Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese asked for some space to reply to yesterday’s Necessary Evil: Why We Need – But Shouldn’t Always Use – HRC.
Read what he wrote, after the jump.
One thing we can agree upon is that HRC does, in fact, play a significant political role here in Washington, DC. Because of the work that we do each day to lobby Congress on behalf of our community, we must work very hard to build and maintain relationships with key leaders on Capitol Hill. These relationships are critical to our political team being able to do their jobs effectively. It’s not always easy, but we work to stay in the fight. So, yes, we do have great connections on Capitol Hill.
In fact, it’s because of those relationships, and the groundwork that we laid in previous years, that both the House and Senate were successful in passing inclusive hate crimes legislation that will soon be heading to the President’s desk. Things like that just don’t happen. It takes a lot of strategizing, cajoling, pushing and organizing to get bills passed in Congress — and we did it successfully on Hate Crimes. Not only did we fight off the GOP’s deadly motion to recommit in the House, which would have effectively killed the bill, but we beat back a filibuster in the Senate. There aren’t very many groups who have that track record in this session of Congress.
That’s also what we’ve been doing on ENDA. Despite the baseless accusations of the “nameless activist” in your post, we’ve had a consistent message on ENDA extending back for years — not just the past couple of weeks. Again, it’s a long process to educate, get the bills drafted, and compile sponsors and cosponsors. That’s what we spend a lot of time doing. And Capitol Hill is ultimately where we need to see the results.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
I did also want to correct one thing about Speaker Pelosi. Last week, Speaker Pelosi gave us her commitment that she would move an inclusive ENDA bill forward as soon as the GLBT community could muster the votes to pass the bill. It is indeed a rare occurrence for the Speaker of the House to make public declarations committing to floor action on a piece of legislation. For the past twelve years we’ve had the leaders of Congress actively working against our community, and now, we have a Speaker of the House making a commitment to move a key part of agenda forward. That’s what we called “unprecedented.”
So, yes, we are the nation’s largest GLBT lobbying organization. With that comes a lot of responsibility — and an enormous opportunity for criticism. But we’re in this to win so we can expand the rights for our community.
Tara
“But we’re in this to win so we can expand the rights for our community.”
But not all of it.
Leland Frances
Yeah, Tara, Joe and Barney secretly have more than enough votes in Congress hidden in their pockets to pass not just a trans-inclusive ENDA but put two cars in every garage and a man on, like the moon, you.
Bad Joe! Bad Barney!
ggreen
OK Joe the coat has shiny rayon trim I guess that makes it a “tuxâ€. The nondescript white shirt with the black necktie scream head waiter/mortician though.
Byron Beck
Joe is a stand-up guy. I can’t think of a better person to shoulder the heavy burden we put on HRC. He could have easily decided to “play” along with the politicos. He has stood his ground. He needs to be commended for that, not torn apart.
Kara Harkins
Byron, did you even *see* the speech joking Joe made soon before the enda debacle (at Southern Comfort)? If not, look for it on YouTube. He pledged, in front of quite a few people and cameras, that HRC would oppose any version of ENDA that was not inclusive …. then when push came to shove, he bailed.
No, he did not stand his ground.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
First of all, I am a Canadian. This means, of course, that I am a citizen of one of five nations on this planet to afford full and equal rights of civil marriage.
Of the five, Canada is the only nation to afford civil marriage to all two persons in this world regardless of citizenship. In other nations, this is not the case. One spousal partner must be Dutch, Belgian, Spaniard or South African.
Our LGBT activists were not centrist, pragmatic, and poll-driven. Our men and women activists did not compromise with spiritually and politically violent fascists who wanted oblivion for us.
HRC is gentrified, centrist, pragmatic, poll-driven and willing to accept lesser rights when it emperils the full rights needed for equality.
In the past, for example, the NAACP was supportive of the northern Republicans who offered them “separate but equal” after Plessy. It, of course, was neither equal nor separate. It was unequal and subordinate.
