Chip Clapp

Email Address: chip@bilerico.com

Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Project Contributor Since: July 2, 2007

Entries by this Contributor: 7

Now finishing his formal degree in Political Science at Florida Atlantic University, Chip has been volunteering in the political field since 1996 with various campaigns and organizations. His political travels have taken him from New York, working with New York Public Interest Research Group as a canvasser, to the Board of Directors for the largest student activist group in New York State, to volunteering with the Human Rights Campaign while in Florida as well as the Dolphin Democrats and numerous political candidates' campaigns.

In addition to his political experience, Chip is also an experienced musician and performing artist. His interest has led him to perform with the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men's Chorus, singing tenor, as well as performing with the South Florida Pride Wind Ensemble, playing low brass and percussion as well as serving for two years on its Board of Directors, helping organize a national conference of the Lesbian and Gay Bands Association. He has been in two local musical theater productions, in supporting male roles, and plans to continue his pursuit of the arts, considering the arts to be an important aspect of the LGBT community that is too often overlooked.

Born in 1978 and raised in New York in a working-class family, Chip is the second of three boys from his parents' first marriages, second of four (boys) from both of his father's, second of five (four boys and a girl) from both of his mother's, and second of six (five boys and one girl) total. Both politics and performance seem natural in such a family and his supporting parents always encouraged both. Despite her encouragement for the arts, his mother has always not-so-secretly hoped that her son would one day become an attorney. She may get her wish, as Chip has been working as a paralegal for 5 years and plans to attend law school upon the completion of his bachelor's degree this year.

• Jesse's Journal: Sodomy and the British Raj

  - Jesse Monteagudo

• We promise to keep in touch!

  - Bil Browning

• Jesse's Journal: A Day at the (Nude) Beach

  - Jesse Monteagudo

• Colbert Takes on Marriage & the Prop 8 Decision

  - Waymon Hudson

• A Two-Fer at the Broward County Main Library

  - Father Tony

• Best of last week's Bilerico

  - Bil Browning

• Dunedin latest Florida city to ban anti-gay, anti-transgender discrimination

  - Nadine Smith

• Gay apathy in South Florida

  - Father Tony

• Betty Bowers Takes on "Traditional" Marriage

  - Waymon Hudson

• Really, Right-wing? "Homosexualizing"?

  - Waymon Hudson

• How has marriage changed me?

  - Father Tony

• My "Non-Traditional" Family: Blogging for LGBT Families

  - Waymon Hudson