Blind Prophecy

We had a bit of a run-in with the HRC today. We’re taking some initiative to promote a particular piece of legislation, and they got their panties in a bunch. Admittedly, we made a few mistakes in the promotions effort, but they were honest mistakes and we were trying to fix them.

Anyway, in the last round of phone calls, apparently we were criticized for not “checking with them” on the political strategy. Um… we didn’t check with them because we didn’t know they had a strategy on this particular issue. It turns out they do. Their strategy is to completely hide their involvement and pretend it’s a mainstream issue without anything but incidental appeal to LGBT people. They also used phrases like “we’re the gatekeepers” and were really hung up on who (them) gets to tell who (everyone else) how the strategy works.

See, this pisses me off a lot. What’s the point of 20 years of “out and proud” campaigns if we’re told that the best way to pass relatively small but important legislation (which, frankly, shouldn’t be controversial at all) is to hide the gay interest. It may be politically expedient to avoid having a bill branded as a “gay rights” issue, but being politically expedient isn’t the same as doing the right thing. I’d rather lose a bill honestly than only make political gains in a way that sends a message that we have to be closeted, deceptive and hidden.

Yeah, I know a lot of people would disagree with me there, that it doesn’t matter how we gain equal rights for everyone as long as it happens. But I think it points to the problems in queer leadership that in public address to our community, they always speak of being out and proud and honest and embracing everyone, but when it comes down to brass tacks, they have no problems adopting closeted, secretive, deceptive and heterosexist attitudes and strategies.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys