Amity Pierce Buxton, Ph.D. is the founder of Straight Spouse Network. and author of The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families.

She served as Executive Director of SSN from 1991 until 2007. SSN is a nonprofit organization that offers support and information to empower straight spouses of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans partners and mixed-orientation couples to lessen their hurt, to cope with coming-out issues constructively, and to rebuild their lives. Its mission is reaching out, healing, and building bridges of understanding between spouses, within families, and with the larger community.

Amity is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Bisexuality and the Journal of GLBT Family Studies. Amity served on the board of Family Equality Council (FEC), and currently collaborates with them as well as with Parents Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) (GLAAD), and Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE ).

She continues to publish articles on various aspects of the mixed-orientation relationship phenomenon for journals and edited books.

Her previous work was as a pioneer of teachers' centers and school staff development programs to help teachers develop curriculum and teaching methods that enable all students, preschool through high school, to reach their potential, particularly in urban, multiethnic public schools.

Show full bio

Hide full bio