Rand Hoch is president and founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council in Florida.

Ian Palmquist is executive director of Raleigh-based Equality North Carolina, which advocates on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents of the state, and chairs the national Equality Federation.

Mickey Hart oversees Ohio University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center. He also serves on the board of Equality Ohio.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on May 17, 2007, signed an executive order establishing a policy that bars discrimination against state employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Contact Keith Dailey, press secretary.

The Zygon Center for Religion and Science is dedicated to relating religious traditions and the best scientific knowledge in order to gain insight into the origins, nature and destiny of humans and their environment. The center is based at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Leslie Ann Thompson is chief executive officer of Affirmations, a community center in Detroit for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people that is Michigan’s largest.

The Metanexus Institute is a New York-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting scientifically rigorous and philosophically open-ended explorations of foundational questions. William Grassie is the founder and executive director.

Christine Peterson is president, for the 2007-08 academic year, of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally Alliance at Iowa State University in Ames.

Randi Barnabee of Bedford, Ohio, who underwent sex-change surgery to become a woman, is a civil rights attorney who specializes in transgender cases.