WATCH: HRC Has A Lot To Celebrate In 2012

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

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The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization, has a lot to be proud of this year, and the myriad steps toward progress are all documented in a new video. 

HRC was involved in the marriage equality victories in Maryland, Maine, and Washington, as well as defeating a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage in Minnesota. For the first time in American history, a majority voters in all four locations voted in favor of equality. 

The video also highlights a record number of out LGB elected officials, including the nation’s first out Senator, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin. Of course, the video also highlights president Barack Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, a statement that made him the first sitting U.S. President to support the freedom to marry. 

Click the header link above to watch the official HRC video.

Project Queer: Unfortunately, these ‘victories’ really only affect a privileged few in the gay, lesbian, and multisexual communities. (More specifically, these issues affect the privileged white upper/middle class folks who donate to organisations like the HRC). Most of HRC’s focus is on marriage equality - when not everyone wants to get married. Another big focus of HRC is getting DADT repealed when not everyone believes in war - nor do they support it. 

Whether you agree or disagree with marriage or fighting wars, there are more important issues at hand - issues that actually involve HUMAN RIGHTS for ALL like: workplace protections, hate crimes protections, healthcare rights, housing rights, and much more. As usual, very few of these victories directly affect transgender or gender non-conforming people. Why the HRC uses the acronym ‘LGBTQ’ is beyond me.

I refuse to support an organisation that encourages queer assimilation and binarism and leaving minorities behind in the process.

Tell Mitt Romney to fire his anti-LGBT National Finance Chair

comingoutjournal:

From The Advocate:

The Human Rights Campaign and supporters are calling on Mitt Romney to fire his national finance chair, Frank VanderSloot, who has a record of antigay activities.

HRC launched an online action Thursday night, with a letter for individuals to sign and send to Romney, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and more than 15,000 people have already done so, officials with the group said.

VanderSloot, a wealthy Idaho businessman, has an antigay history that includes a billboard campaign condemning Idaho Public Television for showing the award-winning documentary It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School. The billboards claimed the film promoted “the homosexual lifestyle,” and according to a Salon profile by Glenn Greenwald, VanderSloot said of the documentary, “If this isn’t stopped, a lot of little kids will watch this program and create questions they’ve never had … little lives are going to be damaged permanently.”

Greenwald also reported that VanderSloot has often threatened journalists who write about him and outed a gay one, and that in 2008 his wife, Belinda, donated $100,000 in support of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that rescinded marriage equality in California.

HRC spokesman Fred Sainz said Romney’s relationship with VanderSloot “speaks volumes about how Mitt Romney truly feels about LGBT people.” He urged Romney to “immediately fire VanderSloot and return the money he’s donated to the campaign” and added that the candidate “can no longer get away with saying he opposes discrimination against LGBT Americans while simultaneously working with someone as viciously anti-LGBT as Frank VanderSloot.”

From HRC’s letter:

“A horribly anti-gay bully like VanderSloot has no business on a presidential campaign especially at the helm of the Romney money machine.”

Click the link above or click here for HRC’s letter, and to send message.

Personal note: Yes, Romney has never been an LGBTQ ally, but still, at least for the consistency of what he says, i.e. he constantly denies that he supports discrimination against LGBTQ people and etc., but this man, is seriously dangerous.

HRC to Romney: Ditch Anti-LGBT Finance Chair

By Trudy Ring

MITT ROMNEY 390x (GETTY) ADVOCATE.COM

The Human Rights Campaign and supporters are calling on Mitt Romney to fire his national finance chair, Frank VanderSloot, who has a record of antigay activities.

HRC launched an online action Thursday night, with a letter for individuals to sign and send to Romney, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and more than 15,000 people have already done so, officials with the group said.

Click the link above to read more.

HRC's Best Companies List: Who Is on Your Side?

The Human Rights Campaign released its newly updated Corporate Equality Index today. Here’s the complete list of companies that scored 100% for being LGBT-friendly.

By Advocate.com Editors

Project Queer: Still, HRC includes companies on this list that are racist, xenophobic, and/or sexist in their practices - i.e. Abercrombie and Fitch and Apple, Inc. Do you think that this is right? Should we really support companies who pick on OTHER minorities?

OPEN QUESTION, FOLKS:

Do you think that companies that discriminate against minorities should be included on this list - regardless of the fact that they are ‘LGBT-friendly’?

I just got off of the phone with an HRC representative calling to collect a donation.

I really try to donate money to worthwhile causes whenever I can, but when I explain to you that within the past few months I have:

  • been evicted from my home
  • moved twice
  • been forced to quit my job

And now I am:

  • still unemployed
  • still paying my bills (somehow) - my hospital bills, my monthly car payment, my internet bill, and now Deg’s vet bill

Do you really think it does any good guilt-tripping me and telling me all that HRC has done for the ‘community’?

First of all, I KNOW what HRC has done (AND HAS NOT DONE) for the community. Most of HRC’s ‘efforts’ only benefit the gay and lesbian community - leaving out the trans*, pansexual, and bisexual communities (among many others).

Secondly, you should never guilt-trip people who cannot afford to donate to a cause. When will people understand that you cannot fight oppression WITH oppression? Just because I do not have $75 to give you, does not make me any less of a good human being or human rights activist.

And when I explained that I donate my time and efforts to the queer community as much as I can - online and offline, you should not have guffawed at me and stated that money was the key to ‘creating change’. That was the biggest insult to me in the entire conversation.

Man, it really IS true. Money IS all that anyone cares about in this country.

Whatever happened to getting the word out about injustices and discrimination? Whatever happened to inclusion instead of exclusion? What happened to boycotting discriminatory organisations instead of promoting them to make more money? Whatever happened to taking to the streets? Whatever happened to FIGHTING oppression instead of JOINING the oppressors?

Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned activism FOR the people?

HRC Delivers 135,000 Petitions to Senate Demanding DOMA Repeal

youjolgbtq:

Today, HRC delivered 135,000 petition signatures to Senate offices showing the groundswell of public support for repeal of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  The petitions come just one day before the Senate Judiciary Committee will likely hold a markup of the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA), the bill that would repeal DOMA and end federal marriage discrimination.

Thanks to you, we demolished our goal of 50,000 signatures.  This is even more proof that the American people are sick and tired of the federal government discriminating against loving and committed couples, and forcing second class citizenship on a group of Americans.  According to a March 2011 poll by HRC and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 51 percent of voters oppose DOMA while only 34 percent favor it.

Fight on!

October is LGBT History Month | hrc.org

The wonderful month that brings fall weather, National Coming Out Day and Halloween is also the time to celebrate LGBT history. The Equality Forum, a national and international LGBT civil rights organization, is on its 6th year of coordinating LGBT History Month, which celebrates the outstanding achievements of LGBT icons. The organization features one outstanding member of or ally to the LGBT community every day,  for the entire month of October — a list that has thus far included the likes of Alison Bechdel, Rita Mae Brown and Lady Gaga.

Today we celebrate Michael Guest, the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the Senate as a U.S. ambassador. The former U.S. Ambassador to Romania retired from the State Department in 2007 to protest the administration’s refusal to offer partner benefits.

“I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” Guest explained during his farewell speech at his retirement ceremony in 2007.

Tomorrow the Equality Forum will pay homage to Neil Patrick Harris who also happened to celebrate his twins Gideon and Harper’s first birthday on Wednesday with partner David Burtka.

Follow all of the LGBT icons honored throughout LGBT History Month here.

2 gay nonprofits to share Harvey Milk’s old store | gayagenda.com

The nation’s largest gay rights group announced Tuesday that it plans to share the San Francisco storefront where Harvey Milk waged his historic political campaign with a nonprofit that provides suicide prevention services for gay youth.

The deal is aimed at quelling a tempest over the slain gay rights leader’s old stomping grounds.

The Human Rights Campaign said it would donate $10,000 a year and space inside the site of Milk’s old Castro Camera to The Trevor Project, which plans to run a crisis hotline there. The deal will continue for as long as the Washington, D.C.-based organization leases the store.

“We are honored to partner with The Trevor Project in offering this important resource for LGBT youth across the nation from such a historic location,” HRC President Joe Solmonese said.

Milk became the first openly gay man to win political office in a major U.S. city when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

In the more than three decades since he was assassinated at City Hall along with Mayor George Moscone, the building also has housed a clothing store, a beauty supply shop and a housewares emporium.

Underscoring the tensions within various factions of the gay rights movement, some of Milk’s friends and admirers had complained last month when the Human Rights Campaign announced it was opening a gift shop and information center at the retail site where Milk worked during the 1970s.

They said the organization’s philosophy of incremental progress ran counter to Milk’s uncompromising message of gay pride. AIDS Memorial Quilt founder Cleve Jones, who campaigned for and worked with Milk, said last month that an organization serving gay youth would be a more fitting to Milk’s memory. Jones applauded the agreement HRC struck with The Trevor Project.

“It is wonderful that Harvey’s message of hope will again emanate from the site of Castro Camera,” he said. “He spoke often of our responsibility to our young people and experienced firsthand the pain of losing loved ones to suicide…. I think he’d approve.”

HRC plans to stock the store with clothing and household items bearing its logo, as well as merchandize carrying Milk’s words and image. Solmonese said a portion of the proceeds will go to a local elementary school named in Milk’s honor and the GLBT Historical Society.

View Source at 365 Gay News

HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN: BUYER'S GUIDE

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More than ever, consumers are sending a message to businesses that they are watching. They are watching to see if the businesses they patronize understand and honor issues important to them, giving buying power to issues ranging from LGBT inclusiveness to environmental protection. Corporate social responsibility has become an imperative for a successful business. With Buying for Workplace Equality, we hope to harness that power by providing you with the most accurate review of a business’s workplace policies toward LGBT employees.

Whether you are buying a cup of coffee or renovating your home, by supporting businesses that support workplace equality you send a powerful message that LGBT inclusion is good for the bottom line. We hope that you will use this guide as one component when determining if a business’s social practices make it worthy of your dollars.

HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN: CORPORATE EQUALITY INDEX 2011

The Human Rights Campaign’s ninth annual Corporate Equality Index shows an unprecedented 337 major U.S. businesses earned the top rating of 100 percent, up from 305 last year.

Healthcare Equality Index Cover

Get the Report

Read the CEI in .PDF or virtual publication format.
Download the CEI 2011 or Read the virtual publication.

The HRC’s CEI report, released each fall, provides an in-depth analysis and rating of large U.S. employers and their policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Businesses rated 100% are recognized in our “Best Places to Work” list, and are invited to apply for the HRC Award for Workplace Equality Innovation. All consumer-oriented businesses are included in our “Buying for Equality” guide.

HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN: Healthcare Equality Index 2011

The Healthcare Equality Index 2011 reports on a record number of facilities working toward LGBT healthcare equality. The report rates 87 survey respondents (representing 375 facilities nationwide) on their policies related to LGBT patients and families. Highlighting 27 Leaders in LGBT Healthcare Equality, it demonstrates both the progress being made and the work that remains to achieve healthcare equality for LGBT patients.

Click the link above to watch the video and find YOUR state’s healthcare equality index.