On the HRC

Lexa_Blue
February 27, 2006

         In the United States, politics does not function solely as a representocracy. Rather, there are specific and professional groups whose sole function is to lobby the electorate. These groups are funded by their membership, and in turn use this funding to influence key politicians in Washington. This system of influence has several obvious flaws-yet it does not appear likely to change; as a result, large factions of the population with common interests have banded together to form their own lobby groups. For sexual orientation and gender identity minorities, the lobby group is the Human Rights Campaign.
         The Human Rights Campaign has an extremely difficult job. It must advocate for all people who do not fit within the majority in terms of sexual orientation or gender identity. While the existence of such a large national organization is positive for the queer community, the HRC faces its share of problems as a result of its prominence in the community. Perhaps the largest of these problems is the lack of consensus within the community regarding the issues that the HRC deals with.
         The "gay rights" (I hate that term) revolution is still in its first few decades; as a result, there are many factions within its ranks. All of these people, however, look to the HRC as their main lobby group in national politics. It is virtually impossible for one organization to encompass all of the varying political and social views within the queer community, and the HRC is learning this very quickly.
         Despite the relative youth of the queer movement, the HRC is over twenty years old, having been formed in 1980 as the Human Rights Campaign Fund, an organization for monetarily supporting "gay-supportive congressional candidates" (hrc.org). In 1992, the HRCF endorsed a presidential candidate, then Gov. Bill Clinton, for the first time. The Human Rights Campaign dropped the word "Fund" from its title and began to take its current shape as a lobbying force in 1995, when it launched its website, magazine, and equality campaign (marked by the now-popular blue and yellow "equal sign" stickers). Today, the HRC is an active lobbying, educational, and activist resource for its members and for the queer community as a whole.
         Membership in the HRC numbers over 600,000; yet the actual number of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) Americans is hotly debated. Common estimates coalesce at around ten percent of the United States population-almost 30 million people. Herein lies one of the main causes of the HRC's problem with consensus. According to my grandmother (and possibly Abraham Lincoln), "you can please all of the people some of the time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time." It is simply impossible for an organization, no matter how large, to make the entire queer community consistently happy-there are simply too many people, each with their own viewpoint.
         The HRC seems not to communicate effectively with its greater community. Although members are welcome to provide feedback, there is no clear way to do so on the website. Given the (hypothetical) 30 million GLBT Americans, membership in the HRC should be higher. The HRC might do well to listen to the greater community and actually implement policy changes, rather than simply logging the complaints.
         The main conflict between the HRC and the greater queer community mimics a similar divide in the community itself; namely, how radical the community's stance should be on important topics-today, the main topic is marriage. The HRC's official stance on the marriage issue is that marriage should be open to all two-partner, adult relationships in the United States. Many members, however, disagree with this position. Some feel that marriage should include any union of two or more adults, while others argue that marriage is an oppressive, patriarchal institution that should be abolished all together. Rather than embracing these alternative viewpoints, the HRC has pushed them to the sidelines to avoid being viewed by more moderate political groups as being too leftist or extreme. While the HRC leadership does have a valid point-that steps need to be taken one at a time, and same-sex two-adult marriage is the first step to a more inclusive definition of marriage-the organization is knowingly marginalizing constituents who could prove to be powerful allies. This marginalization stems from misunderstanding and, mainly, failure to communicate.
         Membership in the HRC is a dubious position; that is to say, member roles are not well defined. Members are encouraged to donate money and sign petitions, but other than these admittedly important functions, there is not much room for members to take on greater power on a large scale. In this area, the HRC might do well to re-analyze its role in the queer community, and strive to act not just as a lobby group, but as an advocacy organization. There is also much work to be done in educating the population of the United States-with its many resources, the HRC could certainly aid the queer community in this area as well.
         One way that professional social workers define roles within the worker-client relationship is to contract. The HRC might benefit immensely from developing some sort of contract with its members. The mission statement contains valuable goals, but there are no action steps within it-there is no talk of how the organization plans to help the community to reach these goals. To be sure, the HRC does much-needed work in politics; but surely the queer community could do work on its own, using the HRC as a resource. Through developing a more personal and meaningful relationship with the body of members, the HRC could do even more work to further its mission.
         Perhaps the most difficult part of maintaining a public service organization is monitoring progress. In some ways, the HRC does very well in this area-the organization is constantly seeking out new personnel, and recently hired a new executive director to galvanize the organization. Yet no where on the website was I able to find a way to directly contact the organization. Constructive criticism from the very people that the HRC represents would be vital to maintaining a working relationship with the queer community. If the HRC were more welcoming to such dialogue, it might become an even more formidable force to contend with in the fight for equality.
         The Human Rights Campaign is an extremely large and influential organization, and change in such organizations can be slow in coming. Throughout its twenty year history, the HRC has done well in effecting such change. The next step for the organization, however, is to bring about change in a new way-on the initiative of its ordinary members, rather than its hierarchical power structure. Communication with members is both one of the hardest, as well as one of the most vital, concerns of an advocacy organization such as the HRC. The HRC does its job very well-yet there is certainly room for improvement, as far as some members are concerned. Were the HRC to turn its focus toward service of its greater community, it could be more effective in working with the community, rather than for it, to create change.