image from bloggy
This past weekend I drove in a friend’s car. While loading up the trunk, I noticed that there was a very faded, barely discernable Human Rights Campaign sticker on the bumper. I was quite amused, especially since, given my knowledge of her general politics, she probably likes the HRC about as much as I do. Which is to say, not at all. For folks who aren’t familiar with them, the HRC is, in a nutshell, an extremely mainstream, pandering, assimilationist LGB”T” organization that seems to work primarily for the rights of the most privileged, white picket fence (and just plain white) sort of queers. Well, not queers, seeing as “queer” is not their sort of word. They are decidedly lesbian, gay, bisexual I guess, and let’s throw in transgendered so that it looks like we care. In fact, their chosen acronym on their website is GLBT, not even LGBT. Clearly, they’re making no bones about who comes first in their hierarchy of gay importance! HRC does not serve the interests of me and many of my friends and many other folks who supposedly fall under their “GLBT” rubric. Last year at the big Pride march here in NYC, my friends and I hollered at them from the sidelines - “Racist, sexist, anti-trans, HRC, we’re not your fans!” We also squirted them with water guns. It was fun times, but it’s also unfortunate that one of the biggest, most established, resource-laden LGBT organizations has such skewed priorities.
They primarily focus on homo marriage to the exclusion of the many other issues that affect many queers on the daily. Now, I’m not an opponent of gay marriage, but I also don’t think it’s the most important issue facing the wider queer and trans communities, and I don’t think it’s going to be some amazing event makes life subtantially better and easier for most queers and trans folks. Of course, I think that the institution of marriage is pretty fucked and fairly discriminatory in terms of deciding which kinds of families are legitimate and deserve certain rights and protections and which are not, and that goes far beyond queer issues. I mean, if you’re not a traditional nuclear heterosexual family unit, you’re fairly screwed under this country’s current laws. So gay marriage, while it will have important benefits for many people, will still primarily benefit those people who want to work within that sort of two-parent rubric. Any other less conventional family formations and you’ll still be out of luck, and it seems rather unwise to push for something that will privilege and legitimize certain queer relationships and families while in turn continuing to delegitimize many others, queer and not queer.
So yes, anyhow, HRC pretty much sucks, and now they’ve evidenced it even more, as bloggy over at the Daily Gotham writes in an entry entitled “The Human Rights Campaign: dangerous to homos”. Apparently, the HRC has decided to endorse Joe Lieberman’s run for reelection as senator of Connecticut. I’m missing how he can be called pro-gay, given his stances and voting record on various issues. (Though, apparently, the “homosexuality is wrong” comment quoted by bloggy is in dispute, so I won’t comment either way on that - his record says enough, I’d say.)
The worst of it, though, is that the very narrow, single-issue focus that the HRC seems to have has pushed them to support Lieberman because, in the weird parallel universe in which the HRC seems to operate, Lieberman is somehow “pro-gay.” Does this perceived pro-gayness somehow counteract his continued pandering to the religious and war-mongering right? Does HRC really think that someone who doesn’t miss a chance to snuggle up to the GOP, as bloggy so amusingly put it, is going to hesitate before completely selling out all queers, from the ones who HRC really looks out for to the ones it purports to represent but doesn’t?
Who knows. Maybe the HRC just likes good ol’ Joe because he’s as much a panderer as they are - Liberman to the Right, the HRC to the straights.
p.s. I know I’m a bit behind on responding to comments, but I’ll be trying to catch up in the near future. Thanks to everyone who’s read and commented. Also, just as a note, I got my first truly out of control comments, the kind where someone doesn’t just diagree with you, but writes a lengthy rant that is largely composed of ad hominems. Apparently this person is really upset about my post on the West Point girlfriends website (which was really rather mild as far as my posts go, probably because the whole topic doesn’t matter much to me and was merely a source of mild amusement and intrigue).
