When the gay rights behemoth known as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) endorsed Illinois GOP Sen. Mark Kirk over his Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, it took a lot of heat for obvious reasons. Control of the Senate has become a critical flashpoint in 2016 now that liberals have a chance to completely reshape the center of gravity of the Supreme Court with a single justice—a justice that GOP Senate leadership has committed to obstructing indefinitely.
In other words, Republican control of the U.S. Senate is single-handedly blocking a once-in-a-generation opportunity for progressives. In the meantime, it’s also a major hurdle (though not the only one) to congressional passage of the Equality Act, which would provide federal nondiscrimination protections to Americans on the basis of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.”
For many progressives, the notion that an LGBT equality organization would endorse a Republican is anathema. I am not one of them. I’m a firm believer that one of the LGBTQ movement’s strongest advantages comes from its inherent diversity within all walks of life, which includes conservatives. That means we have been able to appeal to Republican lawmakers at critical moments, like when the GOP-led New York Senate allowed final passage of a marriage equality bill in 2011, thereby doubling the number of people in the nation with access to same-sex marriage. As Mark Josef Stern wrote at Slate:
We shouldn’t criticize HRC for attempting to play the long game with Kirk. Rather, we should criticize them for attempting to play the long game stupidly.
Given the current political climate and the particulars of this coming election, there’s just no good explanation for this mind-boggling endorsement. If Tammy Duckworth was a conserva-Dem, maybe. But not only did she have a 100 percent rating from HRC in the 2013-2014 Congress to Kirk’s 78 percent, the Illinois senate race promises to be extremely competitive, and literally every seat counts on the path to Democrats flipping the handful of seats necessary to regain control of the Senate. (If Democrats hold the White House, they actually only need four since the VP is the tie-breaking vote.)
In the interest of full disclosure, Daily Kos has endorsed Duckworth, but that’s not the impetus for my piece. The controversy made my radar again this week when Kirk said he would support Donald Trump if he were the GOP nominee. In the words of blogger Andy Towle, “HRC’s Appalling Mark Kirk Endorsement Now Comes with Donald Trump.” That’s when I noticed an organic phenomenon on Twitter that struck me a nascent #DivestFromHRC movement. The twitter search “Kirk HRC” yielded a growing number of sentiments like this simple message:
That got me thinking about the practical impact of such a movement on the greater LGBTQ movement. I’m not an HRC fan but I’m also not necessarily an HRC hater—they’ve always had their faults as does any large group. My biggest quibble is this: since they’re working on all things LGBT, they aren’t necessarily accountable for anything. In 2009-2010, for instance, they were initially committed to passing hate crimes protections (which did happen) and then the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA). But when repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” jumped ahead of ENDA—mainly because DADT-specific groups applied more outside pressure and actually protested Congress and the White House—HRC jumped on that bandwagon even though ENDA had been their priority. So the group manages to get partial credit for most LGBTQ wins, but it has little accountability for losses. When something fails, they can always say, well, we were working on (fill in the blank) as a way to dodge responsibility.
But I hasten to add this, once HRC was fully dedicated to DADT repeal in the final stretch of the 111th Congress—which was a do-or-die moment for the movement—their lobbyists did the job they were supposed to. In fact, if you want a pretty wonky read about why I believe DADT repeal passed the Senate on the very same day that the DREAM Act tragically failed, here it is. In short, LGBT movement lobbyists had longer/stronger Congressional ties and were able to redirect lawmakers’ attention at critical moments during what was an unusually hectic Lame Duck session in 2010. One of those lobbyists, in particular, was employed by HRC.
That’s one reason I’ve always been hesitant to bag HRC altogether. They’re the only big LGBT group right now with a major lobbying presence on Capitol Hill. There’s also a lot of other people besides HRC’s leadership team who work in that building and do things that are perhaps less visible but still important. Yet something Michelangelo Signorile noted about the Kirk endorsement has stuck with me.
