The Words Matter: One Voice Can Make a Difference

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(foot steps)
(clicking)
(light instrumental music)
- To me, diversity means inclusion,
and when I say that I mean full inclusion.
Because with full inclusion,
you're gonna get the best quality of output from
anything that you're dealing with.
- A friend of mine says, “You know Michael,
you weren't the first homosexual at P&G,
but you sure did put a public face to it in the '80s.
And it's true.
You know, I think that description's right.
I look back on this whole thing,
I think, God, you are one crazy queen.
What drove me?
I'm a fighter, and, um, certainly the time that I've been gay,
it has not been easy.
- [Man] Get rid of 'em!
- [Man] Yeah, get rid of 'em!
(cheering)
- [Group] Deport gays.
Deport gays.
Deport them.
(people screaming)
- Don't make me fight you.
- [Man] We die, they do nothing.
We die, they do nothing.
(chanting)
- If you don't know the history,
you're gonna repeat,
you know the famous line,
you're gonna repeat it.
So I think that that's the key.
It's important to understand the struggle
because the truth is, we're always in the struggle.
- Feel the power of this moment
and carry the message to the Capitol
that we will have full human rights,
civil rights for lesbian and gay people.
And we will not be denied.
(suspenseful music)
- [Man] OK, marker.
- So someone came to me about
six months ago and they said, “Hey,
“you know, the 25th anniversary of P&G
“including sexual orientation into
“its diversity statement's coming,
“and we'd like to make a big deal of it.”
I started thinking about it.
Over the past 25 years we've made
an incredible amount of progress towards inclusion,
but our current times remind us it can be lost very quickly.
And so a little light bulb went off in my head.
I thought, well, something had to happen in 1992.
Companies just don't make that shift,
as particularly at that time.
I reached out to the LGBT employees
and asked, “Does anybody remember what happened?”
One person wrote back and said,
“I think it had something to do with
“a mouthwash called Peridex.”
I called our archivist and said, “Peridex.”
“What is it?”
“How would it possibly connect?”
They came back and they said, “Well, we owned it.”
“We can't find any connection;
“we don't have much on it at all.”
So, a dead end.
I emailed back again:
“Who knows something about Peridex?”
And one guy wrote back and said, a friend of mine
may have been involved in it;
his name is Michael Chanak.
(click)
- Oh boy, Cincinnati in the '80s.
(sighs) I got there in '78.
Conservative, I mean, you know, (chuckles) Cincinnati's roots,
yeah, it's really a large cowtown.
- If the world were coming to an end,
you'd wanna be in Cincinnati,
because it wouldn't happen here for seven years
after it happened everywhere else.
Progress and moving things forward
wasn't something that the community
as a whole seemed interested in.
(whistling and cheering)
- I didn't go to Pride until about '85,
because going to Pride was in fact coming out.
You know, that's like going to the cotillion,
your coming out party.
- [Reporter] The parade wound on for hours.
A spectacle even Barnum and Bailey might envy.
- Because there was so much discrimination,
and there were so many problems,
you had to make friendships,
and they had to be good friendships.
And so I met some of the old-timers
and got involved in different political groups.
I started at P&G in April of '85,
and I really was a lab tech in
the old-fashioned sense of the world.
I was an A and T person,
administrative technical.
You know, there's a lot of things in the workplace then,
everything you saw …
There was a lot of homophobia,
there was a lot of sexism,
but that's how most people thought then.
It was kind of a risky thing being known as gay then.
I mean, in those days it was kind of a “friend of a friend” sort of thing,
like an old secret society.
- It was isolating
because we couldn't talk to each other.
There was that fear,
there was that isolation.
And then the rest of the people you could talk to,
there was potential judgment.
- I went to that Pride Parade in '86.
I ran into my friend, Bob McNee.
I liked Bob,
it was great to see him,
it was a celebration.
In those days you didn't see gay people,
you know what I mean?
Two hundred people in a town the size of Cincinnati,
gay pride 1986.
These are like your brothers and sisters here,
this is a homecoming week.
(light instrumental music)
Bob and I kissed.
And when the local TV station caught that,
it was on Saturday and it was on Sunday night.
And then it was even damn on Monday night.
And that was really my coming out at work.
A lot of people stopped by that morning,
about 30 people really,
and the message was clearly: You have to be careful, Michael.
You have to be careful.
After being in that picture with
Bob McNee at the Pride thing,
I think something snapped.
You just finally say to yourself, screw it.
I was the authentic Michael,
I was gonna be who I was.
It's either gonna take you or you're gonna take it.
I had made up my mind.
- And our guest today is Mike Chanak.
Noted interviewer and leader in the gay community.
- [Delaine] He was willing to be an outlier.
- [Ed] He wanted change for the better.
He was willing to put it on the line,
he didn't sugarcoat things.
