Human Rights Campaign held their 10th Annual National Dinner last night featuring the biggest names in gay activism, ie: Reichen and Lance Bass, pictured here with HRC President, Joe Solmonese.
Huge, right? We’d go on about how we think HRC’s really not that great, or about how coming out’s the best thing that could have ever happened to Bass, or the suspicious timing all of this has to Reichen’s upcoming book, but we won’t. We trust you’re all smart enough to draw your own conclusions.
We’ve pasted the entire press release and a selection of pictures after the jump.
10th Annual Human Rights Campaign Dinner Featuring: Lance Bass, Reichen Lehmkuhl, Billie Jean King and HRC President Joe Solmonese
WASHINGTON – With National Coming Out Day this week on October 11, recent openly gay pop singer Lance Bass and partner, Reichen Lehmkuhl were presented with the 2006 Human Rights Campaign, Visibility Award at the 10th Annual National Human Rights Campaign Dinner, on Saturday, October 7, held at the Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington, D.C. Billie Jean King was presented with the 2006 Human Rights Campaign Equality Award.
How about we take this to the next level?
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The event drew more than 2,800 guests from across the country who attended the dinner hosted by the largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. Guests watched as sports legend Billie Jean King, pop star Lance Bass, winner of the Amazing Race and author of the newly released book, “Here’s What We’ll Say” Reichen Lehmkuhl, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese and others spoke about coming out and living life openly and honestly as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or allied Americans.
Billie Jean King’s All About It!
Even More Reichen and Lance Love…
No surprise here: Solmonese yaks it up.
For more pics, click here: Joe Tresh
jack e. jett
the coming out of lance bass (in the last couple of months) has really helped me come to terms with my sexuality. i have learned that one should stay in the closet until they find another celebrity cling on.
it is kind of the “anne heche syndrome” only with a penis.
call me old fashioned..or just call me old and bitter.
where are the awards for the guys working to change things in the trenches……..the larry kramers, the guys from the trevor project, .they young guys and gals that struggle in the mid west…..i don’t know…i don’t get it.
i love both these boys……reichen is a sweetheart… but what the fuck..
is this a lifetime achievement award?
jackejett.
jaded, bitter, hasbeen, unattractive……OPINIONATED
Leland
How like the current “for hire” HRC “leadership” to fail to mention the most important honoree, the arguable “father of the modern gay movement,” Frank Kameny. He’s never suffered fools–straight or gay, and one can only dream that he used his some of his time at the podium to say to Reichen: “I’ve got news for you, Butt Boy: We need more beefcake models like we need more anal warts. Use the rare, priceless gift of celebrity you’ve got for something other than basking in your own ego; for someone other than yourself!” And to Lance: “I’ve heard you don’t like ‘crazy gay activists’. Well, this is one crazy gay activist who made it possible for an ungrateful little cocksucker like you to come out without getting killed. It’s pay back time, Bitch, so what are you going to do for the community that made it possible for you to be here tonight? How about giving some of the millions you were going to spend to go into space to go into helping fight the Right Wing?”
Tagg
Two words: Chip Arndt. The OTHER winner of “The Amazing Race” who is the actual activist of the former couple, and the one who should have been receiving an award Saturday night, unless you have the event confused with a Bad Boys Pool Party. From doing AIDS rides year after year and helping to raise money for the Point Foundation and multiple other LGBT groups to being president of the Freedom Democrats, the Miami gay Democratic caucus, he’s the real deal, whereas Reichen is just a reality show has been, and Lance the latest True Love he’s wiping his _____ on.
Ethan St.Pierre
It’s never been about ACTIVISM for HRC, it’s all about how much money they can raise to pay themselves. They pour more money into fundraisers than they do the G & L community. They are nothing but a corporation disguised as an advocacy group.
JP
Forget not mentioning honoree Kameny in the press release–they didn’t even let him SPEAK! But “Butt Boy” and his 27-yr. old Sugar Daddy did! The dinner’s organizers should be forced to resign in shame. Predictably, Reichen simply replayed his 2003 speech to SLDN and, yet again, promised to do everything in his power to overturn DADT. Of course, he’s done nothing in those three years while others have been going to jail for protesting the policy at his USAF Academy alma mater et al. What’s changed? He’s got a book to sell. Reichen, like HRC, is all about the sell. Sell your book, sell nude pictures of yourself, sell videos of your getting nude in trailer trash movies, sell your soul for Paris Hilton-like “fame.” Just like his physical nakedness appears to be a pathetic, pathological need to be lusted after, his book, like his unmourned dead QTV show, is less about DADT (which he didn’t care to protest while still IN the Air Force) but about his pathological need to be loved for something he’s not–a gay rights hero; stuffed I’m sure, like his calendar Calvins, with padded stories about what a martyr he allegedly was. Kameny’s papers were just donated to the Library of Congress. Look for Reichen’s book in the Library of Billy Masters.
jack e. jett
wow…..the above post say what i was trying to say only 50 times better. i have really come to the conclusion that no one is watching the gay watchdogs and i think they are taking the money of gays and spending it to meet pretty boys and expensive booze.
i would ask the HRC to respond to these post and tell us exactly what reichen and lance bass did to deserve
this award.
jack e. jett
poljunkie
This is silly. HRC puts on successful fundraisers. And they are successful because the these dinners are not the main point of the organization, rather they are a means to the end. The professional HRC staff is 100% focused on winning a majority of the key 20-25 races that will actually make a difference in COngress this year and working with local groups in the states to change anti-gay majorities to pro-gay ones.
Who cares if people put on a tuxedo to get engaged in the cause? AFter all these years, give the audience some credit that they are there because they know their money is going to the right purpose. HRC is one of the best in all the non-profit world for ratio of fundraising costs to program costs. this is all publicly available info.
and by the way, Frank kameny and billie jean got the substantive awards, Lance Bass got the “visibility Award” which is basically a celebrity coming out trophy. and he got it, he announced at the event that he needed to work hard for the community he has ignored to date. reichen came with lance. go figure.
Leland
Can’t remember where I read this, either “Time” or “Newsweek,” I think: “Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left.” The writer was talking about the GOP but could just as easily have been talking about HRC. Their own building, for Christ’s sake [of course, it was “only to save money in the long run”]; bigger and bigger high ticket dinners to vacuum up yet more community money; brick and mortar stores to sell chotskes masquerading as ideas [Remember the overblown flaming of people for wearing red ribbons? They’ve been eclipsed by a sea of yellow equal signs.]; and a Website that is more or less pointlessly bigger every time I visit it. Yes, it has some functional content amid all the smile fucking of themselves, but mostly, just like the dinners and endless other events, it is classic preaching to the choir. They may have more money than all of the other gay groups, affiliates in virtually every state, major donor subgroups, ad infinitum, but they are bankrupt of new ideas to combat the new tactics of the American Taliban. Remember the 2004 well-reasoned calls for national groups to band together for greater resources, clout, and creativity? All remain separate, and HRC’s modus operandi is the same as it was before the Bush/Rove cabal helped turn a hit and miss antigay patchwork mainly preaching to their own choirs into an antigay industry; a rhetorical “culture war” into a national and international [Focus on the Family is behind the rise in rabid homophobia in the former Soviet Union] army sweeping through the states like Sherman through Georgia. EIGHT MORE states have constitutional amendments on the ballot in a few weeks and WHAT has HRC been doing differently to defeat even ONE of them? They could put their millions to better direct use by simply PAYING voters to support us. No wonder Solomnese, Reichen, & Lance are dressed like Dolce & Gabbana undertakers. The national gay movement, having been suffocated by out-of-touch, idealess HRC, is dead.
Leland
“The professional HRC staff is 100% focused on winning a majority of the key 20-25 races that will actually make a difference in COngress this year and working with local groups in the states to change anti-gay majorities to pro-gay ones.” Thanks. poljunkie. You have the Party Line well-memorized. Now where’s your proof, Puddin’?
Nick
Jack E. Jett, I’m a little in love with you.
WriteQueer
Wow. U guys rock.
Granted celebrity support doesn’t hurt. And coming out in the music industry isn’t exactly accepted yet, especially for men. But what career was Lance jeapordizing?
I think this kind of self congradulatory display is really common among activist groups, partly because they have to stroke the egos of the people who don’t get paid big bucks to keep working, but also because I think they like feeling self important.
Money comes and goes, but I havn’t heard anything from the HRC that would lead me to believe they are willing to do more than write a letter in the face of adversity.
Their webpage if u don’t know already is http://www.hrc.org and they do mention kemeny in their coverage of the event.
Not that it means anything I just thought they should get a link.