Via the AP (Take the article with a huge grain of salt)
Chad Griffin, the influential gay rights activist who helped turn the Human Rights Campaign into a powerful political force, announced Thursday that he is stepping down as the organization’s president.
Griffin informed staff at HRC of his decision to step down Thursday. Griffin hasn’t said what he plans to do next. He is expected to stay at HRC until the organization names a new president; that process could take several months.
A prolific fundraiser with deep political ties, Griffin probably will become one of the most sought after advisers for Democrats preparing to undertake White House campaigns.
Said Grifter Griffin in a released statement:
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of this incredible organization at such an important moment in the history of our movement — and our nation. The true strength of the Human Rights Campaign is in its fearless army of staff and volunteers, who are committed to ensuring full equality reaches every LGBTQ person across America, and around the world. For decades, this organization has shown the world that love conquers hate. But this year, in this election, with the future of our democracy on the ballot and the equality of future generations on the line, we proved that votes conquer hate, too. Every single person across this country deserves an equal opportunity to succeed in life, without having to overcome roadblocks put in place by politicians advancing a discriminatory agenda. Even as I step down from my role in this remarkable organization, I remain committed to HRC’s mission and will continue to fight for the rights and dignity of LGBTQ people — and all Americans — as I embark on this next chapter. So now is the time to fight harder and dig deeper. Because there are still more trails to be blazed. There is still more history to be made and more battles.”
Back2Stonewall.com has never been a big fan of the HRC or of Chad “Rosa Parks” Griffin both of whom have taken the credit for work that many grassroots activists have done while sucking up all the money in the LGBT community by throwing garish galas and sending out weekly money begs only to spend more on salaries than actually lobbying for LGBT rights. Griffin a very good friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton (Griffin worked for Bill as an Aide during his White House years) has been one on the highest overpaid ($500k + benefits a year) LGBT rights org presidents and one of the most ineffectual leaders the organization has ever had.
We will assume there’ll be a farewell cocktail party forthwith?
Back in 2010 Kevin Sessums of the Daily Beast interviewed Kevin “I was only walking my dog through that notorious London gay cruising spot when I was bashed” Spacey about rumors he is gay.
We at Back2Stonewall.com picked up on the story and posted it. Many in the LGBT media and the entertainment world have known for decades that Spacey was a closet case and many also knew that he had a taste for twinks but no one would report it except for a few like Sessums and myself. There’s this new site that can let you bet online and let you win real prizes, visit mobilnett casino.
Below in our post about Spacey and his closet in its eternity from December of 2010
“I think what we have seen in terms of gay teenagers committing suicide because of bullying is anguishing. I think young people, if they are feeling like they are confused, need to know that there are people to talk to and that there are places they can go and not feel alone. But I feel that they have just as many rights as I do to not be bullied. And I don’t understand people who say, ‘Well, this is a terrible thing that is happening to this young person whose life is being exposed,’ and then turn around and do it to another person. People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone’s reasons in the same box. It’s just a line I’ve never crossed and never will.”
…..why is it in this country that kids might think it’s okay to bully and make fun of somebody? I’ll tell you why, because what do they see in the media happening all the time? In the media they seem to think that’s okay. So if we stop using sexuality as a weapon against people maybe everyone will eventually get cool with it.”
…..”I don’t live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to,” he tells Sessums. “I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don’t buy into that the personal can be political. I just think that’s horseshit. No one’s personal life is in the public interest. It’s gossip, bottom line. End of story. Now some people feed that. They’ll go to the trendy restaurants where all the photographers are and then bitch about being famous. But if you don’t want to feed that and you want your life to be based around what your work is then it ends there.”
Celebrities who make such a big deal out of NOT saying they’re gay are feeding both bullies and suicidal teenagers because if even THEY can’t admit it (when everybody knows anyway *cough* Queen Latifah *cough*, they are alluding that it is shameful to be gay and something really bad.
Lets be honest here Kevin Spacey is no longer a “hot commodity”celebrity — but he does make his living by standing up in front of people and giving up his “privacy”. Add to that the fact that he is far from the dashing romantic leading man and millions of girls will not be “destroyed” and his career of playing a hetro love interest would be ruined if he actually had some balls and said straight out that “I’m Gay”, its really kind of hard to take the “career privacy angle” seriously. And playing this game does nothing more than paint him as one of world’s most obvious closet cases and someone who is truly ashamed of his sexuality.
Coming out is not “bullshit” as you say Spacey.
“Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying silently in our closets…
We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.” – Harvey Milk
So suck on that the next time you walk your dog at 3:00am on Hampstead Heath.
GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) which was originally founded by gay activist and hero Vito Russo to monitor LGBT representation in media is jumping the shark once again. This time by attacking sexual freedom liberator and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner after his death.
Hefner, who died Wednesday at 91 of natural causes, has been praised in some circles for his early and steadfast support of LGBTQ causes. In 1955, he published a story by Charles Beaumont that envisioned a world where gay people were the majority; after facing pushback, Hefner said: “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong, too.
Hefner also wrote a Playboy editorial in 2012 advocating for same-sex marriage. “No one should have to subjugate their religious freedom, and no one should have their personal freedoms infringed,” he wrote in his conclusion. “This is America and we must protect the rights of all Americans.”
But ” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, pushed back at the praise of hefner in a statement saying:
It’s alarming how media is attempting to paint Hugh Hefner as a pioneer or social justice activist, because nothing could be further from reality. Hefner was a not a visionary. He was a misogynist who built an empire on sexualizing women and mainstreaming stereotypes that caused irreparable damage to women’s rights and our entire culture.”
Ellis who had no real LGBT activism work under her belt before becoming the president of GLAAD holds degrees in Sociology and minor in Women’s Studies from Russell Sage College and is mostly known most widely known for launching and turning around media brands within magazines such as New York, InStyle, Real Simple, and Vogue.
Ellis’ current salary at GLAAD is . $260,961.00 a year.
A virtual super-majority of high-profile fashion designers, including Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs and Sophie Theallet, have publicly refused to dress the incoming first “lady” Melania Trump. In contrast, Stefano Gabbana happily posted a photo of Trump wearing one of their dresses on New Years Eve dress, which retails for an obscene $2,995 at Saks Fifth Avenue, to his Instagram account, with the hashtags #DGwoman and #madeinitaly.
When being called out on Twitter for the fact that the gay D&G team took pride in the fact that the Trump wife wore one of their creations Gabbana fired back at the user, “Dont call me gay please!!I’m a man!!! Who I love its my private life”.
This isn’t the first time that D&G has shown its slef-loathing homophobic side. In 2015, he and his design partner, Domenico Dolce, faced a backlash after claiming that children of same-sex parents were “children of chemistry, synthetic children. Uteruses for rent, semen chosen from a catalog” in an interview with Italy’s Panorama magazine.
Dolce went even further, adding, “I am gay, I cannot have a child. I guess you cannot have everything in life. Life has a natural course, some things cannot be changed. One is the family.”
Kirk “I’ve been on my knees more than any other Christian” Cameron will take the opportunity to prepare himself for his next career today when he works the the drive-thru window at the Greenville, NC branch of Chick Fil-A today from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
The part-time actor cum hate preacher is pimping his new HOLIDAY movie titled Kirk Cameron’s Christmas opening this weekend and soon to be in the $1.99 bargain bin t a Walmart near you!
Kirk girl, you need to get some Oil of Olay Regenerist or an electric sander for that face.
One of the best lines that happened yesterday during the Sixth Circuit 4 state same-sex marriage hearing in Cincinnati, OH yesterday came from 6th Circut Senior judge Martha Daughtrey (also known as Cissy Daughtrey, I kid you not) who totally trashed discredited anti-gay researcher and fraud Mark Regnerus stating that “Even the Texas professor’s university says not to believe anything this man says.”
Looks like its time for Regnerus to apply for National Organization Witness Protection which means he disappears after Brian Brown eats him and destroys false evidence.
Audio files of the arguments for all four states have now been posted. Lets me know what YOU think?
“The Human Rights Campaign supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act for a very simple reason. It will guarantee millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all 50 states explicit, reliable protections from discrimination in the workplace. We call on our allies in Congress to improve this bill’s overly broad religious exemption. A strong ENDA is worth fighting for because we cannot ignore the urgent need of countless LGBT people who do not have the luxury of waiting for these protections.
(Blah, blah, blah, blah, Alabama, blah, name drop Laverne Cox, blah blah blah.)
“But regardless of whether or not ENDA passes in this session of Congress, it is time for the LGBT movement to throw its weight behind a fully comprehensive LGBT civil rights bill. A bill that, at long last, would bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in all core civil rights categories — including housing, public accommodations, credit, education and, if ENDA fails to pass, in employment. This is a visionary idea that Congresswoman Bella Abzug brought to Congress in 1974. Its time has come.”
