If there was any doubt as to why the advancement of LGBT rights has gotten largely nowhere over the last 19 months, the problem can be summed up in one name: HRC. Of course, hand in glove with HRC is our deceiver-in-chief Barack Obama. Tonight at its annual dinner - and frankly, I am dumbstruck as to why anyone would go to it - HRC's kissed Obama's ass. Indeed, HRC's nose was so far up it, that it's a wonder the HRC leadership did not all suffocate. As if that wasn't bad enough, HRC's vice president of communications, Fred Sainz, attacked Servicemembers United and called the efforts of that organization "irrational, unprofessional, and unproductive." I can only gather that Mr. Sainz was looking in the mirror when he coined that statement. It is far past time that HRC be challenged whenever it claims to represent the LGBT community. It certainly doesn't represent me nor the majority of the people I know. Likewise, someone needs to seriously question HRC's claims to membership numbers - I suspect I am counted as a member even though I have refused to give them a dime for over five years. If HRC represents anyone, it's only its staff members and Mr. Best Dressed in D.C., Joe Solmonese, who might as well be on the White House payroll give all of the ass kissing and political cover he keeps giving to the liars in the Obama White House. Needless to say, many out in the trenches in states like Virginia where we have NONE of the rights afforded to Solmonese and similar Washington, D.C., residents are beyond fed up. I am hardly the only activist/blogger who is livid. First this from John Aravosis at America Blog:*
The Human Rights Campaign, which now is apparently a subsidiary of the Obama campaign, today issued a statement - get this - blasting a lead gay veterans group fighting DADT, and praising President Obama's great leadership on repealing DADT.
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And what did the President do on DADT to earn our community's "gratitude"? He let himself get rolled repeatedly by his own Secretary of Defense (yes, Gates and Mullen gave great testimony, then Gates proceeded to undercut repeal every step of the way, and Obama sat there and let him). Obama also sat back while the legislation died in the Senate. He didn't make one God damn phone call to even one Senator the day the DADT compromise was filibustered to death. But that same day our self-proclaimed "fierce advocate" did find time to phone a women's basketball team.
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Praising Barack Obama for continuing to defend DADT in court, for continuing to undermine our entire legal strategy on not just DADT, but DOMA too. For refusing to stop the discharges of gay and lesbian servicemembers while we're waiting for the legislation that will never come? That's what HRC is praising?
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Someone needs to remind the Human Rights Campaign exactly who it is they work for. Because somewhere along the way they got it in their heads that their boss is Barack Obama and the Democratic party, not America's LGBT community.
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HRC needs to get its head out of the Democratic party's ass and start acting like it cares about our civil rights. Because this is bullshit. After everything this White House has done to sabotage our agenda - we aren't getting DADT, ENDA or DOMA . . .
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HRC knows the President f'd up. They knew he never had any intention of passing the DADT legislation before the Pentagon completed its study (conveniently after the November elections when it will be too late to pass anything for years to come). HRC knew, and enabled from the beginning, the President's betrayal of his word to our community.
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Pam Spaulding - another friend and activist who doesn't spend her waking hours worrying about "access" and invitations to cocktail parties - is similarly seething. Here's a sampling of her anger:
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HRC has already issued its air kiss to the Obama administration as the nation's largest LGBT advocacy organization's National Dinner is tonight. The Obama administration, which to date has done everything to retard DADT repeal, and has accomplished zero of the promised equality gains to the LGBT community, clearly has the organization in its pocket.
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And in what can only be described as a statement of an organization in internal political freefall, HRC's vice president of communications Fred Sainz said this today, as the organization's national "No Excuses" dinner is about to get under way:
"These latest hijinks by Nicholson [of Servicemembers United] are part of a troubling pattern of irrational, unprofessional, and unproductive behavior," Sainz said. "[Nicholson's] rant is also without substance.
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I thought it was the blogging set that had no couth, devolved discourse into personal attacks and was politically unsophisticated. What makes this doubly disgusting is that HRC has been on the inside of the DADT policy "planning" (for what that's worth), and knows full well that this adminstration played the community.
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It's clear HRC doesn't want to take responsibility for what has gone wrong under its watch, that it has no juice with an administration that took the money and ran (but threw a few cocktail parties for the insiders, and tossed the community Cinderella Crumbs to tout at the dinner (crumbs can be rolled back by a future anti-gay president).
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What else will it take for the HRC apologists to see that under its current leadership, has failed miserably, and has developed a circle-the-wagons attitude rather than admit fault. It would rather publicly try to shame SU or anyone not willing to shut up and fall in line behind HRC as the voice of the community. When you brand yourself as "the community", you can't pretend you're the outsider and had no role in letting this administration and Congress crap on "the community."
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To me, it's pretty clear that if the LGBT community wants to actually achieve equality, it needs to jettison HRC and look for new organizations that will actually give a damn about the rank and file community as opposed to its own aggrandizement. As long as HRC is allowed to pretend that it "represents the community" and give cover for Obama, it is perfectly obvious that NOTHING will get accomplished.
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