a deeper understanding of problems and to look to a way of turning adversity into success should be well and truly ingrained in every gay man or woman who has cared to examine their own life and their own experiences. The entire process of "coming out" is one of being honest with others even as you protect yourself and one of accepting responsibility for your own life.

Any employer who values such characteristics highly would do well to ask themselves the question of what is more important - that they can rely on these traits coming naturally to their people, or that their people must be heterosexual?


Further reading on some of the particular matters that may trouble some potential employers can be found at a paper Grant wrote as part of his MBA