We cannot and will not ignore the imperative of this moment. As long as this Congress is in session, we will fight for ENDA — with a narrowed religious exemption — because these workplace protections will change millions of lives for the better. But this movement has a responsibility to also chart a course for the future. The gay man in Alabama who gets kicked out of his apartment because his partner moves in — or the transgender teenager in Arkansas who gets shamed for using the right restroom — is just as deserving of legal equality as the lesbian in Montana who gets fired because of who she is.
In other words, it’s time for full LGBT civil rights to come out of the closet. We all agree that, at the end of the day, full federal equality is the only acceptable option, nothing more, nothing less. The campaign for a strong ENDA continues with more urgency than ever before, but we’ve got to dig in for the fight of our lives. – Human Rights Campaign head Joe SolmoneseChad Griffin, writing for Buzzfeed.
1. Bella Abzug would smack the shit out of Griffin for invoking her name on a piece of equality legislation with ANY religious exemption.
2. Someone needs to tell Chad “Rosa Parks” Griffin that writing (if she REALLY did write it) that saying “It’s time for full LGBT civil rights to come out of the closet. We all agree that, at the end of the day, full federal equality is the only acceptable option, nothing more, nothing less” and then stating “”we will fight for ENDA — with a narrowed religious exemption” is oxy-MORON- ic.
3. ANY religious exemption that is in ENDA will actually write discrimination into law and sets a precedent for the future that we may never be able to undo. Amd exempting those who abuse the religions excuse will not “help millions” but instead very few.
The real translation of Griffin’s column: We will continue fighting for an ENDA with a religious exemption because we don;t want to piss off our rich, quisling GOP donors who demand one. But we don;t want you to know that. End of story.
Who knew that Chad Griffin would actually be a WORSE leader than Joe Solmonese.
On the Liberty Counsel’s Friday edition of “Faith and Fascism Freedom”, the radio broadcast was dedicated to Mat Staver and Matt Barber warning that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is “a tragedy” that “must not pass” because, if it does, it will be the end of religious liberty in America.
Citing the firing of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich and supposed persecution of Phillip Monk, Barber spent a good portion of the broadcast railing against the “homofascists” in the gay rights movement who seek to use ENDA to utterly destroy religious freedom! *GASP*
Calling ENDA the “crown jewel of the radical, sexual anarchist progressive left,” Barber said that gay activists want to see it pass in order to “make sacrosanct all sorts of sexual perversion to the detriment of those who want to exercise and live out their lives and carry out their faith.”
This push to destroy anyone who does not share their agenda is why more and more people are finally realizing that gay activists are “absolute thugs,” which is exactly what they warned would happen, he said, before “Obama homosexualized the military” by repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
“We have seen a military that used to recognize honor, dignity, things of that nature now recognizes, as we’ve flipped it on its head, and now perversion is the order of the day instead of honor, dignity, service, and so forth”:
Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe yesterday to discuss HRC’s new “Project One America” campaign, a major part of HRC’s outreach invasion into the South. But instead of focusing on the new initiative Griffin spent 2/3rds of the interview talking about Jo Becker’s book Forcing the Spring, that chronicles the legal fight against only California’s Proposition 8 but portrays it as the beginning of the same-sex marriage movement and portrays Griffin as a LGBT rights hero.
Its a very well rehearsed segment with obvious pre-approved question. Griffin tries to come off as humble (note how he inserts left out same-sex marriage leaders and mentions and how many times he mentions he’s from Arkansas) as to tone down the controversy but he does it in such a way that you can see its all for show. . The stink of over ambition and HRC greed is thick upon him and is obviously turning into nothing more than a clone of Joe Solomese and just as over-paid and useless.
On the Friday, April 18th. edition of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC held a discussion, abut the resignation of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich framing it that Eich was pressured from his job for simply donating to Proposition 8 the political campaign opposing same-sex marriage, and totally dismissing the fact that Eich also donated to far right wing anti-black and anti-Jewish bigot Pat Buchanan and the fact that much of the forces behind Eich’s resignation came from both straight and gay employees and board members within Mozilla itself. And if that wasn’t bad enough Hayes set-up a comparison question using the Eich resignation and the recent firing of the Lesbian Police Captian in South Carolina.
Guest Richard Kim of The Nation magazine intoned that he found it “disturbing” that gay activist friends of his have expressed interest in “targeting” more people who have made similar donations, and who have declared they should “find out where they live.”
