Connect with us

homepage news

WikiLeaks exposes fallout over Clinton remarks on HIV/AIDS

Emails reveal anger over praise of Reagans

Published

on

Hillary Clinton, gay news, Washington Blade

Sec. Hillary Clinton (Image courtesy C-Span)

The gaffe Hillary Clinton made in MarchĀ creditingĀ the Reagans withĀ starting a “national conversation” on HIV/AIDS Ā angered many ofĀ her LGBT supporters and created stress in the campaign before she issued an apology reflecting on the epidemic, according to campaign emails made public by WikiLeaks over the weekend.

Shortly after Clinton made the remarks in March on MSNBC during Nancy Reagan’s funeral, she issued an apology in which she said she “misspoke” about the Reagans’ record, but Clinton supportersĀ outside the campaign insistedĀ that wasn’t enough.

Richard Socarides, a gay New York-based Democratic activist and Clinton supporter, emailed senior campaign officials to warn them the candidate should address the issue “before this spins out of control.”

“Nancy Reagan in fact helped start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS but as we all know it was far too little and way too late,” Socarides wrote. “When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 it was on a platform that was highly critical of the Republican response to the HIV crisis. It had been a record of neglect. As first lady and as senator and as Secretary of State Hillary has been a champion for increased funding and raising awareness.”

Echoing Socarides’ comments in a subsequent email was Steve Elemendorf, a gay Democratic lobbyist, who said heĀ “cannot overstate how big a problem” the remarks were and called for immediate action from the campaign.

Kristina Schake, a deputy communications director for the Clinton campaign, wrote in another email that Clinton ally and Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin was receiving complaints aboutĀ Clinton’s remarks and hisĀ response, which condemned the remarksĀ but didn’t reference the candidate herself.

“I stayed with Chad last night who was receiving lots of angry calls and notes from people that he didn’t call her out by name,” Schake wrote. “He wouldn’t do that to her and kept stressing she just made a mistake, but suggested we need to do something more today to protect her. She has a great record and we lost a lot of ground messaging-wise.”

Dominic Lowell, the Clinton’s campaign LGBT liasion, distributed an emailĀ to coordinate the response, saying “most people are expressing palpable anger and hurt over the comments” in the last 24 hours over the remarks.

“If I had to break things down, I’d put people into three categories: 1) supporters who were horrified at the comment but accept the apology; 2) supporters who are angry and can only be mollified with a longer statement, tv appearance, roundtable, or something else big that shows she ‘gets it,'” Lowell wrote. “They will continue to make hay in the meantime; and 3) Bernie folks who are happy to have a new line of attack.”

(Indeed, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic primary, in the aftermath of ClintonĀ crediting the Reagans for their efforts onĀ HIV/AIDS said on CNN’sĀ “State of the Union” he doesn’t “know what she was talking about.”)

Lowell expressed concern about the second group whom he identified, which he said consist of “Queer Nation, ACT UP, and other activistsĀ who are out, loud, and not afraid of direct action or aggressive confrontation,” adding he didn’tĀ “want this to fester.”

PossibilitiesĀ Lowell raised as a response includedĀ bumping up the HIV/AIDS policy roll out or putting together a roundtable. Lowell said Robbie Kaplan, a Clinton supporter and theĀ attorney who successfully argued against the Defense of Marriage Act, had volunteered the New York-based Gay Men’s Health Crisis to assist with the effort.

(The exchange reveals the idea of a roundtable with HIV/AIDS activists, which was publicly requested after the remarks and occurredĀ months later, was under consideration at this time.)

Teddy Goff, a technology strategist for Clinton, writes the problem with the candidate is supporters don’t understand “on a fact level, what happened and how she could have gotten so mixed up.”

“And in the absence of any explanatory information, they assume the worst ā€” like that this was some cynical political strategy of ours,” Goff wrote. “(Which, I would note, makes no sense ā€” why would our strategy be to piss everyone off? ā€” but regardless.)”

Jessica Morales Rocketto, digital organizing director for the Clinton campaign, raised the possibility of responding in the “Out for Hillary” Facebook group, which she said had 14,000 members and “the largest LGBT community of Hillary’s supporters I know.”

“These are friendlies, they are already carrying water for us making sure the apology is out there, and they firmly sit in groups 1 and 2 that Dom identified,”Ā Rocketto said.

Rocketto addedĀ sending talking points out to supporters “really worked” because “they are popping up everywhere on the supporter Facebook groups.”

Recognizing a distinction between younger and older Clinton supporters, Dennis Cheng, national finance director for the Clinton campaign, said using the groups would be helpful, but not enough because “a lot of our people (esp those who are older who lived through the 80s) want to see and hear her address it directly, given that they saw and heard her Reagan remarks on TV.”

