Joe Solmonese will step down as president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest and wealthiest LGBT political lobby, when his contract expires next March.
My criticisms of HRC have dwelt on its becoming too much of a strategic arm of the Democratic party. I’ll just note that it would be nice if the HRC board would consider the possibility that come January 2013, the U.S. might have a Republican president and a Republican Senate and House. It would be useful to have an HRC head who had some ability to understand and make the conservative-libertarian argument for gay equality, rather than a hard core progressive Democratic partisan. But the chances of that happening are meager.
It could be a very long time before the Democrats again have the presidency and both houses of congress—the situation during the first two years of the Obama administration (with a Senate super-majority for the first year and and half). That more advantage of this wasn’t taken by HRC is a bit of a scandal. No congressional movement on repealing the Defense of Marriage Act or even the liberal priority (at least during the Bush years) of pushing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act. And I believe there would have been no administration/congressional movement to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if the liberal blogosphere and several progressive activists hadn’t bucked the “be nice to Democrats” line and demanded that action be taken before the Republicans took the reins of the House in January (plus, significantly, the October 2010 advancement of the Log Cabin Republicans’ lawsuit). HRC’s tune, instead, has been to play nice with the party that they so closely identify with.
Now I realize the GOP harbors fierce opponents of gay rights. Some of my critics seem convinced that this fact means that the LGBT movement should be in the business of advancing the party of the left. I think that’s the wrong take-away. We won’t have gay equality in the U.S. until both parties are on board. Writing off the GOP instead of lobbying it—and doing so by speaking its language of individual liberty (protection from government), not the left’s language of group rights (bestowed by government)—is not going to help get us there from here.
More. Being able to “speak the language” is important. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, overturning state sodomy laws, was written by Justice Kennedy, a Reagan-appointee. He repeatedly cited an amicus brief filed by the libertarian Cato Institute, primarily making a constitution-based individual liberty case, and ignored the brief co-filed by HRC (which focused on “victimhood” issues such as asserting that sodomy laws provoked violence against gays as a group).
But in politics just speaking the language isn’t enough. The ability to mobilize support is what earns the attention of politicians. That requires money and ground operations, and a willingness sometimes to cross party lines (as the National Rifle Association did by endorsing the re-election of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid).
Furthermore. David Boaz of the Cato Institute hails, in his blog post How Judges Protect Liberty:
four federal judges who had courageously and correctly struck down state and federal laws:
• Judge Martin L. C. Feldman, who blocked President Obama’s moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico;
• Judge Susan Bolton, who blocked Arizona’s restrictive immigration law;
• Judge Henry Hudson, who refused to dismiss Virginia’s challenge to the health care mandate; and
• Judge Vaughn Walker, who struck down California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.
That’s a political perspectives that’s neither beholden to left nor right.
28 Comments for “A New Day at HRC?”
posted by pgbach on
You don’t have a clue. You have no clue as to the GOP 2011. The GOP is now controlled by psychopaths. You let the fundamentalist take over the party, my former party. I was once a Republican. When you went to bed with the Christianists, I left as any rational person would do.
posted by Houndentenor on
I agree that there should be someone on staff who can talk to Republicans and win a vote or two here and there. That strategy (mostly done by individuals over objections of the gay rights organizations) worked well in NY state. No, we aren’t going to win over the majority of Republican legislators any time soon. But in a close vote it’s foolish not to make an appeal to Republicans. I don’t think there’s any point in making that the primary focus. We already have LCR and GOProud who have nothing to show for whatever efforts they have made to move the GOP on gay issues. But a few lobbyists who can make a Ted Olson-style argument (I guess it’s a pipe dream to think we could afford Olson full time.) to Republicans could make a difference at the state level. Again, it worked in New York.
But this begs the question, why isn’t LCR or GOProud already capable of doing this?
posted by BillR on
But this begs the question, why isn’t LCR or GOProud already capable of doing this?
One problem is that LCR and GOProud literally have no budget to speak of, they are both run on a shoestring (for several years recently, LCR had no Washington office and no staff; in the last 2 years that has begun to turn around. GOProud is a two-man press release operation).
