Connect with us

homepage news

Criticism of ‘feckless’ Mook after Clinton’s loss

LGBT advocates weigh in on future of Dem Party

Published

on

Robby Mook, gay news, Washington Blade
Robbie Mook, gay news, Washington Blade

Hillary for America Campaign Manager Robby Mook speaks at a press conference in Philadelphia on July 25, 2016. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Following the unexpected defeat of Hillary Clinton, LGBT political observers are calling for a reassessment of the Democratic Party — and the candidate’s gay campaign manager is being criticized by some in the aftermath of one of the most shocking political upsets in American history.

Some Democrats are saying Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook pursued the wrong strategy in a “change” election and relied too heavily on projecting an image of Clinton as an establishment candidate.

Had Mook succeeded in guiding Clinton to victory, he would have been the first openly gay campaign manager of a major U.S. party presidential nominee, and he would have elected the first female president. Instead, Clinton lost and the Democratic Party, now in the minority in every part of the federal government, is in disarray and without a clear leader.

Wayne Besen, a Chicago-based gay activist and radio host known for his opposition to widely discredited “conversion therapy,” said Mook came off as the “kind of man you’d want to take home and introduce to mom and dad,” but didn’t enact the right strategy to combat Donald Trump’s low-brow campaign tactics.

“We needed a campaign manager who effectively channeled the fear and anger felt by those left behind by globalization and the technological revolution,” Besen said. “We needed someone, particularly against Trump, who was a political brawler. Unfortunately, Mook was often feckless in media appearances and looked shifty. He spoke with little emotion and seemed to be reading off DNC talking points. He appeared as if he was afraid to mess up, when he should have spoken with conviction, charisma, and authority.”

Besen, a Bernie Sanders supporter in the Democratic primary, added Mook “made a mistake” with the choice of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as Clinton’s running mate, saying the vice presidential nominee performed well, but “was the wrong man for this peculiar moment in American history.”

“On my daily radio show in Chicago, I repeatedly warned that Trump’s only path to victory was the Rust Belt,” Besen said. “Thus, the Clinton campaign should pick an anti-trade firebrand stalwart like Sanders or Warren and shuttle them between the Great Lakes and Pennsylvania. Instead they went in the opposite direction and paid dearly for this mistake.”

Besen tempered his criticism of Mook by saying he “competently ran a sophisticated, sprawling campaign operation” and won the popular vote, even though Clinton didn’t end up winning the election through the Electoral College system. According to election results posted on CNN, Clinton as of Tuesday surpassed Trump in the popular vote by about 800,000 votes.

On the day after the election, Hillary Clinton omitted Mook from the list of those she thanked during her concession speech, although she recognized Kaine and his wife, President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

But Daniel Pinello, a gay political scientist at the City University of New York’s John Jay College, rejected the idea Mook’s omission had any significance.

“I caution against reading too much into remarks made in a concession speech by a candidate who had had no opportunity to recover from a grueling months-long campaign schedule and who had just experienced a great — and largely unexpected — career tragedy,” Pinello said. “It’s very hard under such circumstances for even the most composed individual to remember thanking everyone appropriately.”

Trump won the election largely in part to victories in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which have traditionally been “blue” states in presidential elections. The results in those states were a surprise because prior to Election Day, polls there showed Clinton with a comfortable lead.

The Trump campaign seems to have been more aware those states were in play than the Clinton campaign. According to NBC News, Trump in the last 100 days of the election out-campaigned Clinton in states that ended up being critical on Election Day. In Ohio, Trump made 26 rally appearances compared to the 17 made by Clinton. In Michigan, Trump made 13 rally appearances compared to the six made by Clinton. In Wisconsin, Trump made six appearances while Clinton never once visited the state during that time period.

Jimmy LaSalvia, a gay independent and former Republican who endorsed Clinton, said Mook ended up filling the campaign with insiders and, in contrast to Trump’s team, no one who “could help them to see the need to express more empathy for Americans who feel shut out and screwed by the system.”

“I saw many examples of evidence that Mook and his team fundamentally missed the mood of the country,” LaSalvia said. “This election wasn’t about Republicans versus Democrats, it was about the insiders versus the outsiders. The Clinton campaign did too many things that highlighted their candidate’s insider status, and not enough to appear on the side of the outsiders.”

As one example, LaSalvia said during the Democratic primary the Clinton campaign faulted Sanders for not being a Democrat, even though that contributed to his appeal. Additionally, LaSalvia said the team erred by including almost entirely lists of former elected officials and high-level appointees in their Republican outreach — a strategy he said he warned the campaign against because it “helped to highlight her campaign as the political establishment who the country was ready to fire.”