After Robbie Mook, who’s gay and Clinton’s campaign manager,Ā wrote in a subsequent email a Medium postĀ would be a good opportunity for ClintonĀ to express herself, the campaign settled on thatĀ course of action.

“She could open it by saying she misspoke and apologizes for that and wanted to make sure people understand what she will do,” Mook wrote.

Megan Rooney, speechwriter for Hillary Clinton, issued the first draft of the Medium post.Ā In the initial draft, Clinton was to say she was wrong about the Reagans and “said so right away,” but those words were omitted after Goff wrote he didn’tĀ think “that gets us any extra credit” and sounded “a hair defensive.”

Schake followed up with edits from Griffin, who changed the draft to more clearly state Clinton was sorry “for the pain my comments caused” and the persistence of HIV/AIDS among gay and bisexual men, transgender people and communities of color. Rooney said the chances of Clinton “OK-ing this statement with that top are slim” and the campaign would walk that back, although the phrase “made a mistake” remained in the final writing.

As Xochitl Hinojosa, the Clinton campaign’s LGBT media spokesperson, raised concern about upcoming stories in the LGBT media intendingĀ quoteĀ ClintonĀ supporters who say the apology isn’t enough, the campaign scrambled to get approval and put the statement online.

“I think we really should do everything we can to get this up today, if at all possible (fingers crossed),” wroteĀ Clinton campaign director of content and creative Lauren Peterson. “Does not seem to be dying down online, either.”

After approval by Clinton ā€” and a few additionalĀ tweeks, including the removal of a reference to increase funding for PEPFAR in favor of a more general plan for “global funding” ā€” publication was initially set to go, then halted for additional tweeks. A reference to “brave men and women” who fought HIV/AIDS was changed to “brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies.”

The final Medium post has Clinton asserting she was wrong about the Reagans and touting her record in speaking out in favor of efforts to combat HIV/AIDS at the domestic and international levels and mentioned her plan to achieve an “AIDS-free generation.”Ā Among the proposals in the draft were extending Medicaid, reforming HIV criminalization laws, capping out-of-pocket drug expenses for HIV/AIDS medications and expanding access to PrEP.

“Weā€™ve come a long way,” Clinton says in the post. “But we still have work to do to eradicate this disease for good and to erase the stigma that is an echo of a shameful and painful period in our countryā€™s history.”

When the statement when online, staffers responded with jubilation. Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s director of communications, wrote, “Praise, Jesus!” Clinton campaign spokesperson Dan Schwerin commended his colleagues forĀ the post and called it “amazing actually.”

Praise also came from outside the campaign. Jenna Lowenstein, digital director for the Clinton campaign wrote on Medium “the top comments are overwhelmingly positive (and some are quite moving).” Lowell passed around a statement from former Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, who said the postĀ “literally brought [a] tear to my eyes,” and from another statement from AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who was angered with Clinton’s remarks, but satisfied with the MediumĀ post.

Ann O’Leary, senior policy adviser for theĀ Clinton campaign, shared a messageĀ she said came from a couple, Viki and Jen, who were among the couples to marry in San Francisco by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004.

“Jen and I wanted to tell you how incredibly impressed we were with HRC when she was able to apologize for what she said about the Reagans etc. in such a remarkably humble and authentic way,” the message reads. “She showed true leadership, something we are not seeing a lot of these days. We are so proud of her and moved by her courage to open herself up publicly in this manner. Definitely presidential material!!”

Even though Clinton twice apologized for the remarks and recommitted herself to fight HIV/AIDS in the aftermath, it remains unclear why she made the remarks in the first place. Some have speculated she confused Nancy Reagan’s work on Alzheimer’s disease with HIV/AIDS; others claims the remarks were an effortĀ to curry favor with Reagan Democrats.

As foreshadowed in the emails, Clinton would take part in a meeting with HIV/AIDS activists and recommitted herself to fighting the epidemic. SandersĀ scheduled a meeting with HIV/AIDS activists at the same time as Clinton, but later cancelled the meeting on short notice, then rescheduled in California before the primary in that state.

The Washington Blade has placed a call toĀ the Clinton campaign seeking comment on the leaked emails. The Clinton campaign hasn’t publicly acknowledged, nor denied, the veracity of the messages in the WikiLeaks dump.

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

homepage news

Honoring the legacy of New Orleansā€™ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

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

Published

on

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€

Continue Reading

homepage news

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

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

Published

on

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.”

Continue Reading

homepage news

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

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Published

on

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)
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular