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LGBT students report discriminatory treatment at Delaware school
Rehoboth meeting draws parents, activists to assess culture at Cape Henlopen
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — LGBT students from Delaware’s Cape Henlopen High School told a community meeting in Rehoboth Beach on Monday night that many of the school’s teachers and the school district’s administrators continue to ignore their calls for help to stop anti-LGBT bullying at the school.
Cape Henlopen High, which is located in the city of Lewes next to Rehoboth Beach, has emerged as a subject of concern among students and parents in recent years over LGBT-related issues.
As they have since 2014, students and parents reached out to the Washington Blade in April and May of this year to express strong concern over the school district’s handling of an LGBT-related matter, this time over what they believed was the forced resignation of popular theater teacher Martha Pfeiffer at Cape Henlopen High allegedly because of her outspoken support for LGBT students.
Officials from the Delaware groups CAMP Rehoboth, Equality Delaware, and the ACLU of Delaware – who initiated Monday night’s meeting – said they were responding to reports about LGBT-related concerns at the school by the Blade and other news media outlets.
Among the recent developments of concern, they said, was the news that a lesbian student at Cape Henlopen High was suspended for wearing a T-shirt she made bearing the words, “Cape condones racism, homophobia, sexism, and bullying.”
An ACLU attorney speaking at Monday’s meeting said the ACLU would look into whether the school’s action over the T-shirt violated the student’s First Amendment right of free speech if the student or other students encountering similar restrictions approach the ACLU for legal assistance.
“As leaders in LGBTQ advocacy, education and community development in Rehoboth Beach and across the State of Delaware, it concerns us to hear of situations in which LGBTQ students may feel unsafe, unwelcome or unsupported at school,” a joint statement by the three groups announcing the meeting states.
“We are inviting students, parents and concerned community members to join us for a community discussion on Monday, June 19…to discuss the culture toward LGBTQ students in Cape Henlopen schools,” the advance announcement said.
About 75 people turned out for the meeting, which was held in a meeting hall at CAMP Rehoboth’s community center building in Rehoboth Beach. Among those who spoke were five LGBT Cape Henlopen High students, several parents, at least four clergy members from Rehoboth-area churches and synagogues, and two attorneys affiliated with the ACLU.
Also speaking were two volunteer mentors who said they counseled members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance club.
Gay student Adrian D’Antoni, who graduated from Cape Henlopen High this month, transgender student Madison Couture, who completed her freshman year at the school this month, and senior Sarah Ross told the meeting they and their fellow LGBT students’ pleas for help about persistent episodes of anti-LGBT bullying have been ignored by most teachers and administrators.
“We have to fend for ourselves,” D’Antoni told the meeting. “It’s the worst feeling on the face of the planet.”
Ross said one of her lesbian friends at the school filed a bullying report with the school administration as part of a procedure set up by school officials to address bullying incidents.
“Nothing happened,” Ross told the meeting. “Boys on sports teams were doing the bullying. She was so upset she stopped going to class.”
Couture, who is openly transgender at school, told the meeting she is frustrated and outraged that despite repeated calls for help by LGBT students, nothing seems to change. She said she was skeptical that anything useful would emerge from Monday’s meeting.
Gay attorney Mark Purpura, who is a member of the board of all three organizations sponsoring the meeting, was among the meeting attendees who expressed a commitment to take action to address the concerns of LGBT students at Cape Henlopen High and other local schools.
“The input from the students who were at the meeting is vitally important,” he said. “It’s very disheartening to hear stories where they feel like they’re helpless and not being supported in the schools. And as an advocate, that’s something that I certainly can’t ignore and I won’t ignore.”
He added, “Obviously we strive to create environments where every child feels safe and supported at school and that’s obviously not happening right now.”
Steve Elkins, executive director of CAMP Rehoboth, who served as moderator of the meeting, noted that officials with the meeting’s three sponsoring organizations and representatives of several other LGBT supportive groups attending the meeting have committed to “take action to help improve the culture for LGBTQ students” at Cape Henlopen schools.
He said representatives of the groups plan to coordinate a plan to carry out that action. He was asked after the meeting if the meeting’s outcome fulfilled his expectations.
“It did and actually from that standpoint we got around to saying let’s put our words into action,” he told the Blade. “So if we can take a little bit of action – we’re not going to accomplish everything we want to off of tonight’s meeting. But we certainly can’t get anywhere unless we take that first step forward. And that’s what we hope to do.”
He said about 25 people attending the meeting who are calling themselves “The Council of Elders” signed a list to be part of an action plan.
“Each of those persons will be invited to a not yet scheduled meeting to outline the next steps,” Elkins said. “It will be interesting to see if we can capture the ‘let’s get to work’ excitement that we felt at the end of the [meeting].”
At the start of the meeting, Elkins said the meeting’s organizers decided it would not be appropriate to discuss “personnel issues” related to Cape Henlopen High and the school district. He was referring to news first reported by the Blade that the Cape Henlopen Board of Education voted in January to fire Pfeiffer on grounds of negligence and other allegations at the recommendation of the school’s superintendent, Robert Fulton.
