Human Rights Campaign got little love at its annual New York dinner this weekend.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Midtown Hilton to protect HRC’s wavering position during the ENDA debacle of last year. The angry crowd certainly made their grievances heard, shouting: “What do we want? Liberation. Fuck that assimilation.” Perhaps its this unwelcome wagon which led nearly all of New York’s politicians to avoid the event:
…Of numerous elected officials who in past years attended but were not there this time, only Micah Kellner, an openly bisexual East Side Democratic assemblyman, attributed his absence to the boycott. Others insisted, on the record, that they had scheduling conflicts, though Kellner’s statement to Gay City News and off-the-record comments by staff members of several elected officials, pointed to a conscious effort to avoid the HRC event.
…
Christine Quinn, the out lesbian speaker of the City Council who addressed the HRC dinner in past years, attributed her absence to “scheduling conflicts.” In an email statement to Gay City News, a spokesperson for Quinn added, “However, the Speaker has also made clear that she was very disappointed that the action taken by Congress with the Employment and Non-Discrimination Act did not include gender identity. Moreover, the Speaker is stunned that the Human Rights Campaign is penalizing those Congressmembers who support a pro-LGBT agenda, and who voted against the Act because it didn’t include transgenders. The Speaker applauds her colleagues from New York — Congressmembers Clarke, Nadler, Towns, Velazquez, and Weiner — for their stand.”
HRC honcho Joe Solmonese attempted to clean up the mess during his speech, saying that he and his colleagues are committed to fighting the long, good fight:
I understand and I hear every day that some members of our community are feeling forgotten or left behind. It is easy to understand why… We have to overlook our differences and we have got to see instead of our individual wants and immediate desires… a vision for the America that we all want to live in..
…
Let me be very clear: No, we are not done. We are in the grueling, blinding middle of this fight and the middle of this fight is the hardest part.”
…
Some of us may want to stand back or check out, but there is no standing back. There is no checking out. Because sometimes — and I know this is frustrating — the fight for our rights feels like hell, but as Winston Churchill so aptly put it, ‘When you are going through hell the most important thing is to keep going.’
How and when, of course, remains open for debate.
hells kitchen guy
Yeah, but the event was still packed with supporters. So who really won? HRC got its money with just a few protesters – outside looking in.
LA LA LA
Not to sound so cynical but HRC is a political organization and they will do what’s necessary for them to stay alive. The cause is always second regardless of what is said.
Boo
“We have to overlook our differences and we have got to see instead of our individual wants and immediate desires… a vision for the America that we all want to live in..”
We have got to convince more of the transgendered to give us money with the promise of inclusion, so that we can once again screw them over by using gender identity provisions in bills as the first easy bargaining chip we toss away to get the bill passed, as we have again and again and again.
We have got to discover if there are any more transgendered people left stupid or desparate enough to believe the same lie we always tell them.
We have got to find more token lapdogs like Susan Stanton to parrot the line that it’s just not time yet for transgendered people to get their rights (which could also have been said for gay rights and civil rights and women’s rights, but who gives a crap) so that when they are denounced as craven Uncle Toms, we can tut-tut the trans community for eating their own.
And we have all got to be as straight acting as possible, or else we could get fired from our jobs, what with no protections for nonconventional gender expression in ENDA.
JoAnna Michaels
Hi,
it is disappointing to see the community fighting amongst ourselves. The neo com conservatives have won the battle, they just sit back and laugh. Lets all get it together and fight for equal rights for all. Those battles are where we need to focus
Unite
JoAnna
Rupunzel
There has been a long history of in fighting between the lesbian and gay community vs the gender community since the days of Compton’s cafe and Stonewall. Simply put, the gay and lesbian community don’t like trans or intersex folks. Just look at some of the response from the lesbian and gay community over the transgender inclusive EDNA. What the gay and lesbian community, Joe Solmonese, Barney Frank and others within the queer establishment does not appear to understand is most of the discrimination experience by the LGBTI community is based on perceived gender. An individual’s sexual orientation is not an aspect of one’s personality that is readily visible to the world, while gender expression and perceived gender is always visible to the world. Members of the gay and lesbian community are so focused on their sexual orientation that they have been blinded to the fact it is their perceived gender that makes them vulnerable to discrimination, not their sexual orientation, most of the time.
This is the reason why a non-gender identity inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act is nearly useless and will do little to nothing to help those who need legal protection most. All this infighting within the queer community simply works to split and divide the queer community and cause hostility between them. All of those who oppose simply sit back and watch the queer rights movement self destruct over their own hatred for each other.
Boo
“Simply put, the gay and lesbian community don’t like trans or intersex folks.”
I’d say that’s an overgeneralization. The opposition to trans and intersex within the gay community pretty much comes from radical feminist lesbians and gay men who are obsessed with being “straight-acting.” The former are largely on the way out, the latter still hold a lot of clout in gay rights organizations. But you’ll notice that HRC is pretty much alone on this one.
yaksha2
Aww, I was at that protest. I met some great people.
The most striking thing I saw was how many of the black tied individuals were white. Perhaps that isn’t so strange, considering the organization, but it bothered me.