Mar 16, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Gay conservative commentator and author Andrew Sullivan unleashed a series of attacks during the past two weeks against the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group, calling it a “racket” that raises large sums of money while failing to use its resources effectively for gay rights causes.

In an entry earlier this month on his popular blog, the Daily Dish, Sullivan described HRC as a “corporation designed to milk the gay market to hire more fund-raisers and marketers to milk more gay pockets.”

“It’s a racket with a plush new multi-million dollar headquarters and salaries that would make corporate America blush,” he said.

HRC officials called Sullivan’s attacks inaccurate and unfair. They quickly accused him of seeking to weaken the Washington-based gay rights group — which generated $34.6 million in revenue in 2006 — just as it is expected to lead efforts to advance two important gay rights bills pending in Congress.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which calls for banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and a hate crimes bill, which covers gays and transgender persons, are expected to come up for a vote in late summer or early fall.

“I find it curious that, as Democrats have taken charge of Congress and we are poised for the first time in over a decade to pass this sort of legislation, he seems to have mounted this campaign to malign and discredit our work,” said HRC president Joe Solmonese.

HRC’s vice president for programs, David Smith, went a step further, accusing Sullivan of advancing the interests of anti-gay groups from the religious right.

“There’s nobody happier about what Andrew Sullivan is doing than Tony Perkins and James Dobson,” Smith said.

Perkins is executive director of the anti-gay Family Research Council. Dobson heads the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, which, among other things, advocates on behalf of “ex-gay” groups that encourage gays to convert to heterosexuality.

Sullivan did not return a call seeking comment for this story.

His prominent stature as a widely read political commentator, senior editor of Atlantic Monthly magazine, and frequent guest on national television news programs presents potential problems for HRC if Sullivan continues to criticize the group.

At least two fellow bloggers, gay activist and self-described gadfly Michael Petrelis, and transgender activist Ethan St. Pierre, who last year created the blog HRC Watch, have joined Sullivan in criticizing HRC in a flurry of blog entries of their own over the past two weeks. The two have said Sullivan is committed to gay rights causes.

Petrelis and St. Pierre said Sullivan’s recent commentaries on HRC, along with their own postings, were part of a groundswell of criticism emerging against HRC among bloggers.

But gay blogger John Aravosis, of AmericaBlog.com, dismissed claims that a “groundswell” of gay-oriented blogs are turning against HRC. He said the readership of blogs like Petrelis’ and St. Pierre’s was “miniscule” compared to Sullivan’s site.

“They have almost no traffic,” said Aravosis, referring to what he called a handful of gay Republican bloggers, along with Petrelis and St. Pierre, who regularly attack HRC. “The driving force here is Andrew,” he said.

Aravosis said other gay-oriented blogs, such as Pam’s House Blend, published by Pam Spaulding, a black lesbian activist, offer both praise and criticism of HRC depending on a given issue or development and could not be considered part of an anti-HRC faction of bloggers.

Low rating for HRC’s
‘organizational efficiency’

Sullivan’s blog entries of the past two weeks show that he stepped up his criticism of HRC after discovering a recent negative review of the finances of the HRC Foundation by Charity Navigator, a well-regarded watchdog group that monitors the spending and fundraising practices of non-profit organizations.

The Charity Navigator review in question focused only on the HRC Foundation, the group’s educational arm that accounts for about 20 percent of HRC’s total budget. Contributions made to the foundation are tax deductible. Contributions to HRC, Inc., the main part of HRC that conducts political advocacy work, lobbying and gives money to candidates running for public office, are not tax deductible.

Charity Navigator gave the HRC Foundation an overall rating of one star out of a possible four. It assigned the foundation “O” stars for the category of “organizational efficiency,” which includes the areas of program expenses, administrative expenses, fundraising expenses and fundraising efficiency.

In its third and final category of “organizational capacity,” Charity Navigator gave the HRC Foundation a one-star rating. This category includes the criteria of primary revenue growth, program expenses growth and working capital ratios.

The Charity Navigator web site says a one-star ...