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Griffin articulates vision for future of LGBT movement

HRC president on Rubio, Caitlyn Jenner, Trans-Pacific Partnership

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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)

Editorā€™s Note: This is part two of a two-part interview with Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin. The first installment is here.

Chad Griffin has a lot on his plate with new challenges facing the LGBT community in 2016, andĀ he doesn’tĀ shy away from expressing an opinion on a multitude of recent LGBT news, such as controversy over Caitlyn Jenner, expectations for lifting the transgender military ban and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The president of the Human Rights Campaign made the comments last week with the Washington Blade during a 45-minute interview in his office, where he said 2016 would be a pivotal year for LGBT rights.

Within the Obama administration, one major anticipated action on LGBT rights this year is the end to the medical regulation prohibiting openly transgender service in the U.S. military. Just this week, the Pentagon affirmed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would make a decision on the issue this spring following the completion this month of a working group on transgender service.

Griffin said he hasn’t seen any version of the report being prepared by the working group, but maintained the Human Rights Campaign remains in contact with the Defense Department on the issue.

“One of my very first meetings in this job was at the Pentagon on this very issue,” Griffin said. “I know our teams have been in communication as they always are with our colleagues in government. It is unconscionable that the discrimination still exists as it relates to transgender service members. Tens of thousands of transgender Americans are fighting for our country and risking their lives for our country on a daily basis.”

Asked for a timeline for when he thinks the Pentagon should implement open service after the report comes out, Griffin replied, “Yesterday. It should have already happened.”

“I think I said I’m not sure how much work needs to go into a report to tell us that this needs to be lifted and this needs to be changed immediately,” Griffin added. “To me, it’s unconscionable it hasn’t been changed years ago, and so now, a timeline has been put into place that the timeline was going to take six months. We’ve gone through those six months, let’s see what the report says. But I have confidence in the Pentagon leadership and the secretary that he’s going to move quickly.”

Sue Fulton, president of the LGBT military group SPARTA, said her organization is glad HRC has prioritizedĀ working to end the trans military ban.

ā€œSPARTA is working closely with Pentagon officials to establish good policy on transgender military service,” Fulton said. “Transgender troops are serving with honor, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Our ongoing conversations with DOD leave us optimistic this will be resolved favorably. We appreciate HRCā€™s sense of urgency regarding the issue, though, and would be happy to update Chad Griffin on the progress toward transgender service at his convenience.ā€

Singer has had ‘incredible impact’ on LGBT movement

Griffin defended GOP philanthropist Paul Singer who, despite supporting LGBT rights causes includingĀ the Human Rights Campaign, has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

The candidate has expressed anti-LGBT views, such as indicating he’d appoint justices to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage and reverse President Obama’s executive order against anti-LGBT discrimination among federal contractors.

Meanwhile, Singer in 2013 donated $250,000 to Americans for Workplace Opportunity, a coalition group founded by Griffin that sought to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The same year, the Paul E. Singer Foundation teamed up with the Daniel S. Loeb Family Foundation to award the Human Rights Campaign Foundation major grants over three years to support LGBT rights at an international level.

“I’ll say this about Paul Singer: He has had an incredible impact on this movement,” Griffin said. “He, as you know, for a decade actually has been a generous philanthropist funding the work of the movement, and then in the last six, seven years has been a generous philanthropist both from not only his foundation, but also personally in funding many of these battles around the country.”

Griffin also drew a contrast between Singer’s views on LGBT rights and those of Rubio, saying Singer is more “consistent with the majority of the American public and also consistent with the majority of Republicans.”

“You contrast that with Marco Rubio’s views that could not be more out of touch with the Republican electorate,” Griffin said. “So while Paul and I agree on issues of equality, we disagree on plenty of other issues, including support for Marco Rubio.”

Asked whether Singer’s endorsement will affect his relationship with the Human Rights Campaign, Griffin said, “It is not my job to police individual donors around the country. Everyone has the right to support whom they choose.”

“As it relates to this work, what I learned from Ted Olson long ago is that you write off no one when it comes to equality,” Griffin said. “There are folks that surprise you day in and day out. Our job is to talk to those who aren’t with us and bring them to our side. It is my hope that ā€” and it’s not just Paul ā€” it’s my hope that Paul and other Republican donors and voters who are out there that choose to be Republican will continue to work hard to change the candidate’s views on these issues and also ultimately to help impact and change the party’s platform.”

Asked whether it’s incumbent upon Singer to condemn Rubio publicly for pledging to roll back LGBT rights, Griffin said, “That’s not for me to say. You can ask him.”

One initiative that may see a vote in Congress this year is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a controversial trade agreement among 12 countries in the Pacific Rim supported by President Obama. The LGBT labor group Pride at Work and the National LGBTQ Task Force opposeĀ the measure, citing concerns overĀ expanding trade with Malaysia and Brunei, which criminalize same-sex relations.

Griffin took a nuanced approach on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying trade agreements “just generally can be very productive as it relates to human rights issues,” but also cited concerns with the measure.

“As it specifically relates to this trade agreement, we have expressed a number of concerns including some provisions …Ā that would impact the ability to access medications, for instance, in a number of places,” Griffin said. “Another category that I think I talked about publicly, if not here, for the first time, we’ve also expressed about any country being rewarded for being a human rights abuser particularly around LGBT issues. And so, those are two areas specifically that we’ve expressed within the administration as well as on the Hill.”

Griffin suggested the Human Rights Campaign could accept the Trans-Pacific Partnership with modifications, saying, “I hope the final bill that’s ultimately voted on will take into account and make changes to accommodate those concerns.”

