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Trump’s love affair with Ric Grenell

Gay intelligence chief backs Trump’s claim of Obama malfeasance

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President Donald Trump has a good relationship with acting DNI Richard Grenell. (Photo via Instagram)

Aides to President Trump fall in and out of favor depending on various factors — including whether they bring positive headlines for the administration. One official now riding high is Richard Grenell.

Despite the anti-LGBTQ reputation Trump has built over the course of his presidency, he praised the openly gay Grenell — who now wears two hats as U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence — during an interview last week on “Fox & Friends.”

“Ric Grenell is doing a fantastic job, an absolutely fantastic job as our No. 1 person on intelligence,” Trump said. “He has been incredible.”

Trump had a frostier relationship with Grenell’s predecessors — including Dan Coats, who publicly criticized Trump after he downplayed Russian interference in the 2016 election during a joint news conference with Vladimir Putin — a contrast Trump referenced in his praise for Grenell.

“It’s too bad the people that were sitting before him — I won’t use names — didn’t do anything,” Trump said. “They didn’t do a thing. It was like they just sat there in the office. ‘Hello, goodbye.’ That would be a meeting. But Ric Grenell is doing a fantastic job, and this country owes a lot to him.”

Much of Trump’s praise was based on Grenell’s recent decision as head of intelligence to make public the transcripts of the closed-door hearing before House Select Committee on Intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In conservative circles, it was a big deal. In the aftermath of the Mueller report finding no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the transcripts depict Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in an unfavorable light, aggressively going after Trump administration officials, who all denied collusion with Russia before the committee.

That’s a different story than the other side tells of a fearless Schiff defying the wrath of Trump and his supporters by getting to the truth about the 2016 election and holding the administration accountable.

Conservatives also seized on a quote from former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates indicating President Obama was aware of the FBI’s interview with Michael Flynn, which they say is evidence of wrongdoing. Trump accused Obama of committing the “biggest political crime in American history,” although Trump himself has been unable to articulate any particular crime Obama allegedly committed.

Grenell is backing up Trump. On Tuesday, ABC News reported Grenell has declassified and delivered to the Justice Department a list of former Obama administration officials who were allegedly involved “in the so-called ‘unmasking’ of former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his conversations with the former Russian ambassador during the presidential transition.”

In a significant way, Grenell is having an influence on the Trump administration’s communications strategy as the administration is assailed for its response to COVID-19 and Trump vies for re-election. That’s coming from a person who’s a member of the LGBTQ community.

Grenell came into the position of acting director of national intelligence in February, while retaining his job as U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Trump never sought Senate confirmation for Grenell as director of national intelligence and kept him in an “acting” role. Even top Republicans, such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), have cautioned he lacks the requisite experience for the job. Grenell has said his role is temporary and he expects to step down after the Senate confirms John Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence.

But the relationship between Trump and Grenell goes back further than his appointment as acting director of national intelligence. A Trump loyalist in practice and policy, Grenell as ambassador to Germany publicly browbeat U.S. allies to spend more on defense and meet their NATO obligations to spend at least two percent of GDP on the military.

The spending has markedly increased. Starting in 2021, Germany will increase its contribution to the NATO budget by $36 million to match the U.S. contribution, according to foreign press reports.

Previously, Grenell’s name was floated for potential appointments by Trump to high-level roles, including national security adviser and secretary of state. A look at Grenell’s Instagram account reveals images of Trump as well as a picture of him with Trump during a recent trip to Berlin.

One gay D.C.-based national security expert, who has known Grenell for years and spoke on condition of anonymity for greater candor, said the consensus is the relationship between Trump and Grenell is good and the two have “talked tons” since Grenell took on the new role.

“The combination of Ric just lowering the decibel level on Biden/Ukraine and other matters and just keeping a low profile for most part gave Trump some cover on his back side while dealing with the COVID crisis,” the expert said.

Grenell’s influence can be seen early on after his appointment as acting director of national intelligence. Shortly after media reports emerged Russia is once again seeking to meddle in the 2016 election to support Trump, Trump indicated Joseph Maguire would step down from his role as director of intelligence and Grenell would assume the role. Reports subsequently emerged that the depiction of Russia’s meddling in the 2020 election was overblown.

