NEW YORK—An organization hoping to provide a reliable and ethical source of funding for LGBT civil rights initiatives worldwide will ask the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to create a Top-Level Domain devoted to the community.
During next week’s ICANN general meeting in Seoul, the Dot Gay Alliance intends to unveil plans to create a dot-gay TLD.
“Website names and email addresses ending in dot-gay—such as YourBusinessName.gay, LondonBars.gay, News.gay and millions more—will create a new internet community of self-identified LGBT businesses, individuals and organizations and all those who wish to communicate with them,” a spokesman said Thursday. “And dot-gay will be a community that gives back: A majority of all profits will be returned to the LGBT community to fight for equality in the U.S. and around the world.”
According to promotional materials, 51 percent of all profits earned from the sale of dot-gay domains will be returned to the LGBT community in the form of grants to leading civil rights organizations.
“That means that everyone who owns a dot-gay web address automatically contributes to the fight for LGBT equal rights in the U.S. and around the world,” said DGA founder and Executive Director Joe Dolce, whose media strategy firm, DolceGoldin, provides communications services for the organization.
DGA plans to apply for the TLD early next year when ICANN puts into operation its new procedure for approving nearly unlimited new extensions to the current domain-name system. The alliance believes it has a good shot at being approved to manage the TLD registry, as it already has received vocal support from prominent members of the LGBT community. Among early signers-on are New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, New York State Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, award-winning author and Princeton professor Edmund White, civil rights attorney Paula Ettelbrick (who serves as philanthropic advisor for the alliance), In The Life Media Executive Director Michelle Kristel and Sunil Babu Pant, the first openly gay member of Nepal’s parliament.
“The LGBT community has always supported itself and its causes,” Dolce said. “No one was there to help us. We’ve made amazing progress in the 40 years since Stonewall. Now, in the digital era, a dot-gay top-level domain is a logical evolution in our history of self-sustenance.”
The technical infrastructure will be provided by Minds + Machines, an international internet consulting group that is working with a number of new top-level domain efforts, including former New York City Mayor Ed Koch’s dot-NYC and the Sierra Club’s dot-eco. Minds + Machines Chief Executive Officer Antony Van Couvering said he believes the DGA’s plan to fund benevolent activities with monies raised from domain registrations gives the organization’s forthcoming ICANN application an extra edge.
“We are delighted to be working with the Dot Gay Alliance to create dot-gay,” he said. “Their philanthropic business model represents what’s best about the internet. The LGBT community will gain an unmistakable, positive presence on the internet and we’re proud to be a part of that.”
For more info about the Dot Gay Alliance, visit DotGayAlliance.com.
Image: Fabio Fusco