“If Mook had a winning message that he could organize around, then his organizational skills would lead her to victory,” LaSalvia said. “That didn’t happen. He and his candidate, being the establishment figures they are, just couldn’t see what they were missing.”

One aspect of Clinton’s campaign that stood out was running on the most advanced platform for LGBT rights of any major U.S. presidential candidate in history.

Surpassing even Obama in his bids for the White House in 2008 and 2012, Clinton ran on supporting marriage for same-sex couples as a constitutional right, comprehensive LGBT non-discrimination legislation known as the Equality Act, a vision for achieving an “AIDS-free generation” and a pledge to protect transgender Americans from disproportionate violence.

Besen said although the positions were unprecedented for a major U.S. presidential candidate, they helped Clinton rather than contributed to her defeat by Trump, who took anti-LGBT positions over the course of his campaign.

“I think that Clinton’s pro-LGBT platform helped her,” Besen said. “Had LGBT rights been toxic, Obama would not have been reelected. And North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory would have cruised to reelection this year.”

(Indeed, McCrory, who signed the anti-LGBT House Bill 2 into law, appears to have narrowly lost in his bid for re-election in North Carolina even though Trump won the state comfortably and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C), another Republican, won re-election.)

Calls for new path for Democrats

Other observers insisted Mook performed well given the circumstances of the election year and the focus of examination shouldn’t be on the past, but the future and finding new leaders in the Democratic Party.

Eric Stern, a gay Berkeley-based Democratic activist who supported Sanders in the primary, said Mook and his team “worked tirelessly in support of their candidate and should be commended,” but the Democratic Party has to make changes.

“The candidacy of Bernie Sanders resonated with primary voters in Michigan and Wisconsin in a way that Secretary Clinton’s did not,” Stern said. “My hope is that as the Democratic Party begins to pick up the pieces and develop a game plan for the future — that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and leaders from the communities made most vulnerable by the election of Donald Trump have real seats at the decision making table (as well as consideration for party leadership positions). Excluding the voices of those leaders at this critical moment — who represent millions of Americans — would be disastrous for our party.”

Stampp Corbin, a gay San Diego-based activist and publisher of LGBT Weekly, said the Clinton campaign made errors, but the abolition of the Electoral College should be a new priority for the Democratic Party.

“While I believe the Democrats squandered an opportunity to unite working class whites and minorities with an economic message a la Bernie Sanders, the real question is whether the Electoral College is still relevant,” Corbin said.

As Corbin noted, 2016 marks the fifth time in U.S. history a Republican ascended to the White House, even though a Democrat won the popular vote, and the second time after Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in the 2000 election that was ultimately settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Perhaps the electors should vote their conscience on Dec. 19, which is their prerogative,” Corbin added. “Some might have to pay a small fine, less than a $1,000, a small price to pay to actually enforce the true will of the people.”

Mook declined an interview request for this article and the Clinton campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

According to media reports, Clinton during a 30-minute phone conversation with high-level donors on Saturday blamed her loss on letters FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress in the days before the election. The first letter 11 days before the election indicated a new investigation of her use of a private email server as secretary of state was underway, while the second letter exonerated her — yet again after initially being cleared in July — of any wrongdoing.

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Clinton was quoted in the New York Times as saying, according to a donor who relayed the remarks. But, she reportedly added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum.”

Hilary Rosen, a D.C.-based Democratic activist, echoed the anger over Comey’s letters, which defied the agency’s general practice of not commenting publicly on investigations, when asked to evaluate Mook’s performance as campaign manager.

“I’m not into the blame game here,” Rosen said. “Robby put together a brilliant organization. Sometimes votes fall short of expectations. James Comey hurt momentum and turnout and Hillary had not a vote to spare. There were multiple issues beyond Robby’s control. I’m grateful for him giving it his all.”

Pinello echoed the sense that Comey reigniting the email scandal that dogged Clinton throughout her presidential campaign was a major factor in Clinton’s loss.

“To my mind, the most significant culprit for the Clinton loss was James Comey, whose unforgivable last-minute intervention in a presidential campaign rivals the worst of J. Edgar Hoover’s political subterfuges as FBI director,” Pinello said.

As for an inability to prevent losses in traditionally “blue” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Pinello said Mook should be cut some slack.

“If virtually every American professional political pollster was dead wrong about Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — recall that, on Monday, FiveThirtyEight.com had Clinton with a 70-plus-percent probability of winning, while the figure at the New York Times was 84 percent — how could Robby Mook reasonably be held responsible for the loss of those states?” Pinello said. “After all, he was just campaign manager — not Merlin the Magician.”

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

homepage news

Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 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 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.”

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 — 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.”

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.

“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)
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular