While the Human Rights Campaign last year secured President Barack Obama to speak at its fall fundraising gala, tomorrow’s (sold out, we’re told) event will welcome Valerie Jarrrett, the White House adviser. We came up with a whole list of things Obama could’ve addressed, including the Matthew Shepard Act (passed!), ENDA (not passed!), DADT, (not repealed!), and a national play to fight bullying (kids still killing themselves!) just before he began reading from the teleprompters. But what can Jarrett really say that’ll appease the gays?
Trick question, because she’s there to appease the Gay Inc. gays, not your average ones. The black tie crowd at HRC’s 14th Annual National Dinner at the Water E. Washington Convention Center is a chance for moneyed homosexuals to rub bubble butts with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet, Pink, Lee Daniels, Mo’nique, and Bette Midler. Jarrett’s role, then, is not to offer any concrete road map — HRC chief Joe Solmonese already said he’s got one, but won’t tell anyone what it looks like — but to convince affluent queers to continue donating to Democrats Inc., especially with November’s elections coming up.
It’s a symbiotic relationship: Jarrett appears at the dinner to show the media HRC has pull (insert airquotes) in Washington and gets donors to open their pockets for multi-thousand-dollar tickets, while HRC lends its brand of passive acceptance of the White House’s continued stalling and ineptitude on LGBT rights. These two are made for each other. What you won’t see tomorrow night, unless GetEQUAL is planning a zap I don’t know about, is anyone challenging the Obama administration to make good on promises.
But I guess that’s what Servicemembers United is for? The anti-DADT group has made the unrealistic request that Jarrett meet with LGBT military veterans before the dinner, which, c’mon. Though I like their chutzpah.
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.
So if you’re going to the HRC dinner, enjoy yourself. Take pictures, send them to us, and record some soundbites. Bonus points for posing with Solmonese, David Smith, or Jarrett, or if you can get Pink to make an inappropriate sexual gesture. Then we’ll see you the morning after for yet another Obama hangover.
EARLIER:
What’s It Say When Everybody Has Run Out Of Nice Things To Say About The Human Rights Campaign?
Cam
She doesn’t need to explain anything because they won’t ask her to. They will be so excited that somebody important came to their event that they would kill anybody who asked her a question.
jason
The GLBT rights movement has been hijacked by those who wish to use it as part of a PR campaign for the Democratic Party. Thankfully, many of us are starting to wake up to it.
Nick
Don’t you have to try to fail?
Tim W
Ironic Part is the event is called “No Excuses” and we know she will be there with every excuse in the book for Obama.
Sacramento
HRC is a sad joke and the gay world and our rights will improve when people wake up and let them go the way of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
the crustybastard
So the HRC event is sold out?
Well, how poetic.
James
With all the shit people give the Dems I want to see how it will work out when they lost control con congress this nov.gay rights will be a dead issue then.
Black Pegasus
@James: You’re right! and I wonder why I haven’t seen one damn story on Queerty that highlighted the FACT that 100 percent of Republicans Voted against lifting the ban on DADT. All I saw was bullshit stories that read: “Obama Fails”.
This site is a republican propaganda machine. It makes no sense for me to further comment on these political hit jobs by queerty because common sense is not on the menu here, and the angry dejected racist fags who eat this shit up on a daily seem to enjoy it just fine.
So whatever!
Ted B. (Charging Rhino)
The HRC collected approx. $28-million-dollars last year and only spent $744-thousand on Federal campaign contributions on Capital Hill. The bulk of the money they kept for themselves including their expensive corporate palace in DC and over $2-million-dollars in salaries and benefits just for the top eight officers at the HRC.
Give only to local gay and G/L-friendly political campaigns you trust…starve the Gay ATM and Gay, Inc.
hephaestion
If Republicans win back the House or Senate in November, as they are expected to, we can count on remaining 3rd class citizens for a long time to come.
Brian Miller
If Republicans win back the House or Senate in November, as they are expected to, we can count on remaining 3rd class citizens for a long time to come.
In other words, the status quo from two years of absolute Democratic supermajority control of the legislative and executive branches will continue under the Republicans.
So we must go to war for the Democrats so that they can keep up their record! Otherwise, the Republicans will get in and do the same thing the Democrats are doing! Oh nooooo!