HRC has a huge staff in DC and regioinal operations throughout the nation. That’s why the press perceive that HRC, along with it’s allies (Victory Fund, etc.) ARE the gay rights movement. And a key point: it’s why the GOP perceives that HRC is the gay rights movement. When HRC works to elect Democrats and says it’s not just because these candidates are pro-gay but because they support the broad progressive agenda (i.e., Tammy Baldwin), it leads Repbulicans to conclude that gay rights is inherently part of the big-government collectivist left — i.e., the opposition.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
One problem is that LCR and GOProud literally have no budget to speak of, they are both run on a shoestring (for several years recently, LCR had no Washington office and no staff; in the last 2 years that has begun to turn around. GOProud is a two-man press release operation).
And this somehow precludes volunteer activists within the Republican Party from networking, building e-mail lists of pro-equality supporters within the Republican Party and getting those supporters to contact Republican politicians, getting active in county, state and national party politics, and working on campaigns of pro-equality Republican politicians while withholding support from anti-equality Republican politicians?
That’s what gays and lesbians within the Democratic Party have been doing for the last thirty years (despite shoestring budgets) and the results speak for themselves. I don’t claim that the Democratic Party is a paragon of virtue when it comes to “equal means equal” — it moves when it is kicked hard and sits on its ass when it isn’t kicked — but I do claim that the elbow grease has made a difference.
posted by Houndentenor on
One problem is that LCR and GOProud literally have no budget to speak of, they are both run on a shoestring.
But why is that? Why can’t they fundraise? About 1 in 4 gay and lesbian people vote Republican in national elections. Why can’t they raise money?
.. .it leads Repbulicans to conclude that gay rights is inherently part of the big-government collectivist left — i.e., the opposition.
That’s funny. The right-wing position is openly hostile to gays. Not just marriage, which is the topic that comes up most often recently, but the right is still angry that the SCOTUS ruled against sodomy laws.
It’s not HRC’s fault that HRC is inept at raising money and gathering resources. GOProud doesn’t have any interest in promoting gay rights so far as I can tell, so there’s no point in putting any eggs in that basket.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
And I believe there would have been no administration/congressional movement to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if the liberal blogosphere and several progressive activists hadn’t bucked the “be nice to Democrats” line and demanded that action be taken before the Republicans took the reins of the House in January. HRC’s tune, instead, has been to play nice with the party that they so closely identify with.
In my view, the movement toward “equal means equal” within the Democratic Party has always been driven by four forces, each coming from the ground up and independent of the HRC and Democratic politicians:
(1) Gays and lesbians have “come out” in large number outside the “gay ghettos”, become visible in their communities and by doing so have changed public perception of gays and lesbians, making it “safe” (or at least not political suicide) for Democratic politicians to vote for equality. The single largest determinant of whether a straight person is pro-equality or anti-equality is whether or not the straight counts a gay or lesbian as a family member, friend, neighbor or co-worker.
(2) Individuals, mostly gay or lesbian but also including “straight allies” like parents and friends of gays and lesbians, within the Democratic Party and outside, have leaned hard on Democratic politicians to stand up and vote for equality on issues important to the individuals, and pushed back hard when Democratic politicians “talk the talk” but don’t “walk the walk”. The individuals have sometimes worked with the so-called “leadership”, but often not.
(3) Gays and lesbians within the Democratic Party have, for thirty or more years now, worked within county, state and national party organizations, pushing for pro-equality platform planks, and putting time, talent and money into the campaigns of pro-equality Democratic politicians, while withholding support for ant-equality Democratic politicians.
(4) A significant number of pro-equality lawsuits, often brought against the counsel of the so-called “leadership”, have framed the pro-equality issues and forced the pro-equality discussion in the media.
The HRC has, I agreed, “played nice”, and that strategy, typical of lobbying organizations who are dependent on “influence” within the beltway as the rationale for their existence, has not driven the pro-equality agenda. But others have not “played nice” and the agenda has moved forward largely because of their efforts.
Some of my critics seem convinced that this fact means that the LGBT movement should be in the business of advancing the party of the left. I think that’s the wrong take-away. We won’t have gay equality in the U.S. until both parties are on board. Writing off the GOP instead of lobbying it (and doing so by speaking its language of individual liberty, not the left’s language of group rights) is not going to help get us there from here.
What is missing in your analysis, Stephen, as I consistently point along with a few others on this list, is any attention to (or even recognition of) the necessary role of conservative gays and lesbians in turning the Republican Party around. The Republican Party has gone father and farther toward anti-equality, while you and other conservative gays and lesbians seem to be locked into a strange and passive dependency on outsiders like the HRC to change your party for you, doing little or nothing to change things from within.
As a result, the Republican Party has been taken over by anti-equality forces, getting worse rather than better, in my opinion, and conservative gays and lesbians are not showing any inclination to stand up and fight for equality within the Republican Party.
That’s what is missing now and what has been missing for the last thirty years. The Republican Party isn’t going to change unless conservative gays and lesbians get off the sidelines and into the fight.
posted by Houndentenor on
One of the Republicans who voted for marriage equality in NY this year was lobbied by an individual from his district. I catch a hint (and this isn’t a right-left thing) from Stephen that this is all something someone else is going to do. The anti-gay forces do not operate this way. They have grassroots volunteers who are happy to go door to door and it’s why we keep losing these ballot referenda. As long as we think of our rights as something someone else is going to get for us, we are not going to get them.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I catch a hint (and this isn’t a right-left thing) from Stephen that this is all something someone else is going to do.
As long as I have been on this list, I have never heard Stephen suggest that conservative gays and lesbians and their straight allies within conservative circles have any responsibility to get involved in Republican Party politics at the ground level — county and state organizations — and work from within to change the party. I don’t think that grassroots work is on his radar screen.
Maybe its because Republicans don’t operate that way among the Beltway literati. I don’t know, and I don’t pretend I understand Stephen at all.
But grassroots involvement by progressive gays and lesbians over the last thirty years has been an important factor in turning the Democratic Party toward “equal means equal”, and grassroots involvement by hard-core social conservatives over the last thirty years has been the critical factor, in my view, in turning the Republican Party into the anti-equality bastion it has become of late.
It might be time for conservative gays and lesbians to wake up and smell the bacon, as the late Ann Landers used to say.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
What is missing in your analysis, Stephen, as I consistently point along with a few others on this list, is any attention to (or even recognition of) the necessary role of conservative gays and lesbians in turning the Republican Party around.
Which is, of course, why you and your fellow plantation gays berate and attack any gays and lesbians who DARE criticize or refuse to endorse and support the Obama Party massas as race traitors and Uncle Toms, Tom Scharbach.
And furthermore, given how you and yours openly endorse and support FMA supporters, Tom Scharbach, you’re a blatant and obvious hypocrite.
It’s hilarious to watch you lie here, Tom Scharbach, given that you’re a staffer for the Wisconsin Obama Party whose position and job is dependent on him obeying and worshiping Obama and attacking Republicans at every opportunity. What your posts make obvious is that you have confused “gay rights” with your Obama Party agenda, and that you will even support things like the FMA and politicians endorsing the FMA to get elected when it benefits the Obama Party.
So why should conservative and Republican gays care about you? You’re clearly a hypocrite who uses his sexual orientation as an excuse for being a bigot. You and your fellow Obama Party gays scream that you wish all Republicans were dead, per your Obama Party leader Dan Savage, call for violence against Republicans, per your Wisconsin Obama Party director of communications, and whip yourself into paroxysms of anti-religious hate against Christians (while hilariously endorsing Muslims who call for the deaths of gays regularly).
You are gay first, Obama Party second, and American last, Tom. Conservative gays are exactly the opposite, and that’s why you will never understand them.
posted by Houndentenor on
And what you don’t want to recognize is that it’s possible to be gay AND American AND a Democrat at the same time without any problems. I don’t have to prioritize all the things I am (since I’m a lot more than those three things).
posted by Lymis on
I’d love to see gay rights become a bipartisan issue. It isn’t likely to be one soon, certainly not in the upcoming election cycle.
