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Talking with HRC’s Joe Solmoneseby Amy WootenWindy City TimesSaturday Mar 1, 2008Like many, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Executive Director Joe Solmonese has his eye on the race to the White House. However, Solmonese knows that it takes a lot more than a fair-minded president to get work done on behalf of LGBT people.
Although HRC was able to celebrate some victories last year, such as both houses passing inclusive hate-crimes legislation, there were definite setbacks. Solmonese spoke with Windy City Times about the presidential race, how the tide is changing, the criticism HRC received last year during the ENDA battle and more.
Windy City Times: I primarily want to talk to you about the presidential campaign-it’s such a stark contrast to four years ago.
Joe Solmonese: It’s really been interesting to watch, I think. Certainly among Democrats, there is a degree of angst and concern about how the primary process has played out. For our community, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a wonderful place to be in. We would be very enthusiastic about the nomination of either Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton. I think, if anything, our community is just ... ready for the general election. We’re ready to take on the fight. As you said, it’s a stark difference from where we were four years ago.
WCT: Do you think this time around, not only as a community are we getting excited about this, but do you think the candidates are recognizing gay voters as a more powerful force than they have in the past?
JS: There is no question. I think that goes back to-if you look over the course of the past year-the LOGO debate that we sponsored with LOGO where we had almost all of the Democratic presidential candidates there. I think they came well-prepared, they were conversant on the issues and they were thoughtful about the issues. Obviously, the frontrunners are not where we want them to be on marriage equality, but again, we had something that we certainly did not have four years ago, and I think that was the beginning of a thoughtful debate about it. That’s a debate that will hopefully continue.
WCT: There are some people who are frustrated, saying that candidates aren’t bold enough about LGBT issues, but it sounds like you are saying there is still reason to be hopeful.
JS: This is a process. The fight for our rights is an ongoing, long-term process. As a community, what our power is really derived from is when we look at each opportunity and each set of circumstances and we make a decision that is going to serve us best. While Sen. Obama nor Sen. Clinton support marriage equality, the circumstance that we are faced with is who is going to be a better president for our community-one of them, or John McCain? The choice couldn’t be clearer, so the work we need to do couldn’t be clearer.
If there are places where Americans are congregating on a daily basis, the Human Rights Campaign is going to be in that setting, trying to change the experience for those in our own community, and in the process, hopefully change that experience for every WCT: Do you think we, as a community, have learned a lot and changed since 2004, when we had multiple states approving same-sex marriage bans? Do we know how to organize better?
JS: I can only speak for HRC. Our goal, which we saw in 2006, was to use our power more wisely and in more strategic ways. We have power. We have the potential of power-it’s just a question of how we use it. I think what we did so well in 2006 was, individually, to lift our sights out of our own backyard and our own neighborhoods and to really understand that there were some key places in the country that we had to focus our energy that were going to impact everybody in this country. We asked people in 2006 to send money to Pennsylvania to try to defeat [former U.S. Sen.] Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum may not represent Illinois, but he went to Washington every day and tried to make life for LGBT people in Illinois miserable. Our community, I think for the first time, stopped saying, "What are you doing for me in my own neighborhood-how you are going to send the money back to my own backyard?" and we saw that, in fact, we are all connected across this country and our fate is connected, as well.
WCT: HRC received a lot of criticism and continues to do so because of the disappointment in how ENDA turned out. How do you respond to continuing accusations that HRC does not work on behalf of the entire LGBT community?
JS: I think the most important thing to note there is when you talk about how ENDA turned out-ENDA has not turned out at all, by any means. In some ways, I think we are the victims of our own success because we were so lucky with hate-crimes [legislation] and ... passed an inclusive bill through the House and the Senate that when circumstances unfolded differently in the House-and when we saw that there was a real disparity there around support for gender identity in the House-we took all the information that we had, and we took all the conversations that we had with members of Congress that we had about what would be the best way to begin this process, understanding that there was a desire to move forward on the sexual orientation-only bill-something that none of us were happy with, even those who were advocating moving it forward.
Don’t forget this is a piece of legislation that had never been voted on in the House before. ... It would be the first step in what we anticipated would be a long road toward an inclusive bill. It is the course that every other civil-rights measure has taken. It is the course that the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, every other measure that has come before Congress, [took]. Often times, as we have stepped up to the starting point, the conclusion has been made that it is something we need to do in pieces. As much as that is the conclusion we came to here at HRC, I certainly understand that that would be grounds for a lot of fear and anxiety in the community that a group of people were being left behind.
WCT: Is there anything you’d like to add about where HRC is headed and maybe the direction it has gone in and where you’d like to see it go?
JS: Beyond our political work, one of the ways that I think about organizing our work is that if there is a place in our country where Americans are congregating on a daily basis, whether it is the workplace, your community space, America’s healthcare settings, your places of worship-if there are places where Americans are congregating on a daily basis, the Human Rights Campaign is going to be in that setting, trying to change the experience for those in our own community, and in the process, hopefully change that experience for everyone in that setting.
Read the entire interview at www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com.
 Copyright Windy City Times. For more articles from Chicago's largest GLBT newspaper, visit www.windycitymediagroup.com
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