Electoral politics are irrelevant. You’d think we’d have learnt that long ago after getting Clinton into office and being “rewarded” with DADT and DOMA.
Tom in Lazybrook
@James: I can get DADT not repealed, ENDA not passed, UAFA not passed, and DOMA not repealed with the GOP in control of congress. We survived Bush and we’ll survive them in control of one house of congress.
Having the GOP in power has been bad. Having the Dems ignore us is catastrophic.
We have to change this dynamic. And part of the solution is to make the Dems fight for our votes. Am I voting for the GOP? No. But I’m not going to do much to help the Dems stay in power.
And if Obama keeps this up, we ought to run an openly Gay candidate as a third party for President in 2012. Have that candidate only get on the ballot in say 10 swing states. Have that candidate run on a Gay Rights Platform only. And have Obama then be forced to FIGHT for our votes. Otherwise, he can try to win Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvannia, etc. with 5% of the normally Gay vote going elsewhere. We’re not being spoilers, we’re simply giving gay voters a chance to vote for someone who won’t stab us in the back. If the Republicans win as a result of the third party run….so be it.
Failure has consequences.
Tim W
@Black Pegasus: Whatever Pegasus you can believe what you want. I am a Democrat and I am angry. Obama did not even pick up the phone to try to get the Senate to repeal DADT. Not one. He doesn’t care about GLBT rights and to call people racists because they call him out for it is pathetic.
Michael
Through thick or thin, there’s always a constant to any organization: the annual “dog and pony show.”
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com
What next from SU—asking to sit on her lap and tell her what they want for Xmas? Begging Jarrett to meet with them makes NO sense under the sun given there’s NO reason to imagine that she would respond any differently than she did to Dan Choi’s personal entreaty to her or at Netroots Nation a year ago [see link below]….OR ANY DIFFERENTLY THAN WHATEVER WHITE HOUSE SHILL SU MET WITH IN MAY when Alex was kowtowing to HRC’s insistence that no one call out the President’s betrayal….that the hundreds of gay vets brought to DC not go near the White House except to kiss ass….going into smile fucking Obama Mafia talking points auto pilot.
Is THIS the best SU has to offer? Sure they MEAN well, but we need a new game against this administration. Instead of issuing yet another impotent press release they COULD have organized a protest of her appearance at the Hilary Rosen Champagne fund dinner…..and SHOULD be meeting with GetEqual to organize more and bigger civil disobedience at the White House…the ONLY tactic with ANY hope of reversing Obama’s betrayal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pom0RrK83wU&feature=player_embedded
Cam
@James: said…
With all the shit people give the Dems I want to see how it will work out when they lost control con congress this nov.gay rights will be a dead issue then.
___________________________________________________
The difference being that the GOP didn’t compain and ask for our votes by promising that they would push gay rights.
The GOP is like a stranger mugging you, and the current White House are like the person you thought was your friend stealing your credit card. They both suck, and the mugging is more dangerous, but that doesn’t make your dissappointment with your friend any less. And more importantly, just because the mugging was worse, it doesn’t excuse what your friend did.
MM
Ricky Martin speaks at the 2010 HRC Dinner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39_5Rs_DFYU
JoeyB
HRC is having galas with Ricky Martin and our kids are dying. No wonder we are where we are in.
WPHOMANS
It was the Republicans, who understood perfectly the political principle that it is far more important to set the agenda of legislation than to control the process, that hijacked the GLBT civil rights movement by making sure that DADT was brought to the floor before a passable, comprehensive, and moderately non controversial civil-unions bill. The Democrats, having drifted steadily to the right in the years since the Clinton-era demise of the New Deal, and the Bush-era rallying ’round the flag, did not help, but in fact it was the Republicans, who figured correctly that even if the Dems had a majority, something would go wrong, and they would not achieve cloture.
It was shrewd, expert political calculation. Instead of a gay-peoples’ victory in the first Obama term, the Republicans, through their profoundly conflicted catspaws the Log Cabin Republicans, engineered a defeat that has set back gay civil rights for years.