Had it not been for the Southern Leadership Conference under Dr. King, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People would still be hoping for Brown and for the eventual Civil Rights legislation and for the final right to marry under Loving v Virginia.
Joe relies upon Congressman Barney Frank, a DLC centrist and pragmatist. The man is a congressman from MA – has a longtime life partner and did not marry as did other like-minded men and women. Even right wing hypocrites did. Barney did not because it would cost him votes for US Senate.
Frank would have sought election to the Senate had Kerry won the presidency when a special election had been called. I think that he is eyeing the seat of Ted Kennedy when he eventually dies or retires.
Of course, if every gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered American gave a simple dollar a year to hire activist lobbyists….imagine the possibilities.
Rt. Rev. Dr. RES
In Canada, hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered persons is a federal felony.
kellibusey
Ya Joe. Stop the lies. Come clean. Own up to your error. Ask the LBGT community to forgive you. Then work with us. In time you may weasle your way back into our good graces again. Who knows what havoc you can wreck in the future?
Tara
Leland, it is easy to say things like that when you are not being left behind. We transpeople are consistently told that we should wait out turn. How about if we switch the tables? You would be fine to wait? Of course not. It is very easy to pull others back, everyone wants to be above someone.
Leland Frances
Jessica H. Christ! You would win a lot more converts if you stopped misrepresenting the objective facts. No one is asking you to wait your “turn.” You haven’t gotten one yet because you didn’t [and don’t] have the votes. That’s wrong but it’s a fact. It was just words on a piece of paper trying to become law. So many of you keep talking as if there had been a box of free candy bars sitting on the counter and Frank, et al., said, “No, take the one marked T back. We don’t want it.” Silly concept isn’t it? You can huff and puff and keeping trying to blow down the House of Representatives but that’s it.
Of course, you can try to change that BUT NOT by denying rights to anyone else. And spare me the “you don’t feel our pain” guilt trip. I’ve been fired from jobs and denied promotions simply because I am a gay man so HOW DARE YOU or anyone tell me that I have to accept that continuing to be legal because of your wishful thinking.
And, sorry kids, but if you raised your head above the dust of the stampeding herd for a moment you’d see that it is not the “LGBT community” on your side, but the leaders of LGBT organizations which have offered no proof that they speak for the majority of even their LGB members which, contrasted to the LGB population are but a fraction. The majority of LGBs have remained silent on this for the time being. It is the difference between molehills and mountains but it’s understandable that moles would not want to admit the difference.
As for the drool running down from Canada, the quickest way to smell the stink, read hollowness, of anyone’s argument with another is the speed with which the first resorts to character assassination. Frank and his partner haven’t chosen to marry? Shocking! Counter-revolutionary! He must be self-loathing! Of course, he is none of these, but how nice of you, Ms. Canada, to resist mentioning that Frank is also a Jew. By the way, you need to take a refresher course in the Party Line of the Gay Lunatic Fringe for, in lieu of throwing rice at Frank and his partner, you should be throwing roses: to the Luney Tunes [sic] “marriage†is “assimilationist.†Still, your assertion that Massachusetts voters who support gay marriage would not vote for Frank for Senator if he got married is ludicrous to the point of being frightening.
You also don’t know one-tenth as much about US civil rights history as you imagine. SCLC wasn’t even formed until three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision which WAS the result of a suits filed by the NAACP. Nor was SCLC formally involved in the Loving v. Virginia case.
But all the McCarthyistic smears against Frank and name calling and histrionics with no sense of history won’t change the fact that some protection for some now is better that no protection for anyone. Or are YOU, for example, prepared to tell the blue collar lesbian mom working an assembly line in Alabama or slinging hash at a greasy spoon owned by “Christofascists†that she has to celebrate giving up the opportunity for even minimum-wage job security and continuing to feed herself and her kids while you stuff your mouth with lies and your belly with self-righteousness?
praenomenal
Praenomenal = Tara, Just a heads up to help make sense.
Ok, Leland.
Firstly, it is still easy to say from your perspective. But yes, you ARE asking us to wait our turn. By supporting dropping the T you are saying that we do not deserve the same rights as you. Plain and simple.
I never said “you don’t feel our pain” of course you do. But that does not change the fact that once again trans people are legt in the cold. There is a lot more to this than just the clear divide between the letters GLBT. For instance, I exist both as a transwoman and a lesbian. Its not quite so simple. We are all a part of the spectrum.
It strikes me as funny that when its about the community, trans people are there. But when we are left out some people think it is ok.
Leland Frances
That you keep repeating the same willful distortion “By supporting dropping the T you are saying that we do not DESERVE the same rights as you” [emphasis obviously mine] when this is only about VOTE REALITY proves you are incapable of rational, objective discussion.
Any of you could fairly say you disagree with Frank’s headcount and, therefore, it should be left in and we all take our chances, but you’re not. I would disagree with the strategy but strategy is not the same as trans-hatred or phobia which has increasingly been irresponsible charged. I don’t hear anyone accusing Ts of being homohating/phobic. But worse, still, what’s being demanded is not different tactics but that NO ONE get anything if all can’t now. That’s not only illogical [or “nuts” as the head of GLAA DC described it] but immoral.
praenomenal
Leland: I can agree that steps are valid, however, in this case it has been said from the get go that there would be no EDNA without us. Now we are told that we have to wait. Why then should we continue to fight for it at all? I of course will, because I believe that rights are the most important thing. But you can bet your sweet bippy I will call out any BS I see about it. By your own volition you think your rights are more important than mine. So Why should I think any different?
Keith
If HRC is not going to insist on a bill that includes Transgendered persons, who will??
As a gay man, I rather have no ENDA if it does not include everyone.
As far as I’m concerned on this matter, HRC is doing the LGBT (look — T is included) community a HUGE disservice.
Leland Frances
I’m not asking you to think any differently, praenomenal, just clearly. You have as much “right” to fight for something for yourself as I do for myself. The unclear part is that so many are saying, as that famous trans activist Lucy Van Pelt once did, “Snow falls up, Charlie Brown.”
I challenge your assertion that, “it has been said from the get go that there would be no EDNA without us.” By whom? When? And, please, do yourself, not me, a favor and read this outloud slowly: no one is asking you to wait for your rights. They are asking you to understand that INTRODUCTION of a transinclusive ENDA or GENDA or whatever you want to call it bill is, again, slowly: NOT THE SAME AS THE RIGHTS THEMSELVES. Too many confuse the legislative process with writing letters to Santa.
As for Keith, I wonder if you would say the same thing after being fired for being gay in a world without ENDA because ENDA United killed it?
praenomenal
Leland: Specifically? The HRC said it.
“HRC’s been fighting for an inclusive ENDA since 2004, when it joined other non-profits calling for nothing less than trans-inclusion. The “T†in LGBT would not be dropped, no way, no how. That position fell apart earlier this month when Barney Frank announced that he and his allies didn’t have the votes for the proposed bill.”
http://www.queerty.com/news/necessary-evil-20071017/
Introduction is the first step. That is a whole lot of steps following that you assert that transpeople should trudge alone.
Leland Frances
2004 is not “the get go.” The first rights bill was introduced in Congress in 1974. It did not include transgenders. HRC and “other non-profits” are not legislators. They, of course, are only advocacy groups. I’m sorry if you thought they had the sole power to make anything happen for anyone.
The rhetorical brickbats about whether or not HRC or Frank or Pelosi “lied” to anyone is a lavender herring. Such character assassination might make the assassin feel good, but, in addition to alienating friends and “family” members, it doesn’t change any VOTES which, again and again and again and again is the REAL issue, the ONLY issue of any SUBSTANCE.
There IS great justification for asking, “How did we get here [or why aren’t we in a stronger place]? For condemning HRC as well as NGLTF and virtually every one of those groups on the list who are not T-specific [some of them assert they have been active for years in trying to educate Congress] about why they haven’t done more in the past to get not just votes for trans-inclusion but passage for even the most vanilla gay rights bill. Not what HRC was doing three years ago but in the 26 years of its existence. Not what NGLTF is doing now but what it’s done it is longer history? Do the math from above: it has been 33 YEARS. There are, allegedly, some 300 “LGBT rights†groups that have been given hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you even have a T-shirt to show for it?
praenomenal
Leland:
Firstly, I have enjoyed this discussion very much, thank you.
Secondly, for me it is an issue of solidarity. I would stand by the bulk or the minority of the community if the roles were reversed, this is what I would do personally. It is my own failing that I have the expectation that others would to.
I have marched, I have sang, I have donated, I have written. All I have done in the hopes that we were all in it together.
You have a point, it is about votes. But it also about acceptance of what it means. By saying that it is ok, or that these people do not need to be brought to task it is condoning it. It is condoning not trying harder.
Leland Frances
Thank you, praenomenal. However much we disagree on some things, I very much appreciate your not resorting to the unjustified name calling [sometimes it is justified] that others have engaged.
We are very much on the same page in many ways. I have long expressed in other threads and on other forums my anger at groups, and HRC in particular, for outdated strategies [or keeping ones that never worked]. The simplest way to put it, however cliched, is that they have spent too much time preaching to the lavender choir rather than attempting to educate voters. It’s both figuratively and literally like having made bank deposits for nearly forty years only to discover there’s nothing in the account.
Cynical as I am, I’ve actually been surprised at the apparent resistance to including Ts among too many of those who are apparently ready to vote for gay job protection. I regret that anything I’ve written has contributed to anyone thinking differently, but I’m so used to thinking of us “together” that it’s hard for me to digest that someone could take one step forward but still be uncomfortable with taking the next one.
While I do not carry the burden of the most “atypical” trans person, I am all too familiar with being “other.” I was first called queer in the fourth grade when no one meant it as a “reclaimed” rhetorical device. In addition to job discrimination I’ve mentioned, I have also been clubbed to the ground for being gay. I don’t know if that’s why I focus on the “concrete” more than the “conceptual” but I do. I don’t want any trans person to go another day without job protection but, again, the gay person cannot pay his or her rent or for his or her food with slogans while we wait.
I wish all of us a better tomorrow that includes working together on what we can agree on rather than attempting to crucify those of our own who disagree with us. We have enough enemies without making our brothers and sisters the same.
“If you can show me how to cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will not only
drop my defenses … but I will sing your praises and I will help you to make the desert bear fruit.†– Ralph Ellison
praenomenal
Leland: Great quote.
I am of course speaking from a trans perspective, at the very least, MY trans perspective. I think transpeople are very scared right now in general. I know I am. We have to battle with the straight majority and within the GLBT community there are constant battles (I don’t know if you have ever read anything on the Michigan Womyns Festival) and we struggle even to be accepted by our own gender.
In the great ven diagram of life we overlap so many things but we are fully accepted by none of them.
Younger transpeople, myself being 27, were raised in a world where we have just been a part of the GLBT community and see it as our home.
When I hear someone saying things like adamblast said, fringe group et al I feel the same heartache I feel when Black leaders say that gay rights does not equal civil rights.
I do wonder when all is said and done if this will do more harm than good no matter how it plays out. And if anyone planned it that way. I don’t know.
Leland Frances
Yes, I’ve heard of some of the extremes of the music festivals. I support the classic concept of a “woman’s space,” but the times they have denied a woman the right to bring her male toddler is absurd. So I can imagine the type of discrimination that arises with Ts in the same events.
As I agree so much with Adam on the overall issue, I was sorry to see him use the word “fringe,” but perhaps he’s since thought better himself.
I wish you peace and love.
praenomenal
Leland: I believe he did, I did not meant o sound like I was bitching about it, only as an example.
I am about to head home for the day. I am going to breading this blog more often so I hope we can have more debate.
Have a nice weekend.