Índice de Peligrosidad derivado de los combustibles

Participants’ primary frustrations reflect challenges related to internal and external dynamics influencing the broader movement that they must address as they develop and advocate on behalf of the Equality Agenda. First, participants argued that they must maintain a long-term, proactive, ground-up strategy focused on each of the four key issue areas despite society’s obsession with the single issue of marriage. Participants also argued that they must execute their ground up, state-by-state strategy while trying—with varying levels of success—to collaborate with other movement organizations that emphasize mainly a top-down, national approach. Participants acknowledged that the marriage issue is

important and hugely symbolic. Similarly, they acknowledged that the role of national organizations is crucial to the overall movement. The challenge, however, is how to balance structural and cultural influences with state agendas. The next section explores the external cultural pressure and the internal structural pressure to executing a ground-up, issue-by- issue, community-by-community approach to advocacy.

External Challenges: The Pressure of Marriage

Doug Hamilton of Equal Rights Washington argued, in discussing the continuing crescendo around the issue of marriage and the increasing importance it is playing in several states’ political agendas, “2012 is going to be comparable to the Lord of the Rings.”

Participants indicated that this pervasive cultural focus on marriage complicates the process of establishing a ground-up agenda seeking more-fundamental protections such as non- discrimination, hate crimes, and safe schools. They believe external public discourse— shaped specifically by anti-LGBT oppositional organizations, mainstream media, and cultural opinion leaders—effectively has positioned, for different reasons, marriage as the

cornerstone of the modern gay movement. Participants argued, however, that for most states, marriage is not a realistic goal. As Equality Ohio’s Kim Welter explained, “You know it’s hard for people to think about a major push on relationship recognition if they can’t go out and join an organization, they can’t go to an LGBT event because they’re afraid who could see them and tell their boss and be fired.”

First, participants explained that their opposition attempts to publicly reframe conversations about protections against discrimination, hate crimes, and bullying, into conversations about how those protections would be a first step toward marriage equality. As Equality North Carolina’s Palmquist argued, “The other side now ties everything we do to marriage. Protecting kids from bullying is about gay marriage. And it’s this huge, weird illogical leap that they’re making, but you know marriage is not a winning issue for us yet. So we try to keep the other issues separate from it as much as we can.” Accordingly, he added that much of Equality North Carolina’s communication around their campaign for a safe schools bill focused on explaining to various stakeholders—especially legislators—how and why protecting school children and marriage equality are completely separate issues.

Second, participants explained that even allies sometimes help fuel the public focus on marriage; opinion leaders have become involved in the high-profile debate, which reinforces to the public—and the LGBT community—the perception that it is the cornerstone of today’s movement. Several participants expressed strong feelings, for example, regarding a high-profile California lawsuit currently being waged in federal court regarding the legality of Proposition 8, and the legality of denying same-sex couple the protection of marriage. Equality Federation’s Toni Broaddus explained:

Many of us who are leaders in the movement had great concerns about this case being filed…. So it was completely disconnected from our strategy. It didn’t have the plaintiffs we would have chosen to better reflect the diversity in our community. And it was funded essentially by Hollywood activists who had not been supporting our existing work and infrastructure to the level that they’re willing to support this case.

Participants’ concerns with the case were two fold. First, a loss at the federal level could hinder the movement toward full marriage equality for many years. Equality North Carolina’s Palmquist argued:

The federal marriage case I think is incredibly risky. A loss at the Supreme Court could potentially delay getting marriage equality nationwide by 15 or 20 years, easily…. I think typically on social issues the Supreme Court doesn’t come out the right way until you have at least a majority of states on board with an issue, and often a super majority of states. Thinking about segregation, thinking women’s rights, the sodomy laws when it came up with Bowers in the ‘80s, most states still had them. When it came up with Lawrence again six years ago, it was down to 13 that still had sodomy laws, including North Carolina.20

Second, as Broaddus indicated, the legal teams in addition to the state and national LGBT advocacy organizations that had developed long-term strategies over many years were not consulted when deciding to move forward with this case. One Iowa’s Justin Uebelhor explained, “It was filed initially without some of the input from the traditional organizations

20 _{Here, Palmquist is comparing the 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick decision in which the Supreme Court upheld}

that do most of the legal work around gay rights organizations, and I think that ruffled a lot of feathers.” Broaddus added that one year before Proposition 8 passed in 2007, several national LGBT advocacy organizations collaborated regarding the possibility of pursuing marriage through the federal courts, ultimately deciding that it was important to wait. From the Federation’s perspective, Broadus believes it was important to first pursue a critical mass of community and legislative support at the local and state levels. They issued a statement urging the LGBT community to “not rush to federal court because it’s our assessment… that we currently do not have a Supreme Court that is ready to extend marriage equality to all citizens.” Two years later, in 2009, these organizations reissued their statement without knowing that it was the same day that the federal case to overturn Proposition 8 was filed. Externally, Broaddus explained, it appeared that the coalition of LGBT organizations sought to undermine litigation that was filed on behalf of same-sex couples. The unfortunate timing, however, resulted from a lack of communication between the external counsel that filed the case and the traditional LGBT organizations that have been at the forefront of the

movement for years.

As a result of this pervasive public discourse on marriage, participants argued that their LGBT constituents expect their organization to quickly respond to or accommodate the public conversation. Regardless of the political realities specific to marriage, several participants provided specific examples of how the marriage discussion has influenced their constituent expectations. For instance, as Equal Rights Washington geared up for its campaign for the domestic partnership law, the LGBT community began reacting to the brewing public debate. Doug Hamilton explained, “Everybody on the outside was like, ‘What are you going to do? What are you going to do? We need to have this campaign. What are you going to do?’ And we were like ‘Look, we’re doing this thing step by step according

to a rule of a strategy that we’re not privy to tell you.’” In short, the media frenzy and public campaigns waged by the opposition regarding the domestic partnership debate incited frenzy among Equal Rights Washington’s supporters. Internally, the organization was developing a thoughtful, well-timed public communication strategy. Without public knowledge of that process, however, the LGBT community perceived that the organization did not share their same sense of urgency. Hamilton added:

It was very frustrating that the community activists wanted to know everything and go out and do everything. And what they don’t realize is that you can’t tip your hand about your strategy to the other side either. You don’t tell all of the inside and outside of a campaign. You just show the visible part of the campaign at the appropriate time. So we had a lot of backseat drivers.

Kara Gallemore said that in retrospect, one of the key challenges in executing their strategy was a lack of understanding by the LGBT community regarding the process. She

emphasized, however, that it is important to remind constituents that, “Marriage equality is a huge issue, but it’s just one issue. I think that the education of our society about our life is more strategic.” As a result, participants explained that organizations must distinguish for constituents who may be caught up in the marriage debate the short-term versus long-term priorities. Although current public discourse centers on marriage, permanent success will result from a long-term, more-holistic public education campaign executed from the ground up.

Even in states where marriage currently is not a possibility—such as North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, and Texas—participants indicated that many of their constituents still want to know how and when their state will achieve marriage equality. For example, Jeff Graham discussed the 2009 Atlanta mayoral race, in which one of the key election issues was the candidates’ position regarding marriage equality. Georgia has a constitutional ban on marriage equality. The Atlanta mayor cannot alter that ban, and currently there are no plans

to attempt to reverse the ban. Many citizens in Atlanta’s LGBT community raised the marriage question, however, because they argued that the answer provided a marker of candidate sentiment regarding other LGBT issues. Equality North Carolina’s Palmquist noted, “Marriage is the issue that is most personally important to our supporters, but politically very challenging in a southern state. So we try to focus on issues that will have a real impact on people’s lives but are achievable in a shorter time frame generally.”

Palmquist added that, although marriage is not currently a possibility, he views the opposition and media’s unwavering focus on marriage laws at the state level as an

opportunity to pass smaller, incremental forms of relationship recognition on local levels. Palmquist argued that, to an extent, it helps the ground-up strategy by creating space for Equality North Carolina to pass inclusive domestic partner benefits for municipal employees and help establish an inclusive hospital bill of rights that accounts for same-sex partners. Georgia’s Jeff Graham added that for those states that currently have constitutional bans on marriage equality, constituent messaging becomes two fold. First, as explained above, they must advocate on behalf of short-term, achievable goals while convincing constituents that marriage, though still a priority, must wait. Second, Graham explained, “The advocacy community throughout the country has not come to consensus about what the roadmap is to overturning state constitutional amendments…. it’s a situation that there’s really not a lot of precedence for—on the state level—in any real social justice issue.” For these states, any campaign for marriage first must garner public support for reversing a law before it can proactively campaign for marriage equality.

Toni Broaddus emphasized, however, that even if the pervasive national discourse ultimately results in a favorable marriage decision by the Supreme Court, it will not result necessarily in marriage equality across the country, especially in states that already have

constitutional marriage bans. It is essential, therefore, for participants to reinforce for constituents the importance of the state-based approach to advocacy and the importance of establishing a critical mass of support from the ground up. Participants argued that they must present themselves as autonomous and effective leaders connected to the national movement but focused on the needs of the LGBT community in their particular state. Participants explained that balancing the state and national perspectives sometimes can prove challenging as they try to collaborate with organizations that proffer a top-down rather than ground-up approach to advocacy. Accordingly, the next section outlines the internal challenges to the Equality Agenda that result from the structure of the movement itself.