Kim: Here’s a disturbing thing. I did ask some of my gay activist friends, I was like, “Look, here’s a list; 6,500 people gave the same amount that he did or more in California. Should we go down the list and sort of start targeting all these people?” And I asked this facetiously, and people were like, “Let’s do it. Let’s find out where those people live. It’s all-” To me, that’s a disturbing level of targeting people.
Hayes, who had earlier expressed reservations about Eich’s firing, exclaimed, “Yes,” to Kim’s view that such talk was “disturbing.”
As he brought up the discussion, the MSNBC host seemed skeptical of the former Mozilla CEO’s firing: “And there was part of me that did not know how to feel about how this whole thing unfolded.”
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, April 18, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, with critical portions in bold:
CHRIS HAYES: So here’s the other interesting part of this, and I want to use this to segue to the Brendan Eich story because what you hear and see here are changing social norms, right? It is legal in South Carolina to fire someone because they’re gay. Increasingly, that is not viewed as socially acceptable, right? And rightly so. We agree everyone at the table agrees that is wrong.
But, now, there’s also social norms about whether it is socially acceptable to have the belief that gay folks can’t get married or to oppose gay equality. And this came to a head in the tale of Brendan Eich, who was the CEO of the firm, Mozilla, which makes a very popular Web browser. People found out that he had given a contribution to the wrong side in Prop 8, which was the anti-equality side. It was in a public record.
And there was a campaign that basically got rid of him, basically saying this is an unacceptable view for the CEO of a major firm to have. And there was part of me that did not know how to feel about how this whole thing unfolded. What was your thinking?
RICHARD KIM, THE NATION: Yeah, so I, first of all, say I don’t think anybody’s rights were violated.
HAYES: Nobody has a right to be a CEO.
KIM: Right, exactly, exactly. I do, on the level of proportion, question this. So this guy gave one $1,000 donation six years ago to a campaign that 7 million Californians voted for, that 6,500 people gave a donation at his level or higher. Mozilla has an anti-gay discrimination policy. He had no intent to change that. Marriage in California is settled law.
So there’s a question of whether or not all the sort of fury targeted at him and this one sort of, you know, attempt to oust him is in proportion to any threat that he represents to gay people in the future.
CATHY HENNA, LGBT ACTIVIST: It’s somehow, it’s how the culture works, too. This is a major tech company in Northern California, and, you know, as we were talking about before, you know, this is not just about gay people anymore. This is about allies. I mean, the second this went on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, people just find this unacceptable. It’s no longer acceptable to be anti-gay.
HAYES: But did they find it unacceptable, there was a weird kind of advertising of one’s own enlightenment that this was part of. You know what I mean? It felt to me a little bit like, “I can like this, I can get behind this because this is a kind of, it’s no skin off my back, you know? Like, I don’t care who the CEO of Mozilla is.” And this shows — that’s what conservatives were saying, right? Conservatives were saying that this is basically hounding people, this is totally “il-liberal.”
HENNA: (INAUDIBLE) -to say that when it works for them because what their big thing is, “Oh, it’s about the free market.” Well, in this case it was the free market. People are making decisions about what they do and what they buy and what the organizations and the companies they support and the decisions they make as consumers voting with their wallets based on the leadership of those companies.
KAREN FINNEY, MSNBC HOST: It’s the little bit of power that we have as consumers. And you hear Karl Rove and the right wing. What do they always say about the companies that give to right-wing causes. We don’t want to have to publish our names. They’re afraid of a backlash. Well, guess what: I can decide I don’t want to spend my money at, with your company if I don’t approve how you spend that money. I can decide-
HAYES: Barack Obama in 2008 was opposed to marriage equality.
FINNEY: And he still got elected, you know, that’s the process.
HAYES: The point, but this guy gave them-
KIM: Here’s a disturbing thing. I did ask some of my gay activist friends, I was like, “Look, here’s a list; 6,500 people gave the same amount that he did or more in California. Should we go down the list and sort of start targeting all these people?” And I asked this facetiously, and people were like, “Let’s do it. Let’s find out where those people live. It’s all-” To me, that’s a disturbing level-
HAYES: Yes.
KIM: -of targeting people.
FINNEY: But is part of it is because of Prop 8 is so, it became such a heated issue in this country, and it sort of became, I think, and it is a sort of either you’re on the right side or the wrong side, and, ironically, even the lawyer in the case has been evolving as he’s planning his daughter’s wedding.