- I've often been a target of a lot
of nasty stuff over the years.
I'm not here to justify or not justify it,
but I do feel that I've heard
a lot of stuff about a lot of people.
And I think it's our own hatred of ourselves
that keeps us at each other so much.
And we're so smart and yet so willing
to believe some very strange things.
And sometimes that's disappointing.
I guess we all come out,
we look for community.
And we find out that that's a very difficult concept.
I had my debut in June of '86
on the local TV station.
And by the end of the year,
I'm transferred to the Peridex brand.
Once I understood what they were trying to do,
I thought, well, I got something to offer here.
- I was 23 years old and they put me on
this tiny little brand called Peridex
that was on no one's radar screen.
It's a prescription mouthwash
and it was prescribed by dentists,
oral surgeons and periodontists
with an FDA indication for gingivitis.
We started seeing market share for Peridex
really going up in San Francisco and Boston
in ways that were kinda out of proportion.
- [Reporter] Center for Disease Control
says nationwide AIDS has struck 1,641, mostly homosexuals.
Six hundred and forty-four people have died from the mystery disease.
- [Man] There have been doctors all over the United States
who have, if not actually refused to see patients with AIDS,
certainly been very unwilling to do so.
- [Michael] HIV started out as being called GRID,
Gay Related Immune Deficiency,
and then subsequently, it became more
generally known as AIDS.
But by the time people were aware of what it was,
it was too late because there weren't
effective remedies then.
- Procter and Gamble really found this niche
with Peridex being used by people with AIDS.
With a pharmaceutical, you have to
be able to market with whatever
it's indicated for through the FDA.
So we didn't have an indication
for what was called oral candidiasis,
it's basically known as thrush.
And many people with AIDS would struggle with that.
Quality of life in terms of nutrition,
you know, swallowing,
just that basic “what made a good day
or a bad day” became more prominent.
- [Woman] The cause of the acquired
immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS,
is unknown and there is no known cure.
- You had a lifespan of six months,
maybe 18 months if you were lucky.
If you can't eat,
you die quicker,
that's the bottom line.
And if there's something that was better
than the current treatments,
then it was worth pursuing.
- We were doing qualitative research
in the form of focus groups and one on ones
and going to doctors that were prescribing it.
It was a way for us to both learn more,
but also just be in community
and have a conversation with 30 people
in a church basement or a community center.
They were able to share their experience
and how it worked or why it worked.
If we are marketing this product
whether indirectly or directly
to people with AIDS and then affecting
the larger LGBT community,
then we need to hold ourself to the same standard.
- There was this disconnect.
You know, they wanna do the science,
they wanna do the marketing,
but they didn't quite get,
because they weren't gay,
the piece that these are people's lives,
and these people are right here,
even inside of this company.
The first mistake you can make
when it comes to dealing with queens,
if you're gonna sell them something,
you better damn well claim them.
I had to say that message many,
many, many, many times before I finally
found a few people that said, “You know, you're right.”
- Michael knocked on my door,
came in,
I mean, he's a very affable guy.
He told me that things were not good
for the LGBT community in P&G.
- There was always these programs about it,
even then there were programs about inclusion.
But those were for Asians,
those were for Hispanics,
and I pointed out well, where are the gays?
Where are the lesbians?
I went and had these face to face talks,
And I finally got it out of the guy.
Well, we didn't include them,
we don't have to include them,
we're not gonna include them.
But that's the kind of atmosphere it was.
They were not ready to embrace that,
they were not wanting to embrace it.
- I didn't realize that he was getting kind of harassed,
getting some letters that were not very pleasant.
- This one was marked confidential,
open at a time you have 30 minutes to one hour.
He had a specific interval of time.
And this is the Romans' Map to Heaven,
the truthful bible road to heaven from The Book of Romans.
Mike, I was told about what some saw on TV.
I don't judge you,
I know you have torment,
but my Lord still heals, and he cares for you.
And he will make a way from which there appears no way out.
Have faith.
And my all time favorite with a cartoon,
gay but not happy.
We understand, we've been there,
but Jesus has set us free.
God makes a way when there is no way.
I'd walk down the hall and get called “faggot” by some folks.
That's the work environment.
- The issue that Michael was most concerned about
was seeing the words sexual orientation
right alongside all the other
legal prohibitions against discrimination
in the EEO policy statement.
P&G wanted to be not only lawful,
but doing the right thing.
But doing the right thing went beyond the law.
Over the next four years, we tried every year,
we'd run it up the flagpole.
- I was constantly gathering information,
what other companies were doing as far as the gay issue,
the impact of gays in the marketplace,
you know, what this really represented to them.
- The first recommendation we wrote
was just to put it in and talk about what others were doing,
how diversity was important and if we were going to say it,
we had to live it.
I don't think it got all the way to the CEO,
I don't think it got out of our department. (chuckles)
- To change the policy required a business justification.
