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| Randy Foster, an HRC Federal Club member, said the organization
must develop new strategies to work in a more conservative environment and with
a hostile administration. (Photo by Yusef Najafi)
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOE CREA COMMENTS
Concern and frustration spilled out into the open this week over how the Human
Rights Campaign will navigate the post-election of a capital city now even more
tightly within the grasp of conservatives.
A member of the HRC’s Federal Club of key donors raised concerns at a
Tuesday night meeting with HRC staff about the group’s laserlike focus
on marriage equality and hinted that without a new strategy for working with
the GOP-dominated government, new leadership might be needed at the country’s
largest gay lobbying group.
Randy Foster, 39, said he became concerned about the direction gay groups were
taking this year after talking with a congressman during a flight from Los Angeles
to Washington, D.C., three days after the election.
The lawmaker, whom Foster declined to identify, said that marriage had become
such a priority for gay leaders he wondered how effective gay lobbyists would
be during the next four years.
“Unless we create a new strategy, knowing we live in a conservative environment,
as a community, we will be ineffective,” Foster said. “I am not
criticizing that we are on the marriage bandwagon. My point is if we continue
with that strategy, we will not only not get anything done on a federal level,
we might have companies rethink their benefit packages to gay spouses.
“It’s unclear to me that we have a short-term strategy. Are the
people who got us here able to work with the new [political] leadership? If
the answer is no, then we need to do something about that.”
Foster said he raised the issue during Tuesday night’s meeting with Federal
Club members and HRC staff. Members of the club make an annual contribution
of $1,200 to $4,999 to HRC.
Foster said Cheryl Jacques, HRC’s executive director, told him at the
meeting that, “working with this administration is going to be hard”
but that HRC officials were working on a long-range plan for the next year,
though she declined to elaborate.
Foster said a short-term strategy was needed and that other Federal Club members
chimed in saying that HRC’s response was “unacceptable.”
Chris Labonte, HRC’s legislative director, said that because gay marriage
is legal in Massachusetts, it is impossible to retreat from the issue.
Some have criticized gay groups for pushing the marriage issue during an election
year. But Jacques dismissed concerns about the timing of the gay marriage issue,
adding that the “Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court handed us marriage
equality.”
“We can’t turn that back,” Jacques said in an interview last
week. “Nearly a decade ago there wasn’t a Goodridge decision in
the pipelines yet 36 states in 1996 had Defense of Marriage Acts. I believe
that the extremists were pushing the gay marriage boogie man for a long time
now to divide people and mobilize an extreme base.”
With the passage of 11 state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage
on Election Day, Jacques said Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove, “gave
the American students the final exam on the first day of class.” She added
that the American public is “nowhere near ready to decide what our legal
protections should look like.”
“We just started to talk to them about our families and important matters
like tax and estate protections and hospital visitation rights,” Jacques
said. “We need to go back to that and unite Americans on fairness and
families and what fairness looks like.”
Others, including gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), have criticized HRC and
other gay groups for embracing the actions of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom,
who began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in February.
Jacques defended the group’s support of Newsom, adding that the San Francisco
mayor did not ignite the outcry from social conservatives to push ahead with
the 11 state amendments. Jacques said, “that fire was already lit.”
Despite Newsom’s controversial actions, Jacques said history will judge
the San Francisco mayor and other leaders “very kindly in a very long
civil rights battle.”
Foster also expressed concern that HRC was bending considerably to the left,
adding that gay issues are not Republican or Democratic issues.
“If HRC, by its nature, should be bipartisan why have posters that say,
‘George W. Bush, you are fired,’” asked Foster. “Little
or no conservatives will ...
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