In its Mission Statement, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) claims to be “America’s largest gay and lesbian organization.” Thus, many have turned to this D.C.-based group as the voice of the gay community. But, now that we know that HRC’s has inflated its membership, we need to ask, who, if anyone, really speaks for gays?
Ted at Charging Rhino is right that HRC’s new President Joe Solmonese needs to come clean and release an accurate tally of its membership. But no matter how big that number, we can now say for certain that while HRC speaks for a large number of gays, the very fact that it fudges its numbers indicates that its base is not as large as its leaders, present and past, would like it to be.
I don’t think anybody really speaks for all gays. We do not have a leader, nor do I think we need one, to whom a majority of gay and lesbian Americans turn to for inspiration, leadership and ideas. Yet, there are a variety of gay and lesbian individuals and groups to whom many of us look for these qualities. For some, it’s Larry Kramer. Andrew Sullivan has a substantial following. A number of us get inspiration from entertainers Ellen. While others turn to organizations, including HRC. A few even turn to Log Cabin.
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A few months ago, maybe a year, perhaps more, a college classmate e-mailed the gay and lesbian alumni of our alma mater about his Ph. D. dissertation, research on gay models and, as I recall, their effect on the coming out process. While I was delighted that he would be doing such important research, his topic struck a nerve. It reminded me of one of the greatest difficulties I had coming out.
In high school, I met a man whom I would later learn was gay. He was an arrogant self-centered man who looked down on heterosexual couples and even belittled gay men not as “cultured” as he. He did not take advantage of me sexually, yet his very presence in my life complicated the coming-out process.
This man came to mind this weekend when, on Saturday morning, instead of facing some difficult emotions I alluded to below, I attempted to escape them. Finally, I pulled myself together in the evening and ended up, on the invitation of an acquaintance, going to Trunks, a gay bar in the heart of West Hollywood.
I’m not one to frequent gay bars (or any bars for that matter). Often I claim it’s the loud music and the attitude of many of the patrons. But, I wondered Saturday night, if I have often avoided bars because, when I was in my early 20s, that man, the only older gay man I then knew, scoffed at the mere mention of gay bars. He had never been to one; he didn’t much care for the “types” who went there.
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Two readers e-mailed me this morning to note this post and this “WASHINGTON BLADE” article) pointing out that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has fudged its membership numbers. HRC has claimed that its membership shot up from 20,000 in 1990 to 650,000 today. But, according to “THE BLADE,” that’s because

HRC membership numbers include the name of every person who has ever once given at least the minimum amount — currently $1 — and provided an address, said spokesperson Steven Fisher this week.
“The GLBT movement is unique. When we come out of the closet, we commit for life,” said Fisher, defending the membership count.
“We’re an advocacy organization and our intent is to be inclusive of everyone and never let our members go uncounted or be invisible,” he said.

Give me a break, Steven. You’re including far more than is your due. Just because someone comes out of the closet and joins an advocacy organization doesn’t mean that individual continues to support the advocacy organization even if he or she becomes increasingly open about his or her sexuality.
I joined Log Cabin in the 1990s, yet left when I no longer felt the organization spoke for me. Under HRC’s “inclusive” standard, LCR would still claim me as a member.
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I was delighted to note just a moment ago that Dirty Harry, one of my favorite bloggers (and a conservative), called it a “dumb thing” when Gerald Allen, an Alabama Republican lawmaker, proposed censoring books by gay authors. Dirty Harry links to JunkYardBlog, another conservative blog which also called the proposed censorship “dumb.”
Fortunately, this legislator’s bill failed. JunkYardBlog is right to fault him for proposing such sweeping legislation. But, he goes on to say that this “didn’t happen in a vacuum,” suggesting that Allen is likely responding to “the long train of advocacy dressed up as education that has been going in public schools for most of the past generation.”
I recommend JunkYard’s post, especially for critics of this blog, not because I think he’s right, but because he raises a point that many conservatives–and just social conservatives–have been bringing up time and again. They fear that liberal educators are trying to push an advocacy agenda on schoolchildren. And sometimes with solid evidence.
I’m of two minds on the issue. While I would like children to be exposed to positive portrayals of gay people, I also believe in local control of education which, in many cases, would mean that some schools boards would prevent even high schools from offering such positive portrayals.
JunkYard is right that “reasonable limits on the availability of objectionable material should be expected” in school libraries. The problem here is who gets to define what’s reasonable.
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