So the cause of gay rights really is advanced by electing Democrats (while vocally opposing enemies like Ruben Diaz) while at the same time, working against the election of Republicans (while vocally supporting sitting Republicans who speak out for us.)
I have no idea what gay conservatives think, but what they often SAY is that we should just start throwing our support to Republican candidates, even in the face of stated anti-gay policies by the party and sometimes by the actual candidates, and hope that by supporting them they’ll change their minds and become less anti-gay. Reality doesn’t work that way.
Show us the pro-LGBT Republican candidate running against a Democrat with a clearly worse record on gay issues, and I will absolutely support an endorsement by gay rights groups of that Republican.
But I sat in a town hall meeting of LGBT voters and had a national officer of the LCR explain to us that we should all vote for Bush rather than Gore because (I quote), “Yes, I know he’s not as pro-gay as Gore, but he’s not as bad as you think.” I’ve seen nothing since that even hints that their approach has changed. And it was absurd then, and it’s absurd now.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
I have no idea what gay conservatives think, but what they often SAY is that we should just start throwing our support to Republican candidates, even in the face of stated anti-gay policies by the party and sometimes by the actual candidates, and hope that by supporting them they’ll change their minds and become less anti-gay. Reality doesn’t work that way.
That’s odd; it’s the argument that you and your fellow Obama Party staffers use when arguing for your FMA supporters.
You see, that’s really the problem. Republicans know that gays and lesbians are liars and hypocrites who will support anything the Obama Party does, even things that gays and lesbians shriek are “antigay” when a Republican does them. It has nothing to do with “gay rights”; that’s just a lie told by gays and lesbians to rationalize blind obedience to the Obama Party.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, overturning state sodomy laws, was written by Justice Kennedy, a Reagan-appointee. He repeatedly cited an amicus brief filed by the libertarian Cato Institute, primarily making a constitution-based individual liberty case …
… based on Romer and other precedent. Constitutional rights are always individual rights, and as courts weigh in, precedent moves in the direction of liberty.
It is for that reason that I don’t have any doubt about the long-term prospects for “equal means equal” in the courts — within fifteen years the anti-marriage amendments will go the way of the laws banning interracial marriage.
But in politics just speaking the language isn’t enough. The ability to mobilize support is what earns the attention of politicians.
Which is why it is long since time for conservative gays and lesbians to get into the fight, get involved in party politics and start working to change the Republican Party from the ground up, county by county and state by state, as progressive gays and lesbians have been doing in the Democratic Party.
posted by Houndentenor on
I think you are ignoring a more significant problem with HRC. Yes, we need people who can translate make an appeal for gay rights in conservative language (Ted Olson would be an excellent model). Why not volunteer your services?
No, the real problem is that HRC, for all the money spent on overpaid, ineffective staff, has accomplished virtually nothing over all these years. The real problem is that HRC is convinced that we can win these battles inside the beltway. But the real battles are in the heartland. No civil rights movement ever worked top-down. I’m not the only person who has been complaining about this for almost 20 years now. We need a national organization that helps gay and lesbian people advocate for themselves at the city, county, state and federal level. HRC is not only not interested in that, they seem to resent input from anyone outside their own cocktail party circuit. They have failed by any measure. No other interest group would tolerate spending so much money on so much self-congratulatory incompetence.
posted by Jim on
Good riddance to Joe “Salmon Knees”. Now maybe HRC can once again be a truly bipartisan organization fighting for gay rights. I’m not holding my breath.
posted by Wilberforce on
Salmonooshka stepping down won’t change a thing. Mainstream queer culture is too obsessed with looks to recognize brains and character. So there’s no way they will find competent leadership any time soon.
Meanwhile, gay conservatives are lobbying us to vote republican in order to get their taxes lowered. They’re not interested in gay rights, and never have been, or they would have been lobbying their own party long ago. As mainstream queers are obsessed with looks, gay republicans are obsessed with money. All the tricky arguments on this blog are meant to disguise the fact.
posted by BobN on
(and doing so by speaking its language of individual liberty, not the left’s language of group rights)
What gay-rights argument from the left is based on “group rights”?