- Peridex was a prescription mouthwash
that allowed us to build a business case
that, you know, in my words, were just gonna tip the scale.
This is what we need to do as a brand,
as a business,
and absolutely for our own employees.
(printing)
- [Michael] Peridex was the key,
but it wasn't enough.
(chanting)
- This is what we were told.
Because it was not yet part of the federal mandate,
why would we go further?
I can see Michael and hear his words now,
tell me again that the EEO has gone up
and that we were not included.
- How much energy are you going to invest of your soul
to work at a company that doesn't support who you are?
- P&G was talking about diversity on the one hand
and how diversity was the strength of the company,
it just wasn't happening.
- It wasn't in their mindset,
it wasn't in their wheel house of reality.
It's not that their hateful people,
it's just outside of their sphere.
- When you're not gay,
you're not a woman,
you're not a person of color,
you can sit back and say, “You know, of course we don't discriminate.”
And the fact is, they're not in that position
to experience discrimination.
- P&G wanted to make sure no issues
were going to arise; is there going to be
in a backlash from our consumers,
from other employees,
from you name it?
- [Michael] Every attempt we had to make more of a case.
- [Lyn] They were still afraid to do it.
- [Michael] So back we went again.
- [Lyn] Year after year … after year.
- [Michael] And again.
- Which seemed like an eternity.
- It was either change or be changed.
- [Lyn] In no way was Michael Chanak going to back away.
- [Michael] Months would go by and then simply you'd hear a “no.”
- So we had to kick it up a notch.
- There's a saying in the bible about
having the faith of a mustard seed.
Well, here's my faith:
“It will change.”
- I thought that we needed to get our legal ducks in a row.
Tom was able to do that.
- Lyn said that I think it'll carry more weight
if the recommendation originates in the legal division.
It was important to me,
I was a gay man.
I had invested interest.
My goal was to get it approved
and the other benefits would flow afterwards,
but let's get the thing in place first.
- We had to rein in the passion,
just stick with the facts.
- He had one shot at making this happen.
- There are cities and schools
that are requiring us not to discriminate
on the basis of sexual orientation.
From a business standpoint,
we're hurting ourselves.
- [Lyn] That was the perfect hook
to give us more ammunition.
- If we're not matching our competitors,
we were probably losing some good people
that we shouldn't have been losing.
- You have to work up that command chain
and you have to have people that believe
it's the right thing to do.
And there has to be reasons that it's the right thing to do.
There has to be stats and figures.
And what is the consequence of not doing it?
This is a matter of survival for our community.
- [Tom] It went up through the ranks,
it went up quickly.
I saw it when I came back and there were three just “agreeds”
and then the most important two letters of all, “O-K.”
And it had E-L-A after it; and that was Mr. Artzt — Ed Artzt.
It was a done deal.
(light music)
- September 15, 1992, for those of us
that had touched it in any way,
for those us that were involved in diversity and inclusion,
it was just a thrilling day.
There was kind of like a silent
smile on our faces that whole day.
- You know, you have that moment where you say “oh, my God,”
maybe you didn't really think
it was gonna happen and it did, finally.
It's just a lot to take in.
- [Lyn] (laughing) Oh, my goodness.
- [Mike] Let me see you.
- Oh, look at you.
You look like a teenager,
what have you done?
- Words matter.
Policies do matter.
Making something legitimate, legal,
taking a stand matters.
- [Tom] We didn't get everything right
and we certainly weren't the first,
but what's important is that we got it done.
And the lessons that we learned then,
makes it so much easier to go forward.
- All of the work that Michael and Anne
and Lyn and Tom did just to get
those two words into the EEO statement,
those two words had a profound impact.
Maybe not in the day after,
but in the weeks after, and the months after,
and in the years after,
they were the start of everything.
- Procter's come to understand
that if you can't bring your whole self to the workplace,
you're not gonna do an effective job.
You're hiding something,
you're holding something back of who you are.
(cheering)
It's always important to understand the past,
because it's instructive,
'cause you learn from the techniques,
what the issues were,
how they were dealt with.
That gives you a clue to the future.
The struggle isn't over now.
- We didn't think about there being an LGBT community
as I probably should have in hindsight,
as being a factor that could make a person
either feel welcome or not,
safe or not.
- [Brent] When this started, there was no way
that they knew what this would turn into.
I mean, this created a path for domestic partner benefits,
it created a path for transgender benefits,
it created a path that, you know, ultimately
has led to marriage equality.
- We're still on this path, this journey,
of having an environment where everybody
can be who they are and what they wanna be.
It's only by doing that that we make progress
as a company or as a society.
- It's those Michaels of the world
that help to create incredible change.
(light music)
- [Michael] It'll change if you believe it'll change
and you work for it.
That's my philosophy.
(light music)