The Devil Wears Gucci

The state of the movement is a mess.

Dear Joe Solmonese deigned to sit on the panel tonight. And he was pedantic. His whole spiel could be embodied in this summation:
"You just don't understand how things work."

Now having been in academics for ages, I have run across this sort a number of times. The professor, giving you some weary look as you describe your idea, shoots it down passively. They don't explain their disagreement with your idea because "it is just wrong". No further explanation given nor needed. The professor doesn't have time to go into explaining the basics of the err of your ways. Or, what is generally more accurate, they won't lower themselves to argue with an inferior. And why should they? You, the little peon, just don't understand but Joe does.

Joe is a political animal. As the head of HRC, he doesn't have time to explain why grass-roots approaches are so slow, sloppy and ineffective. He can just tell you that it is, he'll then do a stage voice sigh, and pick at some imaginary lint on his Gucci sleeve. Condescension dripped from his every pronouncement.


To Joe, low level politics are passe. Blogs are distracting (quote). Local efforts are notable, not as a means but soley as a humble example, but ultimately, small potatoes. The only thing that matters is the House and the Senate. 535 people are his audience. The rest of us, the unwashed gay masses, are just sheep and we ought to just write our checks and shut the fuck up. He will decide what we need and our job is to genuflect towards the onerous burden that he has in spending our contributions.

Joe told us tonight that corporate America is leading the way in gay rights. FYI - No secret there Joe. But Joe said that corporate America is an ally. Here is where we have to be careful. Joe's statement is that corporations offer all these benefits to gays and are models for the gay rights movement. But corporations offer those as a response to market forces - not as some sort of paragon of virtue. Corporations will lose gay talent if they don't offer those benefits - and talent is the lifeblood to any company. Corporations are not friends to gays, they are friends to their shareholders - corporations offer these gay benefits to enhance their bottom line - if they lose talent then they lose market position. This is standard capitalist thought - Joe should spend some time reading the WSJ, Economist, etc. The false assumption, offered by Joe, is that corporations will go to Congress and sing the praises of gay rights - and in turn, the Congress will grant gay rights.

Yeah, sure, youbetcha.

Joe, if that was true, wouldn't they have more black, or woman, or gay, or illegal immigrant CEOs? Wouldn't GE or Exxon be the leaders in Human Rights in this regard? But corporations are not. Corporations offer gay benefits to bolster their bottom line. Period. Ask yourself if that profit motive qualifies as a model of human rights? Are these same corporations fostering human rights in their sweatshops in China? That is a serious question - not a bitchy comment.

What Joe likes about the corporations is that they come to Joe to ask what they should do to enhance their gay benefits. And then Joe can get a contribution from the corporation to the HRC for his "expertise". Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton do the same thing - it is just a shakedown.

Kids - it is all about the bucks. The gaping maw of the HRC beehive needs funds - and Joe will whore the homos to get it. And tonight, alot of the gay sheep saw that. HRC is top-down. I find it sad that HRC has taken the the position that gay rights has "matured" to the point of being one more lobby. Direct action, local action, grass roots action are all cute in Joe's eyes. Look at the cute gays protesting. Its so 1970s.

Side note: If we are going to give an HRC Visibility Award to Lance and Reichen - then just give it to some porn stars. At least I would get something out of a porn star's performance. HRC is a sham. A sham. A sham. A sham.

Jimbo was next to me and during one of Joe's many looks of disgust, Jimbo writes "Joe looks bored", and right after that one queen behind me says to the other "Joe looks like he would like to be anywhere but here". I wanted to throw something hard and sharp at Joe. Only to wipe that smug and condescending look off of his face for one second.

This rant is purely to illustrate that our largest organization oriented towards gay rights is calcified and indignant. HRC deserves not one dime of our money. For HRC has positioned itself to tell us what is important and how it will unilaterally decide what is important.

Aside from the corporate whore plea, Joe's other contribution was that "we" need a few victories to get some wind in our sails. No Joe, you need some victories. Gay marriage is a sham, it was a sham and will continue to be a sham. Gay marriage is a wedge issue to raise funds and ensure you get a quote in the NY Times. It is a wedge issue to keep you current. Gay marriage has no grass roots support - none. It has been shown to be anethma to at least 40% of Americans, and more in the red states. How do I and everyone else know this? Because gay marriage gets trounced every time it comes up. Joe, you can spin the narrow victory in AZ and the 2% loss in SD however you want to - but those are the good points. HRC pushed this topic into average Americans lives and they are not ready for it - and they have demonstrated that in the voting booth. As a political animal, you know this and we have to live with its consequences. Hence, the deceptive talk about corporate America as our ally. It is always revealing to watch spin because it tells you where the failure was. And I think clearly is.

Blogs got alot of time tonight. Their role is vexing for the elite. The unfiltered voices are fractured. This variety makes it hard to package by the elite and harder still to distill into a message. But that is the message. Gay rights have evolved into something substantial. The goals are many and diverse now. We have trans issues, gay black issues, gay latino issue, a panoploy of lesbian issues, and so on and so forth. The previous river of gay rights before has spread out onto the plains and runs in all different directions. But the common core is obvious, and being ignored by the elite. Gay rights hinge on day to day, person to person, locality to locality. Gay rights is best cast now as local change. The constitution and the courts have a long tradition of state's rights. If you want to effect change at the Federal level, then start at the local level. The hard right took this approach in the 1980s and it led to Federal changes in the 1990s.

The majority of gays are outside the urban core. They need protection. There is the M.O. for the grass roots - very simple. Anyone who has lived "out there" knows that.

The single most powerful image in our gay community is the AIDS quilt. It is a testimonial to the loss of the collective at the hands of the bickering elite. The gay elite need to think about this in the current climate. Why is the AIDS quilt so powerful? Why was Matthew Shepard or Ryan White or Brokeback Mountain so powerful? Oprah has made a fortune on this idea - working or exposing the struggles at the local level, and making that struggle approachable to the non-homos, can lead to powerful movements and social change. Very idealistic, I know - Joe's eyes are probably rolling out of his head at that sappy sentiment. Never forget Joe, the 535 in Congress work for us. Joe can smirk all he wants about that being "naive" or "simplistic". But then his check comes by serving them. Kissing their ass. Begging for their crumbs. He, and his organization, choose 535 politicians over you and I.

I say, and I think many others would agree, IT IS NOT SO. We live in the tyranny of the masses, not in the shadow of 535. HRC has drifted so far from this as to be unrecognizable as a gay rights organization and now has every feature of a lobbying. We win our rights by living our lives and sharing our experience with our neighbors. And we expect our gay donations to facilitate change at that level. It is only fair - we are not giving the HRC money to swill drinks with Congressmen in the hopes of getting gay marriage to pass.

Boycott the HRC. Just like a corporation, when the dollars stop flowing, the rhetoric will change. Simple economics. We homos should control the HRC, some Gucci whore should not control us.

BTW - Thanks to Sean Bugg for putting this together. He's a cutie to boot!

More about the other speakers later - I gotta get up early tomorrow and earn some bucks. I can't suck corporate donor dick like Joe does to pay the bills. This gay bitch acutally has to produce something to earn a check. Odds are that you other gay folk have to do the same as well. Demand more and expect more. It is time for the HRC to get some tough love.