Parents who know and support Pfeiffer said Fulton and the board later agreed to allow Pfeiffer to resign effective at the end of the school year this month in exchange for not being fired.
Students and parents who support Pfeiffer have told the Blade the negligence charge was “trumped up” and they believe the real reason for Pfeiffer’s forced resignation was the administration’s objections to her outspoken support for LGBT students and LGBT rights cases in her role as a straight ally.
When asked to comment on concerns raised by students at Monday’s meeting pertaining to the school’s response to bullying, Fulton said the district has a diverse student population that he considers to be the strength of the district and the community.
“We support all students through various clubs, activities and programs, and we are proud of the inclusive culture found in each of our schools,” he said.
All allegations made by students, including concerns related to bullying, “are treated seriously and thoroughly investigated, Fulton said. “Consequences related to bullying follow our student code of conduct and Board policy.”
Since the time the Blade’s story on Pfeiffer and other LGBT-related issues at the school was published earlier this month, at least one gay teacher and two lesbian students at Cape Henlopen have contacted the Blade to say the allegations by students and parents quoted in the Blade story were either untrue or exaggerated.
They said they believe LGBT students are being treated with respect at the school.
Another teacher at the school, Alayna Aiken, who the LGBT students speaking to the Blade earlier this year said has a reputation for making disparaging remarks to LGBT students, submitted a comment on the Blade’s website version of the story calling those allegations false. The Blade was unable to reach Aiken for comment for its most recent story on Cape Henlopen High, but the Blade included in the story her strong assertions reported in a 2014 Blade story that all allegations against her were false and she has positive relations with her students.
Elkins said he and the others organizing Monday’s meeting decided all matters specifically relating to Pfeiffer, Aiken, or other teachers would be off limits at the meeting.
“The reason is we’re not a personnel committee,” he said. “We don’t have access to any of the information. It would not be fair to her [Pfeiffer] or it would not be fair to the administrators. That’s not what we hoped to do with this meeting. That’s not going to solve any problem,” he said.
“They were alluded to but the purpose of the meeting was to talk about the culture for the LGBT students,” Elkins said.
None of the students or a teacher, Greg Berman, who have disputed assertions by the students who told the meeting that anti-LGBT sentiment and bias is widespread at Cape Henlopen High, spoke at the meeting. Berman, who spoke to the Blade about his views, said he was out of town for the summer and was unable to attend the meeting.
It could not be determined whether students with differing views attended the meeting and chose not to speak.
Chyenne Cole, who identified herself in a June 8 email to the Blade as a gay student, said complaints by several LGBT students against Aiken, who teaches a human development class, were unfounded.
“As an openly gay student who is very liberal and expressive in her opinions, Aiken is fully accepting what I have to say,” Cole said in the email. “In fact, she encourages discussions with many different students about certain issues in an attempt to understand all perceptions,” she said.
Others who attended and spoke included Nancy Maihof, a member of the Delaware State Human Relations Commission. Maihof noted that the commission looked into possible anti-LGBT bias at Cape Henlopen High in 2014 following a Washington Blade story reporting on students’ and parents’ concerns about anti-LGBT bias at that time. The commission has authority to initiate its own investigations into violations of Delaware’s human rights law, which, among other things, bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
As part of its findings in its 2014 investigation into Cape Henlopen High, the Human Relations Commission issued recommendations for the school to address and curtail possible anti-LGBT bias.
Karla Fleshman, the LGBT Youth Case Manager for Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Delaware, who was one of the speakers at Monday’s meeting, called on those who will work on the proposed action plan to carefully study the commission’s recommendations and push to make sure the school is adopting them.
D’Antoni, the Cape Henlopen High School student who graduated this year, told the Blade after the meeting that he has “seen firsthand the damage some of these teachers have done to their students, including myself.”
He said the treatment received by some of the LGBT students by teachers is often subtle but has a profound impact on the students.
“Being part of the theater and being part of the GSA and being a part of those weird kids there’s a lot of retaliation from the normal kids,” he said. “Because we’re the weird ones. We’re the ones that like things that are out of the ordinary. And with that comes bullying. With that comes being treated differently by teachers because we’re not an athlete or you’re not a genius mathlete.”
Added D’Antoni, “It’s all about being aware that you’re part of something that is hated. And because we know and we acknowledge that we are different and that we are not treated correctly by anybody, that makes us want the administration to realize it even more and help us because we’re out on a string now. There’s nothing that we can do without help.”
Linda Gregory, president of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG, was among the panelists who spoke at the meeting. She told the Blade she was hopeful that those participating in the meeting would take steps to bring about a change in the school culture toward LGBT kids.
But she said she and others familiar with Cape Henlopen schools to some degree have failed the LGBT students encountering bullying and other forms of bias.
“They don’t want to hear about meetings or action plans,” Gregory said. “They want to see something real happen.”
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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire
Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later
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.
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.”
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.”
Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”
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New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences
Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings
The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.
In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.
Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.
“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person — if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”
The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.
And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.
Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”
“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”
One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.
As such, expect issues of standing — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.
Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.
Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.
“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’s speech.”
Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.
“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”
Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.
One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.
“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smith’s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”
Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.
With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.
Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.
“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”
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Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign
Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund
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.”
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.