COLAGE

I urge you to read this very touching story of the group COLAGE, which is an acronym for Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere. The governor’s Chief Strategy Officer, Brian Selander, shares his story.

One of Markell’s top staffers — Chief Strategy Officer Brian Selander — knows a bit about the challenges kids like Daryl face. When Selander was Daryl’s age, he had no idea that his dad, Bob, was gay. He didn’t find out until he was about 18, a freshman in college, after his parents had already separated.

“[The separation] would have happened anyway,” Bob Selander said. “I realized who I was and what I was, and there was no way I could go on with this.”

Bob Selander wanted to tell his family himself, rather than have them learn some other way. So he sat his two kids down.

Brian was shocked, but he was already — unknowingly — his father’s ally.

A year or two before his father told him, Brian was campaigning as a student member of the school board in Piscataway, N.J., for his school district to adopt a ban on discrimination for reasons of sexual orientation. He spoke to the school board in a heated meeting in an auditorium one night and remembers the hateful things that were said.