Internal Challenges: Ground Up vs. Top Down

Participants explained that within the movement, resources are concentrated at the national level, at national organizations, not—as the Equality Federation Website argues—at state organizations, which are doing the lion’s share of the work. Equality North Carolina provides a good example. Between 2006 and 2010, the organization almost doubled its staff – from two full-time staff members, to three full-time, one part-time position, and several interns. Although the organization has grown and received national accolades for its work, Palmquist believes the organization must determine how to advance a statewide agenda with an annual operating budget of $400,000 and a full-time staff of three. It is important,

therefore, that the organization maximizes opportunities for fundraising and connects with local LGBT communities throughout the state in substantive ways. To that end, the organization made a deliberate move several years ago to change Equality North Carolina’s logo. Palmquist explained,

That was really important to use because we’re not an affiliate of the human rights campaign and we were realizing that there were people in the community who thought that by giving to the HRC we were getting part of that. Plus, we haven’t always taken the same policy positions on issues as the HRC. It was important to distinguish ourselves a little bit more… A minor thing changing the colors, but it definitely helped separate us a little in people’s minds, which is really important to us from a fundraising perspective. We often get people who you know are like, ‘Yeah, I give to you.’ And you draw them out a little bit and it’s like they go to the HRC dinner.

As seen below (Figure 5), the former Equality North Carolina (ENC) logo (left) closely resembled the HRC’s logo (center). Today, ENC (right) has changed its colors to separate the organization from the HRC. Palmquist believes doing so reinforces its independence and aids in crucial fundraising.

Figure 4: ENC changed its logo to distinguish itself from HRC

Participants argued that state and national organizations both have important roles, but a key challenge for the overall movement in pursuing an agenda of equality is

determining how state and national organizations can work together most effectively. They must do so to more effectively counter the fewer, but larger and better-funded opposition organizations. Toni Broaddus provided the example of the opposition’s campaign in the lead up to the Proposition 8 vote in California. She explained that during the subsequent trials to overturn Proposition 8, it was revealed:

The Mormons and the Catholics were getting together and having these huge briefings with their preachers and priests and pastors all across California, and reaching tens of thousands of people, maybe millions of people every Sunday with

this message of discrimination and exclusion. And you know we don’t have that kind of infrastructure that has that kind of hold in people’s lives to counteract that.

MassEquality’s Scott Gortikov also noted the use of national power to oppose state-based campaigns. He explained, “Our opponents have figured out ways of bringing campaigns to states that are sort of pre-packaged, leverage national money, [and] bring with them either national media that you can leverage locally, or messages that you can then customize. So it’s not like recreating the wheel every time.” He continued that the gay movement must be careful not to follow this model exactly, because it detracts from the important, localized, authentic personal story that is at the heart of the movement. But he argued that state and national organizations must collaborate to determine how best to share resources in order to compete with the opposition.

In several cases, participants mentioned how national resources benefit state

organizations that otherwise would not have the capacity to execute major campaigns. Kara Gallemore, for example, discussed how staff from the Human Rights Campaign and Glaad worked in Equal Rights Washington’s offices during their campaign for the Domestic Partnership Law. MassEquality’s Scott Gortikov discussed how the Gill Foundation, the HRC, MassEquality, and a local New Hampshire organization collaborated on marriage issues. And OneIowa’s Uebelhor argued that national organizations played an important part in helping Iowa reach key milestones; the focus going forward should be on how state and national organizations can help each other locally and regionally. Equality Texas’s Chuck Smith summarized that ideally:

There’s a role for national organizations. There’s a role for state organizations. There’s a role for local organizations. We can’t be in all 254 counties in Texas, and we don’t have an ear to the ground in every city the way people that are organized locally do. In the same way, national organizations that spend most of their time working with the U.S. Congress do not know the nuances of what is happening in

each of the fifty states. I think the best way to work collaboratively is to understand that there are certainly benefits of working together because each of us can be in places that the others can’t.”

Most participants voiced a key frustration that often, national organizations do not do enough to acknowledge or respect the state perspective. These national organizations are willing to collaborate with states and lend resources during major campaigns, but often they do so from the top-down, national perspective, failing to acknowledge the specific state context or experience. Toni Broaddus explained:

Every state has its own unique culture, and state organizations understand that culture…. I think sort of the hardest thing is figuring out how… national and state organizations can partner in state work. So I think a state group is responsible for figuring out how to build that basic infrastructure in their state and national groups should be responsible for figuring out how to use that infrastructure in a way that doesn’t undermine state work but that helps move the agenda forward across the country.

She added that in the past, national organizations helped coordinate fundraising and