Anyone Else Following the Latest Dust-Up with the "Professional Gays"?

[furrbear]

Towleroad:

NOW: Did HRC make deal delaying 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell?
HRC: 'Deal' claims 'an outright lie...recklessly irresponsible'
WATCH: Jason Bellini Daily Beast report on HRC Deal

Joe.My.God.

Daily Beast Reports: HRC Told Congress To Wait On DADT, Push For ENDA, Hate Crimes Instead
[Now with two updates]

EXCELLENT Summary from Pam's House Blend:

HRC's Solmonese goes on Signorile show; later calls for stop to DADT discharges on Hardball

I think the saddest part of this, for me, is that I can totally believe HRC would make this sort of deal (pushing Hate Crimes and ENDA) to the detriment of progress on DADT (and DOMA?). The next step would be for HRC to trumpet these "successes" in their new series of funding solicitations. These have been "their issue" for years. I can believe they'd throw others under a bus to get their issues through Congress so they could use that "We fought for and got passed..." line in solicitations.

Luckily for the GLBT world, not everyone dances to HRC's drum. From Pam Spaulding:

In HRC's case, there is a real threat of irrelevancy because of outside efforts attuned to that change, which is what Mike [Signorele] suggests may be the reason for Joe Solmonese surfacing now (you can listen to Mike's interview with him here).

The other things that have changed which perhaps have made HRC, rightly, realize they need to communicate with the LGBT public about their interactions with the White House is that the terrain is shifting rapidly, in the country but also among LGBT activists in recent weeks. Prominent activists Cleve Jones and David Mixner, joined by many others, have called for a march on Washington. Another group of activists met in Dallas and came up with the Dallas Principles, which challenge HRC's approach. And a group based in Hollywood has formed specifically to back Ted Olson's and David's Boies' challenge to Prop 8 in federal court -- a legal challenge that many gay groups, including HRC, oppose, fearing the setting of a bad precedent. The director Rob Reiner, Academy Award-winning "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and Chad Griffin, a former Clinton administration staffer (who also is an executive producer of the film "Outrage") are among those on the board of the group, The American Foundation for Civil Rights. It's safe to say that a group like this, especially, is somewhat of a threat to HRC because it has access to money and big names.

Should make for an interesting day and possibly weekend.

[Update: Michelangelo Signorile's post: Joe Solmonese Interview: Discusses Obama, Responds to Critics. ]

Comments

[joebehrsandiego.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Thanks for the great summary here.

[rafdfw.livejournal.com]

Joe is supposed to be in the Dallas area today/Friday speaking at a pride event for one of north Texas' biggest employers. Several of us at work were invited to go (I wasn't interested in hearing him).

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

I have no interest in hearing him either.

EDS, JCP, or TI?

[rafdfw.livejournal.com]

JCP. I made sure the Voice knows he's coming, on the odd chance they can get in to talk to him. Usually, these kind of events are "no media" thanks to their speakers' bureau contracts, which I've always found ridiculous.

[qnetter]

I'd be thrilled if they did do that. ENDA and hate crimes affects all of us. DADT secures the right to do something I can't morally justify anyone doing in the first place, gay or straight. It's an apologist's civil right.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, for all practical purposes, HRC begat Equality California, which fucked up the Prop 8 fight.

Both agencies are now irrelevant to me. Other than HRC's corporate equality index, both agencies are also dead to me.

[jayjaybear.livejournal.com]

HRC is a useless piece of crap and has been so since around 1990. They're more interested in continuing to throw cocktail parties in the District where they can get their access-to-the-powerful fix, meanwhile the powerful are patting them on their pointy little heads and promising things that will never get delivered as long as the HRC board has their lips firmly planted on elite ass.

Grassroots organizations are where the real civil rights change is going to happen. HRC is a fossilized group of star-struck "professional queers" who lost touch with what the gay man in the trailer park in Tennessee or the working-class lesbian in Detroit really needs and wants.

[qnetter]

...which I don't believe is marriage or repeal of DADT. I think that's what Andrew Sullivan wants.

[tecknow.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure ENDA would be hollow and toothless. Consider where I work and live, The University of Texas at Dallas. Their nondiscrimination policy includes sexual orientation but not, because they fear it would be against Texas law, partner status. The first two years of living on campus were a constant hassle to "prove" we were really a couple and be louder and more obnoxious than people's fear. Even now, UTD lacks any official domestic partnership policy. There's nothing like knowing that you get to live where you do on a "favor."

Any law that doesn't include partner status and protect against housing and benefits discrimination doesn't interest me. Of course ENDA doesn't contain that, since it would clash not only with the laws of many states but with the DOMA. This is like saying you can be gay, but you can't take a same-sex date to homecoming/prom and I didn't buy that reasoning when I was in HS.

Think whatever you want of the military, but its influence on the culture and policy of the U.S. in general should not be underestimated. Have you looked at what the DADT policy actually says or the reasoning that upholds it? It effectively makes "homophobe" a protected class and enshrines a privacy right of straight people not to be exposed to gay people or have to acknowledge them in any way. As long as it is on the books, effectively validating the reasoning that created it, any other anti-gay policy can be justified.

How do you think ENDA, DOMA and DADT are going to interact, legally and socially? I'm not a lawyer but I'm confident it won't be be well. Legal discrimination and protection from same don't mix and discrimination always wins so yes, it's more important to me to dismantle the legal framework supporting discrimination first.