In 1974, four months after the American Psychiatric Association removed the diagnosis of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, Glen Tig became a college freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With a pioneering group of students that same year, Glen took an active role in co-founding the first gay student organization in North Carolina, the Carolina Gay Association.

During the decades since, Glen has continued a life of activism, working for racial and gender equality, environmental awareness, and Native American empowerment. But Glen has never abandoned the campaign for equal rights and social acceptance for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people.

In North Carolina, Glen has been an avid supporter and sponsor of the North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, co-founder of a popular LGBT social dance organization, and an active member of a large Business & Profession Guild for LGBT community members. In his effort to improve LGBT social opportunities, Glen has coordinated and taught East Coast Swing Dance classes to hundreds of LGBT dance enthusiasts. He and his partner Chitpol, a periodontal surgeon (and cook) from Thailand, have taught scores of happy students in their ever-popular, LGBT Thai cooking classes.

In everyday life, Glen has stood up for LGBT equality by such simple actions as challenging local video stores to provide "Gay & Lesbian" sections with dignified selections. On a larger scale, Glen single-handedly convinced the North Carolina State Employees Credit Union to offer equal banking privileges to ALL permanent partners of credit union members statewide-not just heterosexual married spouses.

In the early nineties, when Glen's town of Carrboro elected the first "out" gay mayor in the southeastern US, LGBT clients traveled from counties around for counseling from "the gay therapist in the town with the gay mayor." Since then, Glen has worked with large numbers of LGBT individuals and couples from across central North Carolina, offering the particular insight, support, and guidance that comes from being gay himself.

Spreading out from his practice, Glen enjoys presenting workshops and lectures to foster increased understanding of issues faced by America's LGBT citizens. He also works increasingly as a consultant to help businesses and corporations create workplace environments that are supportive of LGBT employees.

In early 2003, in the midst of paranoid changes in US immigration policy, Glen's spouse Chitpol (a citizen of Thailand) was unexpectedly and inexplicably denied entry back home to the US from Canada (Click here for story from Raleigh News & Observer). With their only option for remaining together in North America requiring a move into exile in Canada, Glen and Chitpol have forged a compromise solution, where Glen commutes on alternating weeks between their current home in Canada and Glen's counseling practice in North Carolina.

This dramatic turn of events in Glen's personal life has pushed him into another activist role, this time advocating for immigration rights for America's gay citizens who have foreign partners.