If HRC is not answerable to LGBT people, however — and its president, Griffin, rarely even gives interviews to LGBT media, while speaking often in the larger media — exactly to whom and what is it answerable, and what are its true priorities? One thing is clear: HRC doesn’t speak for the LGBT community, and the sooner that politicians and those in the media grasp that, the smarter they will be.
HRC, by virtue of its size and visibility, has been given carte blanche to say and do whatever it wants while representing LGBTQ Americans. Mainstream media almost always looks to them first when they’re seeking someone to weigh in on LGBTQ rights. And ever more so recently, the group has made a series of decisions that have actually dealt serious blows to the equality push.
As egregious as the Kirk endorsement was, I’m still convinced that the group’s early endorsement of Hillary Clinton helped completely stunt debate of LGBTQ issues during the Democratic primary, just as I was initially concerned it would. In the wake of that endorsement, the Clinton campaign seems to have grown less responsive to LGBT concerns, not more. As the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson noted, Clinton’s reaction to the egregious North Carolina law was relatively slow.
Nearly 24 hours after McCrory signed the North Carolina legislation into law, Clinton joined Sanders in expressing opposition on Twitter with a message linking to an article in The Advocate. The tweet is marked with “-H,” indicating it came from Clinton herself.
To be precise, Clinton’s response was nearly 11 hours slower than that of Bernie Sanders (and no, please don’t hijack my comments thread with a Hillary v. Bernie debate). The point is, if LGBT concerns were truly being prioritized by the Clinton campaign and her team really thought they needed to compete for LGBT votes and credibility, that time differential would have been miniscule. Instead, the early Human Rights Campaign endorsement helped stymie that competition.
We also still don’t have an LGBTQ interview with Clinton—she had given at least a handful by this juncture in ’08, when the Human Rights Campaign withheld its endorsement till the Democratic primary was decided. So if the group’s access to Clinton was a key selling point for that endorsement, that access hasn’t yielded much so far in 2016.
Of course, HRC isn’t solely responsible for the lack of LGBT debate this election cycle. As I have noted before, lack of grassroots energy has also contributed. But that is perhaps precisely a reason now to find alternatives to funding HRC. We need to be lifting up a multitude of voices. Part of the real messy and raw power of movements like Black Lives Matter and DREAM is that they are what I have taken to calling “emergent movements.” They come from all directions and they’re not particularly streamlined with one clarifying message. (That was also true for the LGBT movement in the early years of Obama’s presidency, when grassroots activists staged the National Equality March and organized repeated direct actions.) Emergent movements have two benefits: 1) they force people to actually grapple with an issue rather than be spoon-fed one singular slogan or line of thinking; 2) the movement can never be coopted by one solitary voice or entity.
When the mainstream media, for instance, wants to cover racial justice, they don’t simply turn to an organization like the NAACP for a response. They seek out other voices of activists involved in BLM and lawmakers and thought leaders. Journalists actually have to think about who would be the most interesting and relevant interview. That in turn, yields a greater diversity of voices and viewpoints and a far richer conversation about racial issues.
This is what led me to consider a #DivestFromHRC movement anew, despite some potential drawbacks. And as for the group’s lobbying presence, HRC will likely never give that up. It is their claim to fame and in many ways, their reason for being, for better or worse.
So what say you, dear reader: Divest? Don’t divest? Perhaps, there are groups you would like to raise up here as possibilities for giving. There’s always the legal groups—Lambda Legal, GLAD, ACLU, Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (which launched a “WeAreAllNC” campaign this week.) If you’re inherently drawn to electoral giving, there’s the relatively new Lesbian Political Action Committee, or LPAC, (which endorsed Tammy Duckworth this week). Perhaps some state or regional groups in the South, like SONG (Southerners On New Ground, @ignitekindred).
All ideas welcome below!
Kerry Eleveld’s book about how LGBT activists created a political tipping point during Obama’s presidency is called, Don’t Tell Me To Wait: How the fight for gay rights changed America and transformed Obama’s presidency.