What group?
DADT, ENDA, marriage, hate-crime laws… those are all things that affect individuals and that are based on the rights of individuals.
And I don’t think you’ve been paying much attention to your party. What are the big issues the GOP is pushing? “Religious freedom” of groups like the RCC. Business rights of corporations to hire/fire gays and others at will. The right of majorities of the population in states to ban abortion for everyone in a state, to ban SSM, to ban CUs. The GOP dropped the “individual rights” banner a long, long time ago, except in 2nd Amendment cases.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
What gay-rights argument from the left is based on “group rights”?
All of them.
Every single argument from the left is based on your group. Not your individual performance, not your individual character, but your skin color/gender/sexual orientation.
Want to see the best example?
Business rights of corporations to hire/fire gays and others at will.
Yes. Businesses should be able to fire who they want and hire whom they want regardless of that person’s skin color or sexual orientation.
Why do you oppose that, BobN? Do you agree with your Obama Party that there need to be quotas for hiring that eliminate qualifications, performance, and choice and substitute race and sexual orientation instead?
The right of majorities of the population in states to ban abortion for everyone in a state, to ban SSM, to ban CUs.
Yes, the majority has rights. That’s the point of a democracy.
Glad to know that gays and lesbians oppose voting, oppose majority rule, and want to strip everyone else of their right to vote on and select their own representatives and their own laws.
posted by BobN on
Pity the majority put individual rights into the Constitution, eh, ND?
posted by Jorge on
….
If Joe Solmonese was a step in the wrong direction, it seems to me there’s a 50-50 chance the new president will be a step in the right direction.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
David Boaz of the Cato Institute hails … That’s a political perspectives that’s neither beholden to left nor right.
You don’t think that a libertarian analysis of case law reflects a political perspective from the right? I’d say that’s naive.
posted by Houndentenor on
A libertarian is not always going to be allied with what passes for the right in 2011 America. It might be useful to appeal to the libertarian wing of the GOP. It’s a small group, but sometimes the margin for passing a bill is only a few votes. Note that Ron Paul voted to repeal DADT.
The problem actually is that Republicans who vote for gay rights are likely to face challengers in the next primary. This has already been threatened against the Republicans who voted for gay marriage in New York. If they wind up losing their seats, that will make it harder to get any Republicans to vote for gay rights in the future. Getting those legislators re-nominated (an re-elected) would be job one for any conservative gay group serious about advancing gay rights.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
A libertarian is not always going to be allied with what passes for the right in 2011 America.
“… what passes for the right …” being the operative concept.
It might be useful to appeal to the libertarian wing of the GOP.
We should be seeking votes anywhere we can get them.
Libertarians used to be a strong part of the Republican coalition, but no longer, as you point out. Today, Cato and libertarians are treated with scorn by the dominant social conservatives.
I’m reminded of an e-mail exchange I had about a decade ago with an Anglo-Catholic friend from Virginia. When I explained that Barry Goldwater supported “equal means equal” (based on his libertarian understanding of the Constitution) she told me that she had no idea that Barry Goldwater was a liberal, and she wouldn’t have voted for him in 1964 if she’d known.
As you say, “… what passes for …”
posted by Hunter on
“Writing off the GOP instead of lobbying it (and doing so by speaking its language of individual liberty, not the left’s language of group rights) is not going to help get us there from here.”
You don’t seem to have noticed that the “language of individual liberty” on the right is highly selective — “individual liberty” doesn’t seem to apply to gays and lesbians, Muslims, women, the poor, or people of color. And as BobN asked, what “group rights” is the left agitating for? Civil rights are individual rights. It’s that simple.
And as for lobbying the GOP, I can only echo other commenters — when’s the last time you called a Republican legislator about a piece of legislation?
“. . . ignored the brief co-filed by HRC (which focused on issues such as violence against gays as a group).”