The Log Cabin Republicans are REPUBLICANS FIRST, y’all, and gay people sometime down the road. They have betrayed the entire LGBT community by using the emotional content of those six servicemen to bring before Congress a bill that would only benefit a small subset of the LGBT community– those who wanted to join, or stay in, the military– rather than comprehensive legislation ensuring that ALL gay people get all the societal rights that straight people do. They betrayed us! They will do it again, given the chance. If you know such people, they should be outed as what they are– cynical, shrewd, on balance ANTI-GAY political operatives, and ostracized from the gay community. With such friends, who needs enemies??
Tom in Lazybrook
@WPHOMANS:
The Dems have 59 Senators and a majority of 50 in the House. The Dems control the agenda. They screwed it up.
I’m not a Republican, but at some point, you have to lay blame where it needs to fall.
We’re getting punked by the Dems and especially by the Obama admin. With a huge assist from the incompetent HRC leadership.
WPHOMANS
But it was LCRs that made sure that the issue with the most determined opposition came on the floor first.
I do not deny that Senate Democrats erred in bringing this paticular bill at this time.
Harry Reid was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position. He could counsel gay activists that this wasn’t going to pass, how about a civil-unions bill instead, that could have gone on and be a stirring victory for LGBT civil rights. Gays would be screaming. “no, we demand marriages.”
Or, he could have just told gays, “this is not going to pass now, and I decline to bring it on the floor for the present.” Then people would still have been calling him a homophobe. And it would have been the Log Cabin Republicans screaming the loudest!
Or, he could have done just what he did, half-heartedly ushered a bill on the floor that did not achieve cloture. Ironically, 57-43 is probably not too far from a poll of the US people about the issue. The will of the people was almost done, but Republicans are harder-core users of rules to screw stuff up than Democrats are. That’s not an uninformed generalization, I came out for the first time in Vietnam in 1970, and I’m a degreed observer of social process.
The Log Cabin Republicans, gay catspaws of the Republican Party (and five’ll get you ten, friends– birds in the ear– of some of these A-List gay people you cite), betrayed us, that’s flat. I SAID it was shrewd! Just think– a strategy wherein you could lose the vote, but because of procedural niceties, the bill can not and will not be enacted. Zero legal risk, everything done is squeaky clean. Karl Rove– if he himself is not the archietect of this surgical political strategy– is slapping his knee in guffaws.
William P. Homans
Mississippi
Pucifer
Most popular toast at the HRC Dinner: “Well, it could be worse!” Drink!
The Guys
This is not to be sarcastic, just a random thought: this country which I will always love used to aim for the moon, and eventually mankind took that step. What happened? People of power and soul used to shoot for the stars and now people of power seem to feel only that point n click to a 3-4 figure ticket is good enough. I feel all I receive all day are emails to contribute here, contribute there, Apathy has filled the soul, I really don’t feel as if there is a COMMUNITY anymore-but there is some dream still waiting to be dreamt.
We have become this divisive tactic for politicians who are the same as us- worried about their job security, they just have a public title. Politicians have become variables without a control causing rifts. People call us the age of entitlement, well, I never expected anything, just knew I had to work intelligently for what I wanted. Right now, I dont want to be entitled to a country where the ‘grown-ups’ bicker as if in a sandbox not big enough. If anyone reads this, its not a note of despair, just observance, observance in tangents now that I look over what I typed down here.
Still, lets remember a supper no matter how great will overshadow the betrayal of our leaders, I just hope, whatever their faith, will guide them to an awakening that will create tangible promises to make this nation better, whether its one more job for the unemployed, or one more stable bridge to cross. For right now, I am going to hug the closest thing to me, my puppy, she’s pretty loyal, then my husband when he gets home, then say hello to a neighbor and maybe our COMMUNITY will be ONE.
Um, I wrote to much, anyway, please love yourselves and be good to yourselves
Trent_K
@WPHOMANS:
Just what the gay community needs…another elderly str8 man presuming to tell us how to go about repealing a policy he says he supports. Brilliant.
Trent_K
@WPHOMANS: “But it was LCRs that made sure that the issue with the most determined opposition came on the floor first.”
No, that’s NOT true. Their suit was filed back in 2006–during the BUSH ADMINISTRATION.
Taking your subversive homophobic talking points elsewhere!