Jerame Davis, executive director at Pride at Work, said he’s “heartened” by Griffin’s remarks and hopes the Human Rights Campaign joins in more substantive activism against the agreement.

“Chad Griffinā€™s concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership mirror Pride At Work’s and weā€™re thrilled HRC has reiterated those concerns publicly,” Davis said. “Pride at Work brought these concerns to HRC in 2014 and they joined our letter to President Obama that laid out the serious issues LGBT people worldwide will face if the TPP passes. Our hope is that HRC will use their influence with the White House and lawmakers on the Hill to address the concerns of LGBT and HIV/AIDS advocates before the deal comes up for a vote.”

‘Everyday folks’ other than Jenner needed for trans visibility

Griffin also touched on transgender personality Caitlyn Jenner, who became arguablyĀ the most high-profile personĀ to publicly transitionĀ last year. She’s controversial because sheā€™s a Republican, is seen as too affluent to represent the broader transgender communityĀ and hasĀ made controversial remarks about gender conformity.

Asked by the Blade whether he thinks Jenner has been good for the transgender movement, Griffin said, “I think any time that people with significant profiles, T, L, G or B, come out on a national stage, it’s a good thing.”

“Having said that, what we need is more folks, and this is what you saw as it relates to gay and lesbian folks coming out a decade ago, what we need is everyday folks,” Griffin continued. “We need the neighbor next door, we need the person across the street, we need the coworker, the colleague, the business leader, the CEO. And so, while I hope more and more celebrities will continue to come out of the closet, the real brave heroes areĀ people like Blossom Brown, are people like Jazz Jennings who so boldly and bravely with great risk stand up and live their lives openly, both for themselves and also they care about the impact that has for others.”

Griffin said Jenner has helped with efforts conducted by the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, youth organizations and homeless shelters, but added “it’s important that we as a movement, and the media as a whole, not only focus on one, two or three people to define transgender Americans.”

“Anyone who’s not Caitlyn Jenner has to worry about being fired, being evicted from their home, facing discrimination day in, day out, whether it’s at their own dinner table or whether it’s under the law,” Griffin said. “And so, there is great risk when folks do this, and that’s why in my view they are amongst the greatest heroes in this country today: The everyday folks who atĀ great risk stand up and step out and live their lives openly.”

As the interview came to a close, Griffin addressed the issue of HIV/AIDS, touting his organization’s work with the Elton John Foundation to raise competency about the disease in the Deep South, especially the potential of HIV prevention medication.

“PrEP entering the marketplace is an incredible advancement as it relates to HIV and AIDS,” Griffin said. “The research shows that a significant number of the LGBT population don’t know it exists, don’t ask for it, and the research also shows that too many health care providers don’t know that it exists and therefore don’t talk to their patients about it. And so, I do believe we’re at a time where we can very soon see an AIDS-free generation, but it is going to take continued commitment, continued advocacy, continued and increased investment and attention to this issue.”

In response to news the New York LGBT group Empire State Pride Agenda would shut downĀ after declaring its chief objective complete, Griffin insisted more work on LGBT issues remains in the state.

“We have a governor that has moved forward on executive action as it relates to transgender protections, but there are a lot of issues beyond just the legislation,” Griffin said. “There are homeless challenges, there are issues and challenges as it relates to HIV and AIDS in this country.”

Griffin expressed enthusiasm when asked if he could foresee a time when the Human Rights Campaign would close its doors much like Empire State Pride Agenda, but predicted that wouldn’t happenĀ in the near future.

“Wouldn’t it be great to be at the place in this country and in this world where advocacy is no longer needed,” Griffin said. “I hope that’ll happen in my lifetime, but if you look at parallel movements, if you look at the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s, you look at my colleagues at the NAACP, who are fighting for the right to vote in 2016. I think that day is not so near.”

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleansā€™ 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 Orleansā€™ 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, ā€œUnited We Standā€ by the Brotherhood of Man. 

ā€œUnited we stand,ā€ the men would sing together, ā€œdivided we fallā€ ā€” the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to todayā€™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 ā€” 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: ā€œSome thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.ā€ 

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 ā€œhelp our bereaved brothers and sistersā€ ā€” and shatter officialdomā€™s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. ā€œItā€™s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,ā€ 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. 

ā€œThis fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,ā€ Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. ā€œI do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.ā€ 

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

ā€œPhil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,ā€ recounted Esteveā€™s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. ā€œPhil wouldnā€™t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.ā€ 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. ā€œHow dare you hold your damn news conferences!ā€ 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. ā€œReverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,ā€ 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 storyā€™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 ā€” some with visible burn scars ā€” gathered but were discouraged from singing ā€œUnited We Stand.ā€ 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the cityā€™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, ā€œWhere are the gay activists in New Orleans?,ā€ Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. ā€œWe donā€™t feel weā€™re discriminated against,ā€ Esteve said. ā€œNew Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere elseā€¦ Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.ā€ 

(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 ā€” with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charleneā€™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: ā€œA tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.ā€ 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneiderā€™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 ā€” more than 18 years after the fire. 

ā€œI believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,ā€ Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteveā€™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. Whatā€™s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world ā€” 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 pastā€™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 ā€” and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally ā€” 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 ā€” in the spirit of voices who once gathered ā€˜round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, ā€œUnited We Stand.ā€ 

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

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of ā€œTinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.ā€

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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 ā€” 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 ā€” whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit ā€” 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. Coloradoā€™s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actorā€™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 Smithā€™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.

ā€œIā€™m honored and ready to lead HRC ā€” and our more than three million member-advocates ā€” as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,ā€ Robinson said. ā€œThis 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 ā€” and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.ā€

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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