I don’t care if Barrios made $300,000 or $500,000 in salary and benefits – GLAAD is useless. We don’t NEED them. They should fold.

GLAAD does not have a $20 million budget. More like $7 million. Barrios does not make $500,000. Less than half of that. GLAAD is an imperfect organization that can be much better. What civil rights organization is perfect? What civil rights organization can’t be made much better? Barrios is new and getting up to speed. I like what I see so far. He’s making tough decisions and adding some edge to the organization. He has the benefit of my doubt.

I’m happy for you and I’mma let you finish but STFU. No more help, dude, I already took care of this tonight on Fox.

kthanksbye,

Adam

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/214/gfhh.gif

When will we learn?

You must work for GLAAD, because the outrage has come from the gay media, not GLAAD.

It is very clear from this Post and all the comment – only employees of GLAAD want to keep them in business.

GLAAD is no longer relevant or necessary. Stop, already.

I’ve been touched in hearing from the main stream media, including smaller local newscasts, the proper pronouns used in describing transgendered people.

I remember not too long ago, it was usually a “he/she, chuckle,”. Thru the work of GLAAD and their education of the media, a transgendered M2F is called “she”, even if she is only starting the transition. Chaz Bono for example is properly and respectfully called “he”. That wouldn’t have happened without GLAAD.

I’d love for the time when GLAAD is dismantled, because that would mean defamatory comments were absent. But we’re not there yet.

And yes, positive representation on television and pop culture have HUGELY affected middle-America’s comfort level with the gays. You have to change people before you can change laws.

GLAAD received $18,700,799.in 2008.

Okay, not quite $20 million. I guess we should have said they only wasted about $19 million.

Sorry.

If you want to suggest GLAAD is useful or effective, please share.

They don’t use their muscle at all. And that is because, as was pointed out, they have too many “media partners” funding it. ABC sponsors them, no wonder they don’t want to hit ABC over the head like I do.

The get 49 out of 100 points.

High salaries and fundraising expenses – half their money.

Please downsize GLAAD or shut it down.

GLAAD is just like HRC – ineffective. Both organizations have had 28 years. Maybe they were relevant 20 years ago, but not today.

The LGBT Community has given HRC more than $500 million and GLAAD more than $200 million. What do we have to show for $700 million?

If you want to justify the spending of this money – please provide something real, something that makes a difference for LGBT persons.

Unless we do something, HRC & GLAAD will waste another $75 million in 2010. As a community, are we really that stupid?

GLAAD had $18,700,799 in 2008 GLAAD IRS Form 990. 2009 is estimated at $22 million.

Ahhhh, both of those numbers are “close to $20 million.”

Nobody has justified that kind of waste. GLAAD is irrelevant.

That’s not worth $20 million a year.

Anything else? We need to justify the millions or kiss them goodbye.

The one useful thing GLAAD actually does, counting queers on TV.

http://www.glaad.org/tvreport

Oh that’s OK, GLAAD, HRC, NGLTF and the rest of the self-appointed “leadership” ran the freedom train off the tracks long ago.

“Lobbying politicians?” Are you kidding? We have wasted +$500 million on HRC and their lobbying.

What do we have to show for it? Nothing.

I think we need to do some math and come to the realization that much of Gay Inc. is a waste. We don’t need GLAAD or HRC, we need our neighbors and friends and co-workers.

GLAAD is finished. HRC is next. NGLTF, soon.

ARE there any gay characters on network television anymore?

You lack courage, it seems, thus hide in the comfort matrix that is GLAAD BAGS. Just once would you assume there could be a different “NEW” alternative instead of the tried and untrue…Yeah yeah you would say well “where is it?”…It needs money and attention that your org has been sucking on. Heh, org, like Sea Orgs from scientology…You guys are the gay scientologists lol

You write: “Maybe believing that there is a place in the movement for “causing a scene” makes me irrational and an idealist, but considering that in the absence of scene-making we’re not accomplishing JACK SHIT, maybe you and the rest of the polite homosexuals should go sit down in the back of the bus and let the idealists take a crack at it.”

Let’s take your Rosa Parks analogy to its logical conclusion.

