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By: KEVIN NAFF COMMENTS
 
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the gay rights movement. Sullivan and others have faulted HRC for failing to successfully lobby Congress to pass pro-gay laws. Some of that is deserved, some is not.
HRC provided the Blade with a list of its accomplishments, which include: successful campaigns to defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and 2006; the inclusion of gay provisions in the 2006 Pension Protection Act; the successful effort to defeat anti-gay adoption bans in Missouri, Georgia and Ohio; and the donation of $1 million to MassEquality.
This list is lacking, of course. But just as it is unfair of HRC to take all the credit when something goes right, it’s equally unfair to assign it all the blame when things go wrong. The reality is that no significant gay rights legislation was going to pass the Republican-controlled Congress of recent years. And even now, if the Democratic Congress passes the long-suffering Employment Non-Discrimination Act, there is no indication that President Bush will sign it.
The bloggers are right that HRC could have done much more to curry favor with Republican lawmakers in Washington. Endorsing Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.)
re-election in 2004 would have been a sensible, obvious start.
But none of that history changes the dynamics of the modern Republican Party, which has been hijacked by religious conservatives. The bloggers slammed HRC after Hillary Clinton spoke to its members last month. But they failed to note that HRC invited multiple candidates to speak, including John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, who declined. It’s hard to cultivate relationships with Republicans when they take their marching orders from Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.
HRC and the Democratic Congress have a short window to accomplish a lot, most importantly passage of ENDA. Failure to achieve that will expose HRC to much more damning criticism than it has so far encountered.
In the meantime, gay rights advocates across the political spectrum should declare a brief truce and focus on the shared goal of passing ENDA rather than continue to engage in “Gotcha!” finger-pointing and name-calling. There will be time for that after the votes are counted.
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