They also seem to think that I am either a hipster, or like hipsters at all, and plan to force my children to be vegans. Uh… sure. (Just for the record, I am an inveterate carnivore, though I do make attempts at obtaining meat from humane sources when I can.) Anyhow, getting comments like that for the first time, I feel like I’ve graduated to some new level in blogging! I mean, I clearly can’t be doing my job well if people aren’t calling me names.
For folks who aren’t familiar with them, the HRC is, in a nutshell, an extremely mainstream, pandering, assimilationist LGB”T” organization that seems to work primarily for the rights of the most privileged, white picket fence (and just plain white) sort of queers. Well, not queers, seeing as “queer” is not their sort of word. They are decidedly lesbian, gay, bisexual I guess, and let’s throw in transgendered so that it looks like we care.
Whee!
Thank you so much. This made my day.
Happy to be of service.
a gay friend’s rant about the HRC was where I first heard the word “heteronormative.”
Here’s a few more good reasons:
http://www.hrcwatch.blogspot.com/
Learn to be tolerant of your peers. you might not agree but as america becomes more accepting of GLBT, you should too. First it was women, then it was african americans, then it will be the gay community that also get their rights. That equal stands for human rights, not straight or gay rights. We are all created equal.
It’s unfortunate that although there is some type of positive campaign, any campaign for that matter, that there are those who attempt to negate the importance of such a push. Although I respect and hear your opinion, I’m not sure that “ranting” about your personal cause is a method that is conducive toward uniting the GLB community. As it is, we are a minority, leaving no room for this type of division and separatist thought, in my opinion. This, to me, is the epitome of internalized homophobia and it is sad. I, as a fellow person of color am saddened to hear such negative thoughts and remarks about the human rights campaign.
Arturo, your comment is so ignorant. If anything, you’re the one with a pet cause, since you seem hostile to the concept of intersectionality. “Internalized homophobia”? What part of this radical post can you pinpoint to support that “analysis”? Or do you simply feel so uncomfortable having a centrist organization you support challenged and therefore need to reassure yourself by turning to comfortingly simplistic conclusions?
CAN’T WE ALL JUST FUCKING GET ALONG!!!! THIS IS WHAT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS WANT. IF WE CAN’T GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER THAN HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET EQUAL RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE!!!! LGBT GLBT DOES IT REALLY MATTER WHAT LETTER GOES FIRST. AT LEAST THIER IS HRC, GLAAD, AND ALL OTHER GROUPS. WE JUST NEED TO GROUP ARE OURSELVES KEEP ON MARCHING. AS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID “i HAVE A DREAM” LET’S NOT KILL THE DREAM.
Im another Arturo not the one who wrote on Sep 23 @1:23 pm not to confuse with the first arturo’s blog thanks.
@Arturo #2 - So, you want people to forget that the issues that most directly impact them are getting completely shunted to the wayside by HRC, and that they foolishly endorse candidates like Joe Lieberman, who may as well be a right wing Republican himself given how much he loves to kiss their asses? All in the name of us all fucking getting along? Yeah… OK. That’s how to fulfill Dr. King’s dream all right - by letting HRC crap on parts of our community while claiming to be working for the rest of it. Sure.
No, thanks.
I remember a time, when I was a Chicago youngster, when sisters from the Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective would come to help do guerrilla theater with the Black Panther Defense Committee. We often met in the home of the local coordinator of the Gay Liberation Front (this was only about a year after Stonewall). The significance of this is that it expressed an underlying shared assumption that we had to have each other’s backs in the struggle against oppression.
What happened after that involved the repression of many movements and the channeling of people’s desire for justice into “non-profit corporations,” each representing a “community” (not a movement), each seeking a place at the table, not justice for all.
It comes down to vision. Do we envision alliances among people, across all kinds of lines, struggling for a just world, or do we see our alliances as being within our “communities,” the streets and the suits united to compete against other “communities”? It’s not about being intolerant…it’s about deciding what kind of future we wish to fight for…and with whom.