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Griffin sees 2016 as pivotal moment for LGBT rights

‘We’ve never had so much at stake in any election’

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Chad Griffin, HRC, Human Rights Campaign, gay news, Washington Blade
Chad Griffin, HRC, Human Rights Campaign, gay news, Washington Blade

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part interview with Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin. The second installment will be posted to washingtonblade.com in the coming days.

For Chad Griffin, 2016 represents a pivotal time when the LGBT community’s successes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage could continue — or face significant setbacks.

“We’ve never had so much at stake in any election than we have in 2016 as it relates to LGBT rights — both in terms of protecting our gains as well as having advocates both in the House and Senate as well as in the White House that will not only protect our progress and our gains, but also be champions and leaders in order for us to achieve success in the future as it relates to the Equality Act and a host of other priorities,” Griffin said.

The president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT group, laid out his vision for the year ahead in a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview with the Washington Blade in his office in Washington, D.C.

At the top of his list of concerns is the expectation that state legislatures would advance bills aimed at rolling back progress on LGBT rights. Touting his organization’s new report on the danger of such bills, Griffin said when asked if he thinks we might see movement on them, “I think not may, I think we will.”

“We’ve been working in coalition, depending on the state, with state groups, with business coalitions around the states to ensure that we’re all in front of us and that no one is caught off guard and that no one is surprised, and I think the experience of what we saw this last legislative cycle has really — not just our organization, but the movement as a whole — is more ready than we really were last round,” Griffin said.

Griffin divided the bills into categories: “Religious freedom” bills that would allow businesses to refuse services to LGBT people; legislation prohibiting municipalities from enacting pro-LGBT non-discrimination ordinances; and anti-trans bills aimed at keeping transgender people from using the public restroom consistent with their gender identity.

Asked to name the states in which he thinks such legislation could advance, Griffin said the pre-emption bills could come in four or five states while the anti-trans and religious freedom measures could emerge in more than 20.

Griffin said the strategy to defeat the bills would differ from state to state, but that the business community would be key in derailing those efforts — not just behind the scenes, but vocally in opposition to the bills.

“In many of these states, it’s business leaders and the state chambers — it’s the largest employers in the state that often have the grandest impact among elected officials at the local and state level, and so we’ve been working across the country in order to ensure that businesses are organized in ways that we can see defeat, and you have some businesses that are willing to be more public and some businesses that are willing to do things more privately,” Griffin said.

But Griffin also emphasized the importance of grassroots organizing, saying the work of activists in Arkansas last year was important in mitigating a religious freedom bill before lawmakers at the statehouse.

“There’s only one route in,” Griffin said. “They either have to walk up the grand stairs to the Senate or up the stairs into the House of Representatives. And in doing that they have to walk through hundreds and hundreds of grassroots folks from that state, and I maintain that that had amongst the greatest impact of everyday folks who were showing up to demand equality and to ask their legislators to oppose that legislation and ultimately ask the governor to step back.”

Griffin acknowledged he also sees opportunities to advance LGBT rights this year, but was reluctant to specify where because he doesn’t want to tip off opponents of LGBT rights. Among the places that he said are no secret are Charlotte, N.C, and Jacksonville, Fla., where efforts are underway at the municipal level to enact prohibitions on anti-LGBT discrimination.

“It’s important not to write off municipalities,” Griffin said. “Before there were any statewide protections in Utah, there were 18 cities or municipalities that had protections. So that meant more than half the state was already covered by the time the state legislature finally voted and some protections were afforded.”

In terms of advancing LGBT rights in the states, Griffin identified Pennsylvania as one place where that could happen, but said the focus at the state level would be on derailing anti-LGBT efforts.

“I do believe in the 2016 cycle when we’re in the midst of primaries we’ll be on the defensive more than we’re on the offense,” Griffin said.

Ted Martin, executive director of Equality Pennsylvania, said he agrees with Griffin that his state could see pro-LGBT legislation advance this year.

“We do share this assessment,” Martin said. “Non-discrimination is our top legislative priority and we intend to do everything we can in 2016 to see it passed.”

More third-party voices needed after Houston defeat

Chad Griffin, HRC, Human Rights Campaign, gay news, Washington Blade

Chad Griffin (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

In the aftermath of the defeat of the LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance in Houston last year, Griffin had told the Blade weeks ago on Capitol Hill the result was under review. During the interview in his office, Griffin offered additional ideas on the strategy going forward to counter the anti-trans attacks at the ballot, but maintained that the absence of business community support was harmful in the Houston fight.

