Mar 04, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force announced it has created a new six-person department in its Washington, D.C. office to lobby Congress and federal government agencies for gay civil rights causes.

Eleanor D. Acheson, a former assistant U.S. attorney general during the Clinton administration, will head the new department, and Dave Noble, former executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, will serve as the department’s political director, the Task Force announced last week.

In a March 1 conference call with reporters for the gay press, Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman said the group’s new role on the Washington lobbying scene would be carried out in full cooperation with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group.

HRC for years has served as the gay rights movement’s lobbying arm before Congress, the White House, and federal agencies and departments.

NGLTF, which has offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Cambridge, Mass., in addition to its headquarters in D.C., has worked largely with state and local gay civil rights groups in an effort to strengthen the gay movement’s grassroots political base.

“If you look at any other social justice movement, whether it’s choice, race, anti-Semitism, you can go down the list, there isn’t a single community that has one voice on the Hill,” Foreman said. “There are multiple voices for every social justice movement.”

HRC welcomes Task Force role
David Smith, HRC’s vice president for policy and strategy, said HRC welcomes the Task Force’s new lobbying role.

“We view it as a positive thing,” said Smith, who noted that HRC and NGLTF officials have met twice in recent weeks to discuss upcoming legislative issues.

Foreman said that in addition to Acheson and Noble, NGLTF has hired Amber Hollibaugh, an official with the national gay seniors group SAGE, to serve as senior strategist for the new staff unit, which is calls the Department of Public Policy & Government Affairs.

According to Foreman, NGLTF is funding the new department through an increased budget brought about by a larger base of contributors. He said no existing programs would be cut or curtailed as a result of the creation of the legislative affairs department. He said the Task Force budget for 2005 would exceed $9 million.

HRC’s budget is more than $25 million, according to HRC spokesperson Steven Fisher.

Gay columnist and author Wayne Besen, who served as HRC’s deputy communication’s director in the late 1990s, said HRC officials are more likely to be concerned about NGLTF’s new lobbying role than they are saying publicly.

“I think they privately have to be very disturbed because it’s very difficult coordinating these things with members of Congress,” Besen said. “You’re going to have miscommunications and toes are going to be stepped on.”

Besen said the two groups would likely be duplicating efforts and resources in their lobbying operations.

“You just can’t avoid that,” he said. Yet, Besen said with the hostile atmosphere in Congress on gay issues making it unlikely that any pro-gay legislation will pass, having two groups with competing visions could be a good thing.

“If NGLTF has its own vision, they have a right to present it,” he said. “Let them duke it out over who has the best vision for where we should go. But if this isn’t handled in a coordinated way, it could lead to a breakdown and confusion over our message.”

Activist Robin Tyler, director of the pro-gay marriage group, DontAmend.com, said she sees the Task Force’s decision to enter the Washington lobbying picture as a form of competition with HRC.

“If NGLTF turns out to be gutsy, I think it’s fine,” said Tyler, who has criticized HRC for not being forceful enough in its support for same-sex marriage and for not securing passage of a single gay rights bill. “But hopefully, NGLTF won’t be another arm of the Democratic Party.”

Tyler was referring to criticism by some, including gay Republicans, that HRC has aligned itself too closely with the Democratic Party. HRC officials have said they back members of both parties who are supportive on gay issues, but note that far more Democrats have been supportive.

Besen said some of the criticism of HRC has been unfair.

“If you don’t have the right people in Congress, you can’t accomplish your job, no matter how good you are. They can hire Bill Clinton, and it still won’t make a difference in this very tough environment.”

With Republicans in full control of Congress and the White House, and with GOP leaders of the House and Senate hailing from their party’s conservative wing, many observers ...