In reality Rosa parks was an unwitting pawn in a campaign planned for months and carefully stage-managed by none other than the NAACP. Ed Nixon had planned the ensuing boycott and enlisted considerable support from the surrounding community through his connections with labor unions and managed to strong arm the local black clergy into supporting him.

Let’s look at Brown v. Board of Education – the supreme court case that struck down separate but equal in the U.S. The case was actually an amalgamation of five separate cases all initiated again by the NAACP in an orchestrated campaign that had maximum success because it was spearheaded by a largely united movement.

In the late 60′s and early 70′s the African-American Civil Rights movement became increasingly polarized, disjointed, and split up. The Civil Rights movement was most effective in the late ’50s and early ’60s when the NAACP managed to censor and contain radical upstart groups such as SNCC, SCLC, and CORE from radicalizing the Civil Rights agenda. (Censorship of John Lewis at the March on Washington).

Let’s look to the lessons of successful Civil Rights movements and emulate them, rather than running rough-shod into fantasies that uncoordinated action will produce civil rights.

You can emulate Abbie Hoffman and his guerilla theater all you want. But they didn’t stop Vietnam.

Let’s hope your misguided approaches don’t derail the movement for equality.

BUT think of this as a business plan.

How did you get your research for example-market research?

My sources are Stephen Tropiano’s “The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV” (2002) and the far superior “Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present” (2000) by Steven Capsuto. Both unfortunately out of date (but still in print). A more recent book (of which I’ve only read excerpts) is Ron Becker’s “Gay TV and Straight America” (2006).

And I agree with you that the movement is disjointed and splintered and used “Gay Inc.” ironically as I believe is per usual on this site. Whose fault is that? Is it the grassroots people who are out there taking direct action or is the turf-warring chieftains of the so-called national organizations who congratulate themselves on their “access” but can’t get a bill through, not only Congress, but a single Congressional committee? The people on the ground of these battles or the ones with the funding who can’t figure out how to put together an effective TV commercial. You know it’s funny, but every time I’ve worked toward achieving a specific LGBT objective (and admittedly these were small-scale objectives, not on any sort of national scale) my grassroots groups started out negotiating with those in power and when they turned us down we stormed the battlements. And every time we achieved our objective, because the targets knew what we were capable of, disrupting their event, hijacking their issue to reflect the LGBT concern and generating embarrassing publicity. We took power from them and got their respect. Maybe believing that there is a place in the movement for “causing a scene” makes me irrational and an idealist, but considering that in the absence of scene-making we’re not accomplishing JACK SHIT, maybe you and the rest of the polite homosexuals should go sit down in the back of the bus and let the idealists take a crack at it.

As as fan of both chaining yourself and lobbying…

All the groups you mentioned had to start somewhere and they did..

You need both in my opinion to develop a cohesive model of the different fractions that exist in the gay community…

But it’s hard because you have ethinicty, class, political ideals…

Ah yes, and a synopsis of “Target, Prime Time: Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television” provides us with a great history of LGBT portrayals in the media. Great job. Too bad the book was published in 1989, pity.

As for what’s happening today you are completely off the mark. Your comment: “and the mainstream media doesn’t consult with anyone outside the industry about queer representation. Why? Because time and again Gay Inc. has proved to the mainstream media that Gay Inc. has no real power to cost them money or bad press and no stomach for the kind of radical disruptive action that allowed queers to seize such power in the past.”

This is ridiculous.

Look at the groups that possess the most power and sway in mainstream media and politics and you don’t see radical grassroots organizations that cause disruptive action. You have groups such as the the National Rifle Association (NRA), American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Christian Coalition who are the lobbying powerhouses that get results. Gays can’t dream of matching their effectiveness because we are too splintered and dis-united. The idea that there is some sort of coordinated Gay Inc. working together in unison for gay rights has been utterly exposed by the in-fighting and failure of the Prop 8 campaign in California, The spats between legal groups pressing LGBT cases in Federal Court AND the embarrassing setbacks in Maine, New York, and soon to be New Jersey.

Gay Inc. is a myth. The gay movement is as dis-jointed and ineffective as ever.

And it’s the irrational idealists like you – who believe that causing a scene and chaining yourself to a TV camera is the way to work for equality – that are spoiling the movement for LGBT equality for the rest of us.