In his new job, Grenell has tangled with Schiff, who has voiced objections to Grenell’s restructuring of intelligence agencies. In a recent letter, Schiff said he was making changes without congressional consent “in a manner that undermines critical intelligence functions.” Grenell took Schiff to task on Twitter for alerting the media to the letter before transmitting it (such practice is common for House members).

One recent change Grenell has made is the creation of an intelligence community “cyber executive,” which will oversee four consolidated, previously separate ODNI organizations focused on cybersecurity. Other changes are closing out the directorate of national security partnerships and establishing a DNI adviser for military affairs. Grenell on Twitter said “more changes to come” and “reforms should have been done before I arrived.”

Much like Trump, Grenell also has a combative relationship with the media — and the LGBTQ media is no exception. Grenell didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article, and his influence seems so extensive that neither did gay conservatives in his circles. Even Log Cabin Republicans, where Grenell formerly served as a board member, declined to comment for this article.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere, however, confirmed to the Washington Blade via email Trump’s relationship with Grenell is strong.

“As the president has said before, he and Ambassador Grenell have a good relationship built on mutual trust – a trust that has only grown as the ambassador has delivered results,” Deere said. “The president has enormous confidence in Ambassador Grenell to tackle any challenge put in front of him, including keeping the American people safe as the acting DNI, and is grateful for his service to the administration and the American people.”

Faced with accusations the Trump administration is anti-LGBTQ, Republicans have pointed to the appointment of Grenell as evidence to the contrary. After all, as a Cabinet member, even though he’s serving in an acting capacity, Grenell is arguably the highest-ranking openly gay presidential appointee in U.S. history.

Democrats have responded that one openly gay appointment does not a pro-LGBTQ administration make, especially compared to the transgender military ban, judicial confirmations with histories of anti-LGBTQ views, religious freedom carve-outs to LGBTQ regulations and arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that LGBTQ people don’t have non-discrimination protections under federal law.

Ned Price, a gay appointee to the National Security Council in the Obama White House and now director of policy and communications for National Security Action, had a decidedly different take on Grenell than Trump.

“The most generous thing I can say is that Grenell is doing the job Trump set out for him, but that’s not the job of acting DNI,” Price said. “What Trump wanted was a loyalist atop the intelligence community who could do his bidding rather than the nation’s bidding. In this case, that includes weaponizing national security information — as with the declassification of the Flynn-related records — for Trump to use for his own political ends as well as keeping a lid on intelligence assessments that portray the president and his foreign policy in an unfavorable light.”

But Grenell’s mark on LGBTQ rights isn’t limited to being an openly gay presidential appointee. As ambassador to Germany, Grenell has spearheaded a global initiative to decriminalize homosexuality in the more than 70 countries where it remains illegal. Trump himself brought up the initiative, even explicitly mentioning the LGBTQ community, during an address last year before the United Nations.

Critics have said the initiative has achieved little or nothing since Grenell launched it last year, but Grenell appears to have brought the project with him to his role as acting director of national intelligence. Last week, Grenell tweeted he spoke with an influential Lebanese Shiite leader who’s close to coming out publicly in support of Lebanon decriminalizing homosexuality.

As reported by the New York Times, Grenell has also launched an intelligence community working group to identify ideas to advance the project, which could include sharing less intelligence with countries that still have anti-gay laws. At the same time, Grenell has distributed a memo declaring his time as director is short, but he expects intelligence agencies to adopt policies prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination and harassment.

Mark Bromley, chair of the international LGBTQ group Council for Global Equality, was skeptical about the change reportedly under consideration with Grenell, crediting the Obama administration for being first to champion LGBTQ human rights across the globe.

“It’s very hard to believe that the U.S. would curb its intelligence sharing efforts with repressive countries like Saudi Arabia or Egypt over their virulently anti-LGBTI policies,” Bromley said. “I just don’t believe this story makes a lot of sense. But we appreciate that our foreign affairs agencies continue to promote decriminalization as a strategic U.S. foreign policy objective as first outlined in President Obama’s groundbreaking 2011 Presidential Directive.”

One question remains: When Ratcliffe is confirmed as director of national intelligence, what role will Grenell assume? He has indicated he would step down from the administration in any capacity once as new director is in the job.

The White House is keeping quiet about any new role. Deere said he “won’t get ahead of any announcements on that.”

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Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

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

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

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

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

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

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

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

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