HRC's New York Dinner -- Not Pretty

by: Autumn Sandeen

Mon Feb 25, 2008 at 17:30:00 PM EST

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, used his keynote address at the group's annual Midtown Manhattan dinner to answer critics who fault it for going along with a version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that does not include protections for transgendered Americans.

"I understand and I hear every day that some members of our community are feeling forgotten or left behind. It is easy to understand why," Solmonese told a crowd approaching 1,000 in the ballroom of the Hilton on February 23. But he also said, "We have to overlook our differences and we have got to see instead of our individual wants and immediate desires... a vision for the America that we all want to live in."

...In his toughest volley against some in the LGBT community who argue that HRC has lost its right to lead the battle on ENDA, Solmonese suggested it is others who have left the field.

"I have to ask myself: When did we all become so impatient? When did we say to ourselves, okay that civil rights thing, I'll give it a year, maybe two, then I'm done," he said. "Let me be very clear: No, we are not done. We are in the grueling, blinding middle of this fight and the middle of this fight is the hardest part."

Having stated HRC's commitment to delivering hate crimes and job protections -- as well as marriage rights -- for all members of the LGBT community, Solmonese said, "Some of us may want to stand back or check out, but there is no standing back. There is no checking out. Because sometimes -- and I know this is frustrating -- the fight for our rights feels like hell, but as Winston Churchill so aptly put it, 'When you are going through hell the most important thing is to keep going.'"

[Which politicians didn't show after the fold.]

One elected official who joined the protest was Queens City Councilman Hiram Monterrate, there at the invitation of the Jim Owles Club. Roskoff lauded the many other elected officials who, he said, "took a big step" in boycotting a dinner they typically attend.

In fact, of numerous elected officials who in past years attended but were not there this time, only Micah Kellner, an openly bisexual East Side Democratic assemblyman, attributed his absence to the boycott. Others insisted, on the record, that they had scheduling conflicts, though Kellner's statement to Gay City News and off-the-record comments by staff members of several elected officials, pointed to a conscious effort to avoid the HRC event.

Kellner was among those that dinner officials from the stage announced as being on hand, but this reporter did not see him, and when reached by telephone the assemblyman said, "I was not there. I boycotted like everyone else. And I was really quite annoyed that they put my name on their press release. I phoned them late yesterday to make clear I was not coming."

Christine Quinn, the out lesbian speaker of the City Council who addressed the HRC dinner in past years, attributed her absence to "scheduling conflicts." In an email statement to Gay City News, a spokesperson for Quinn added, "However, the Speaker has also made clear that she was very disappointed that the action taken by Congress with the Employment and Non-Discrimination Act did not include gender identity. Moreover, the Speaker is stunned that the Human Rights Campaign is penalizing those Congressmembers who support a pro-LGBT agenda, and who voted against the Act because it didn't include transgenders. The Speaker applauds her colleagues from New York -- Congressmembers Clarke, Nadler, Towns, Velazquez, and Weiner -- for their stand."

None of the three Democrats mentioned as likely 2009 mayoral candidates -- Quinn, Congressman Anthony Weiner, or city Comptroller William Thompson -- attended the dinner.

Quinn's lesbian colleague on the Council, Lower East Side Democrat Rosie Mendez was also absent, as were out gay and lesbian Democratic legislators Senator Tom Duane of Chelsea, and Assemblymembers Deborah Glick of the Village and Matt Titone of Staten Island.

As late as February 22, HRC had gay Upper West Side Democrat Daniel O'Donnell, who steered the marriage equality bill to passage in the Assembly last summer, slated on their program to present the group's community service award to Marriage Equality New York, but that same day O'Donnell's office told Gay City News that he too had a scheduling conflict.

If we aren't voting for what we want, what are we voting for?

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.