With corporate partners like BP, Chevron, Nike, Chase, Dell, Goldman Sachs, IBM, MetLife, Morgan Stanley, and others, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is certainly not the pillar of progressiveness and addressing social issues like poverty, homelessness, and access to health care has never been its top priority. However, with its very successful campaigns focused on garnering public support for the LGBT community, it has become THE premiere gay rights organization.
HRC’s mission statement is as follows:
HRC envisions an America where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are ensured equality and embraced as full members of the American family at home, at work and in every community.
According to their website they have programs that focus on diversity, where by the “HRC unites diverse communities into a powerful whole striving for equality.” They participate in educational outreach to “engage LGBT and straight-supportive Americans in an ongoing dialogue about equality.” Additionally, the HRC conducts media outreach where it “works with the news media to showcase a pro-equality message and produces its own media programs, demonstrating the breadth of LGBT life.”
These all sound like admirable goals for any organization whose aim is to promote mainstreaming of LGBT individuals into the American psyche. However, some members of the LGBT community are saying that is not enough of a focus for an organization with a 50 million dollar annual budget. Amongst these are the members of The Right Honorable Wicked Stepmothers’ Traveling, Drinking and Debating Society and Men’s Auxiliary that vandalized the DuPont circle HRC store yesterday by throwing pink paint on the walls and writing Stonewall on the sidewalk.
In a press release issued by the group, they made clear that they did not believe the HRC was acting in the best interest of the LGBT community. “So we strapped on our riot chaps, poured pink paint into light bulbs, grabbed hammers, and went party party party! all over that tacky testament to the transformation of radical queer liberation into consumer junk.”
Organizers stated that:
“The HRC rakes in something approaching 50 million dollars a year in revenue--their executive director pulls in a salary of several hundred grand. What have we gotten out of this bloated carcass? Not a thing worth mentioning and every now and then, they eagerly sell Trans people up the river. Seriously, this is an organization that hordes money and does nothing useful. It's a sad, sick dinosaur. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC violence against the LGBT community is on the rise; DC's only LGBT center is forced to go hat in hand to real estate developers and beg for space, only to face eviction a few years down the road; We lack a homeless shelter for queer youth and services for our community are the victims of budget cuts. Can you think of something better to do with a few million dollars?”
Indeed, it is true that in DC violence against the LGBT community has been steadily on the rise. According to Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), who recently launched an initiative to combat violence against gays and lesbians, "Washington, DC has the highest rate of bias crimes in the US, nearly 4 times the national average. This violence is particularly devastating in the LGBT community - in the last year, bias crimes against our LGBT neighbors accounted for roughly 85% of all bias crimes in DC and are on the rise."
The Right Honorable Wicked Stepmothers’ Traveling, Drinking and Debating Society and Men’s Auxiliary took these measures as a protest in remembrance of the Stonewall riots. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, that were sparked on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, where LGBT citizens violently demonstrated against an early morning police raid (such raids where common in the 1960s at establishments that served LGBT individuals). The riots lasted for three days and the gay rights movement was born.
“The modern LGBT movement owes its success to three days of smashing, burning, punching, and kicking--all of it happily indiscriminate--and the confrontational tactics of groups like ACT-UP that followed in the decades since. Yet, somehow we've forgotten our riotous roots.”
Looking at the history of the LGBT movement and how the focus has seemingly transitioned from the we’re not going to take it anymore passion of the Stonewall riots to the current mainstreaming focus of the HRC, one might ask what happened? Better yet, is the focus going in the right direction? Or, is there only one direction?
Clearly there is a need for mainstream acceptance and understanding of LGBT people and the issues that impact their community. However, there are pressing civil rights issues that continue to threaten the very existence of LGBT individuals, and these cannot be ignored. Maybe this vandalizing of the DC HRC store will be the catalyst to spark this much needed conversation.
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