Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign
Answers OUT Spoken’s questions

 

The national GLBT lobbying group is holding its gala dinner in San Francisco July 26th
It is our annual fundraising event in San Francisco and this year we are taking the unprecedented step, which is to encourage people to designate 100% of their contribution to the California Marriage PAC, Equality for All, working to defeat the marriage ban.

What is Equality for All?
It is the umbrella campaign in the state of California that is fighting on the anti-marriage bill on the November ballet. A number of organizations, Equality California, HRC, NCLR, San Diego and Los Angeles community centers are part of the Equality umbrella, the collaborate effort to defeat the ballot measure Limit on Marriage, proposition 8, the constitutional amendment.

HRC pledged an initial contribution of $500,000
We made an initial commitment to the state that we would either raise or contribute $500,000 to fight help fight the marriage ban. Our goal is to make sure all of the $500,000 is there for the Equality for All organizations leading the fight.

HRC’s annual gala dinner is creating a political furor here in San Francisco. Many local queer activists and community leaders are boycotting the dinner including Carole Migden, Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, Bevan Dufty, and the City's two LGBT Democratic clubs have signed on and announced they won't attend. Can you tell us how we got here?
There has been a pretty pointed and contentious debate about what happened last fall. Since then there has been a significant and painful divide in the community and there is no doubt about that. It has manifested itself in a variety of different ways. We’ve had about a dozen dinners last fall across the country; most of them had no protests or no boycott. We had a number of protestors in New York including some community leaders and we’ve had none of this in Los Angeles.

Its emblematic of the nature of social change and nature of the civil rights, the fact that there are passionate views about how we move forward on a whole range of civil rights issues, that’s what this is. But what I hope people will bear in mind is that there may be a sharp debate about how it is that we eventually get inclusive ENDA legislation, but HRC’s commitment, ultimately, is that to get to a place where they vote on the legislation.

What do you think the opposition wants?
I don’t know. I think there is uniformity in their displeasure about, people in San Francisco, at least the people who intend to protest, in their displeasure with HRC. I don’t there is uniformity in what we need to do.

You know, we had a goal of signing up 500 new members at our HRC booth at the Pride festivities and we ended up signing up 700 new members. Our store in the Castro hit a record this past month in terms of sales. So, there are lots of different views about this in San Francisco, beyond those that are protesting, but I even think among those that are protesting I don’t know that there is unanimity in terms in what they would like to see us do.

While you can’t go back, can you tell me today whether it was a mistake to support ENDA without the inclusion of our transgender community?
No. Because we were faced with a very difficult decision which was a body of Congress facing this issue for the first time. The decision by the leadership that the first step would be to do this in, or I should say the approach would be to do this in - the thought among the House leadership was that this was not something that was going to be cut and dry.

There were members that needed to evaluate and get their heads around parts of this legislation before they could move on to other parts of it. There were members who needed to vote for parts of the legislation and then simply get themselves reelected. I feel that on the heels of an ENDA vote and a Hate Crimes vote, that first term congressmen could get themselves reelected. A number of democratic freshmen were coming from districts that had their resources coming from Republicans.

There were lots of barriers in the House, so the decision to take this route to start somewhere and to build is what I thought then, and what I think now, is the right decision. But, that is a far cry from saying that this was the end of it, that this was a one-shot-deal and we would vote on something and it was going to become law and that would be the end of it. And that is not what this was.

If you didn’t travel the Halls of Congress, and you didn’t talk to these members and didn’t fully understand or fully appreciate the struggles they were having and where they were and where we wanted them to be; I can see where this would feel like this was a measure that would leave people out.

I have no doubt that this is something that we’re going to have to vote on a handful of times before it becomes law.

Theresa Sparks, transgender president of the San Francisco Police Commission, returned an award she received from the HRC saying, “To me, this is less about strategy and more about integrity." You’re talking strategy; do you think HRC lost integrity by supporting the non-inclusive ENDA bill?
I think that we were faced with a difficult decision to either walk away from this fight and take the entirety of this legislation concept off the table and to come back someday when this body of congress would be fully able to vote, from the very beginning, on the entirety of the bill.

It was either that or start the process now and build towards what we wanted. And everything about the members of Congress that I spoke too said to me, start somewhere and build to where we want to, was the way to both expeditiously get to an inclusive bill.

We still do not have one single federal law that protects gay people, let alone the transgender members of our community?
Right. Now, what we have, has passed both the house and the senate. And it is quite frankly a veto proof majority in the senate, an inclusive Hate Crimes bill that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

You are right, we do not have a law, but we have now finally passed through both bodies of congress an inclusive Hate Crimes bill. And we have one more step on that journey of course, which is to elect a President who will sign that bill into law.

Will you meet with protestors in San Francisco?
I’ve met with a number of transgender leaders earlier this year. I’ve spoken with a number of people in San Francisco about this issue; some of who will be protesting, some of them will not be. I don’t really know that in this setting, outside of the hotel, is a productive place to have a spirited dialog. I don’t know that it is appropriate, but it doesn’t mean that we are not talking to people.

When you think about the movement, when we are talking in California about the marriage fight and in the same conversation we are talking about the ENDA fight. There are people who sharply disagree with us on the ENDA fight, and like what at we’re doing on the marriage fight.

We certainly are having spirited and substantive conversations about how we move forward on the movement, I don’t know that Saturday night is the right opportunity or the appropriate opportunity to engage in that.

Will it still be a party inside?
Oh yeah. Well, I think, I don’t think we’re going to have a party. But, yeah, I think that there are a number of people, just as I think we experienced at our booth during the Pride celebration, who perhaps who have been quieter about it, but are fully supportive of HRC, fully support what we are doing. But I think more than anything want to use this opportunity to not just support the organization, but to ensure that their contribution will help what is most critical; to help defeat the gay marriage ban scheduled for the November ballot in California.

2008 HRC San Francisco Bay Area Gala Saturday, July 26, 2008 San Francisco, CA
Tickets available $85-350, 5:00PM VIP Reception, 7:15PM Dinner & Program, 10:00PM Afterparty