When I first heard of the “controversy” ovwe Microsoft’s stand on “gay rights,” I immediately assumed the company, one of the first companies to extend benefits to gay employees was cutting or eliminating these benefits. After all, some gay rights’ activists felt Microsoft “betrayed” them. One gay group even asked Microsoft to return an award it had given the company four years ago. Using such strong language, it seemed activists were concerned that Microsoft was no longer treating its employees fairly.
But, this company had not, as I initially feared, changed any of its internal policies regarding gay employees, it had merely withdrawn its support for “a [Washington] state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.” Some activists contend that Microsoft withdrew its support for the bill because of pressure from social conservatives. Ken Hutchinson, “pastor of Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies against gay marriage in Washington State and Washington, D.C., said he had threatened in those meetings [with Microsoft executives] to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.”
Last week, the bill failed by one vote to clear the state Senate.
Microsoft’s own explanation makes more sense to me (a Microsoft shareholder):

They simply examined their legislative priorities and decided that because they already offer extensive benefits to gay employees and that King County, where Microsoft is located, already prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, with a law as stringent as what the state bill proposed, they were focusing on other legislative matters.

It thus seems natural to me that a corporation would want to narrow its legislative focus to “a shorter list of issues,” to put great emphasis on bills which more directly concern the corporation.
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When former President Clinton referred to an openly gay Republican political consultant as “self-loathing,” he merely repeated a term used so often by the left to describe gay conservatives that it has become a clich?. Some may use the term “self-hating,” but few who do have any real psychological insight into the gay men and lesbians they are attempting to describe. These name-callers lack the imagination to understand individuals whose political beliefs (at least on the surface) don’t seem to correspond to their sexual orientation.
So often do those on the left brand us gay conservatives “self-loathing” that it seems to be the “default” reaction of liberals to a gay person who does not fit into the liberal view of what a gay person should be. In reality, all they’re doing is fixing a label on something they refuse to understand.
In my life, I have met a number of people who have struck me as “self-loathing.” And a few of them have been gays on the right. One man lived with his boyfriend, yet went out of his way to socialize with social conservatives, some of whom repeatedly bashed gays–even in his presence. This man was, however, one of the few conservative gays who appeared (to me at least) to be self-hating. Others who struck me as self-hating, including many gays, did not share his (or my) basic political philosophy. A number indeed were very liberal (often vocally so) in their politics.
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In 1989, the year I moved to Washington to look for a political job, I had, after just over a year “out of the closet,” gone back in. In the short period when I initially accepted my homosexuality, I did not meet a single gay person who believed same-sex relationships where possible. It was all about the quick hook-up with no possibility of an enduring connection. I felt more out of place in the gay world than I had in the Republican world which I had left shortly before graduating from college a few years earlier.
In D.C., as I looked for a job in the first Bush White House and in various Republican and conservative organizations, I was petrified that someone might find out I had recently lived openly as a gay man in Paris.
As part of my networking, a former colleague introduced me to a woman a few years my senior then working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) where I had interned in college. This woman invited me to a party where I met a lanky, energetic man, Greg Stevens. Somehow I knew he was gay. And while I was trying to convince myself that I would one day end up with a woman, I wanted Greg to know about my “secret.” I never said anything to him. I did run into him a couple of times when I was over at HUD, but lost touch when I landed a job downtown.
Over the years, as I heard his name, I wondered how I could reconnect with him. When I did come out, his name came up once at a gathering of gay Republicans, but I can no longer remember in what context. I’m sure I asked about his sexuality, just don’t recall the response I got.
This morning, chills ran down my spine when I read this piece in the New York Times about his death in Carrie Fisher’s Hollywood home. (Hat tip to David Ehrenstein for alerting me to the article). The Times identified him as gay, confirming my sense back in 1989. My first thought was, would Greg still be alive had I, back in 1989, had the guts to approach him with my “secret.”
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