“Many in the business community hid behind the local chamber,” Griffin said. “That is not without a lot of attempts and organizational appeals by us, by our partner organizations and others. And that was a noticeable difference in Houston. Business is key to our formula for success, and we’ve got to have them in our battles in the future.”

Griffin also said there was “no question” the response to opponents’ ads was insufficient, not strong enough and not well enough resourced.

“The folks who were on the ground and the campaign manager, there was funding for a single track of ads and a decision was made to stay on a positive message as opposed to switching,” Griffin said. “Often times on a campaign, when I used to be a campaign manager in a previous life, your dream was to be able to afford two tracks, right? One track of ads that was your positive, one track of ads that was your response. We didn’t have that level of funding in that campaign to run two tracks the entire time.”

On the nature of the response to the anti-trans attacks, Griffin said views differ and the issue will require more testing, but he believes personally third-party voices are key.

“My own experience tells me specifically what we were missing in the response were third-party validators that could look into the camera and say why those ads are wrong and why they’re lies,” Griffin said. “A good example of someone like that would be a law enforcement officer, a police chief, someone with credibility that’s not seen as political or partisan or having any interest.”

Also key for Griffin is generally raising visibility of transgender people, which he said is relevant to Houston, but also the transgender movement as a whole. Espousing the widely held view that knowing someone who is LGBT makes a person more supportive of LGBT rights, Griffin said in 2008, 5 or 6 percent of people knew someone who is transgender, but that number now is 22 percent.

“And the extent to which we can increase that number and increase the pace with which that number goes up, it will be to our benefit in all of these campaigns around the country,” Griffin said.

Griffin also raised the possibility of a “Bradley Effect” in Houston to account for early poll results indicating a victory for the ordinance before the loss on Election Day. Under this political theory, voters are telling pollsters they will vote a way that’s different from the way they actually cast their ballots.

“I think we don’t have evidence to know exactly how to interpret the difference in polls and the Election Day results, but I do think it’s something that we as a movement are going to have to be really conscious of going forward in the future,” Griffin said.

As the 2016 presidential race continues, Griffin couldn’t say when the Human Rights Campaign would make an endorsement. He noted the board and staff continue to discuss the issue as the organization’s questionnaires are returned by candidates.

“Those who are willing to send them back, who filled them out, we get them back,” Griffin said. “As you might suspect, some choose not to fill them out.”

Asked if HRC could realistically endorse anyone other than Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, Griffin said that’s a decision for the board and drew a contrast more generally between Democrats and Republicans running for president.

“There’s no contested presidential primary where the differences have been grander between the candidates on the Democratic side and the candidates on the Republican side,” Griffin said. “You just look at three Democrats, all of whom are champions for equality, all of whom have endorsed the Equality Act, all of whom have talked about their ideas to move equality were they to be elected, and then you look at the other side. And you look at the other side’s positions. Not only are they not saying they won’t move things forward, they’re doubling down to say they’ll roll things back, that they will undo our progress.”

Griffin said the positions Republican presidential candidates are taking on LGBT issues are “unfortunate” not only because they’re “harmful to real-live people,” but also because they’re out of line with the majority of individuals in the Republican Party, who as recent polls show support LGBT non-discrimination protections.

“I am confident in the general election that it is going to be difficult for a Republican nominee to have such hateful discriminatory positions against LGBT people because they’re out of touch with the electorate, they’re out of touch with Democrats, they’re out of touch with independents, and they’re out of touch with Republicans to hold these views,” Griffin said.

Griffin said before he joined HRC, he predicted 2016 would be the election in which the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees would hold the same views on LGBT issues, but admits he “was badly wrong.”

“I do think that day will come because the Republican Party can’t survive as long as they are espousing such hateful and discriminatory views,” Griffin said.

Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, said Griffin was making “incredible generalizations” about the GOP candidates for president and that some have said they want to move on after the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage.

“There’s more common ground here than Democrats want people to think,” Angelo said. “I have tremendous respect for Chad as he heads a supposedly non-partisan organization, I hope he more carefully chooses how he describes GOP candidates as we forge ahead toward Election Day.”

No chance of Equality Act becoming law this year

At the federal level, one high-profile LGBT initiative is the Equality Act, federal legislation that would amend the Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act to include a prohibition on anti-LGBT discrimination.

Although Griffin said he is optimistic the bill would become law sooner than many think, when asked if he saw a path for the Equality Act to become law in this Congress, he said, “No.”

“This Congress can’t agree on how to keep the lights on much less the Equality Act,” Griffin added. “What I do think is that the momentum is going to continue, we will continue to add co-sponsors, we will continue to add business endorsers, we will educate constituents in districts across the country when the elections come up as to one’s position on the Equality Act. Anyone who opposes it, I don’t think deserves to be in Congress, and those who haven’t yet taken positions, our job is to work hard to continue to convince them of why they should publicly support it.”

Griffin said he bases his optimism on the dramatic growth in support for same-sex marriage among lawmakers as well as business support, co-sponsorship and strong polling in support for the Equality Act.

When the Blade pointed out the Equality Act doesn’t have a single Republican co-sponsor, Griffin said the situation was the same for pro-LGBT legislation like the Respect for Marriage Act and legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“But at the end of the day, with a lot of work, with our allies on the Hill, ultimately enough Republicans join Democrats to get deals done,” Griffin said.

Asked whether the lack of endorsement for the Equality Act from major civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights is a problem, Griffin said these groups “all have their own processes for endorsement, which is not unlike what we went through on marriage.”

“Congressman John Lewis has been incredible in bringing on members and new co-sponsors and has been an early leader in this process along with…Cory Booker and others,” Griffin said. “So this is one of the broadest-based coalitions that we’ve ever had for a piece of legislation, particularly this early on, and we will continue to grow it and continue to expand it.”

Stacey Long Simmons, director of public policy and government affairs for the National LGBTQ Task Force, expressed a similar doubtfulness about the Equality Act’s prospects when asked about Griffin’s prediction the bill wouldn’t pass this Congress.

“Without at least one Republican co-sponsor, it is difficult to see a path forward in this Congress,” Long Simmons said. That said, we will continue to build support for the bill with a broad, diverse coalition of those who are committed to achieving full legal equality and justice for all LGBTQ people.”

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

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Fifty years ago this week, 32 gay men were killed in an arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.  

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man. 

“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’s queer safe havens. 

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment. 

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. 

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history — and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. 

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” 

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” Perry said. 

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals. 

“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.” 

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business. 

“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.” 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” one business owner shouted. 

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

(Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.” 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt. 

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.” 

(Photo by H.J. Patterson/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking. 

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider. 

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.” 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 — more than 18 years after the fire. 

“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989. 

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire. 

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing. 

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the past’s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference? 

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation. 

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered. 

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.” 

(Photo by Philip Ames/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”

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New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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The U.S. Supreme Court is to set consider the case of 303 Creative, which seeks to refuse design services for same-sex weddings. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.

Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.

“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person — if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”

The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.

And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.

Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”

“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”

One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.

As such, expect issues of standing — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.

Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.

Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.

“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’s speech.”

Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”

Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.

One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.

“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smith’s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”

Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.

Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.

“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”

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Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman and veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is to become the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBTQ group announced on Tuesday.

Robinson is set to become the ninth president of the Human Rights Campaign after having served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and more than 12 years of experience as a leader in the progressive movement. She’ll be the first Black, queer woman to serve in that role.

“I’m honored and ready to lead HRC — and our more than three million member-advocates — as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,” Robinson said. “This is a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people. We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us.”

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

The next Human Rights Campaign president is named as Democrats are performing well in polls in the mid-term elections after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving an opening for the LGBTQ group to play a key role amid fears LGBTQ rights are next on the chopping block.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy,” Robinson said. “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”

The Human Rights Campaign announces its next president after a nearly year-long search process after the board of directors terminated its former president Alphonso David when he was ensnared in the sexual misconduct scandal that led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. David has denied wrongdoing and filed a lawsuit against the LGBTQ group alleging racial discrimination.

Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu, SMYAL, Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, Amy Nelson, Whitman-Walker Health, Sheroes of the Movement, Mayor's office of GLBT Affairs, gay news, Washington Blade
Kelley Robinson, seen here with Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health, is the next Human Rights Campaign president. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
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