You really should read things before you cite them. The discussion of how discriminatory laws contribute to violence against gays takes up one paragraph — less than a full page — of a 33-page brief. I’d hardly call that a focus. The bulk of the brief focused on the actual harm the law caused to gay and lesbian citizens, which you need to demonstrated when you want to overturn a statute, as well as its denial of equal protection to gay and lesbian citizens. As to why Kennedy chose to quote from the Cato Institute’s brief, I can’t say — perhaps it was just more quotable. Or maybe he liked the idea of arguments against the statute from a conservative source.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
You don’t seem to have noticed that the “language of individual liberty” on the right is highly selective — “individual liberty” doesn’t seem to apply to gays and lesbians, Muslims, women, the poor, or people of color.
Ah yes, the reciting of the usual talking points.
You see, Hunter, you judge people based on their sexual orientation, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and skin color.
By the logic of the left, all black people are the same, all gay people are the same, all Muslim people are the same, and all poor people are the same. There’s no room for individual evaluation. When a gay person is fired, it can never be because they were a bad performer or because they did something wrong; it’s because their employer was a homophobe, as we see in the example of the gay and lesbian community and the Obama Party insisting that it is homophobic to fire gays and lesbians who sexually harass their coworkers.
Your problem, Hunter, is that you believe that gay people are always qualified and that there is never any reason for firing a gay person from their job; therefore, you want laws in place that automatically punish an employer any time a gay person is fired, regardless of that gay person’s behavior. You put the minority status/group identity ahead of individual performance, and want to enshrine your stereotypical belief that anyone who fires a gay person is a homophobe into law.
posted by Hunter on
Haven’t had time to check back here in a while. Nice to see you sounding off (again) about that of which you know nothing.
“You see, Hunter, you judge people based on their sexual orientation, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and skin color. ”
Since you have no idea who I am or what I’m like, I find that statement hilarious, albeit entirely typical of the kinds of comments you post here. And I suspect there’s more than a little projection going on there — after all, my statement was about so-called “conservatives” and their criteria for granting individual liberty. Just take a look at those areas in which they routinely decide on more government intervention. Of course, I realize that ideologues have trouble dealing with empirical evidence.
And from there you move into outright fantasy. First off, who told you I’m a leftist? There are many on the left who would be amazed to hear that. And having been in the position of having to fire people whose performance was below substandard, I’m not all that sympathetic to laws that tie your hands in that area, although I realize that there has to be some protection against prejudice in the workplace. You just have to make sure you have a solid case based on individual performance, not stereotypes or personal prejudice. But then, that’s just good personnel management to begin with. Or are we seeing more projection from you?
You seem to be the one dealing in stereotypes. It’s a human habit, but one you should try to break if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
And having been in the position of having to fire people whose performance was below substandard, I’m not all that sympathetic to laws that tie your hands in that area, although I realize that there has to be some protection against prejudice in the workplace. You just have to make sure you have a solid case based on individual performance, not stereotypes or personal prejudice.
Which it’s pretty obvious you don’t believe, given what was in the link that you didn’t read.
But the real kicker came just the other day, when the city’s Human Rights Commission concluded that Atos had repeatedly made flirtatious, sexually charged and inappropriate comments on the job – and had even pressured one male employee to “come out” against his will.
In short, the investigators said, Atos was “terminated for inappropriate sexual conduct in the workplace.”
The employer made their case. And your fellow Obamabots and leftist gays went batshit crazy calling them homophobes and insisting that it’s wrong to fire gays and lesbians who sexually harass others in the workplace.
That’s evidence. Pity you couldn’t be bothered to just once look past your sexual orientation and demonstrate that you have the capability for independent thought beyond the Obama talking points you mindlessly repeat and the bigotry you so easily espouse.
That is, if you are truly capable of doing so.
posted by TommyJefferson on
1. The GOP has very little electoral interest in support gay rights,
outside of a very few exceptions. Who votes in GOP primaries, helps write the platform, select candidates, etc. Yes, I known Republicans who are not quite so homophobic, compared to their parents, personally have little interest in either party right now, but we are still young and few people care what we think. 2. The HRC is probably where most gay people are politically, third way/center left, and the HRC does do certain things well. Some of the challenges are frankly a bit beyond their powers.