This week Indiana became the second state this year to enact a rabidly anti-LGBT law—Arkansas beat them to it last month and is now trying for a repeat—and one has to wonder, "Where the heck is the Human Rights Campaign?" And maybe more specifically, "Where’s its president, Chad Griffin?"
If you don’t know who Griffin is, you may recall when the powerhouse duo of Ted Olson and David Boies teamed up to file a challenge to Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. The legal odd couple—one a conservative hero, the other a liberal icon—made headlines everywhere they went. And they went everywhere: on TV, on radio, to forums and fundraisers, all around the country. That was the work of Chad Griffin, who is a public relations professional and was
founding partner of the communications consulting firm Griffin|Schein before taking his current post as head of HRC.
When the Supreme Court finally issued its rulings in the Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act lawsuits on June 26, 2013, Griffin stood outside the court house
and declared, "Let’s set a new goal: within five years, we will bring marriage equality to all 50 states in the U.S."
Both actions, the Prop 8 lawsuit and the 5-year goal, were visionary. Not everyone agreed with them, to be sure. And LGBT legal advocates who warned the Supreme Court wasn’t ready to rule for marriage equality nationwide when the Prop 8 suit was filed in 2009 were proven correct. In fact, the Justices weren’t even ready to do it by 2013, when the case finally reached the court. Yet both of Griffin's efforts surely pushed equality forward and arguably at a faster pace than would have otherwise been achieved.
But Griffin’s high profile on same-sex marriage stands in stark contrast to his low profile now, when LGBT Americans are in a pitched battle to combat the backlash to our success on the marriage front. The laws in Indiana and Arkansas, while substantively different, are two sides of the same coin. Indiana’s law makes it easier to discriminate against LGBT Americans (among many other groups) while Arkansas’ law makes it impossible to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals from discrimination.
During the Arkansas battle last month, Griffin was absolutely nowhere to be found as activists like
Mike Signorile and
Dana Beyer both noted in pieces they wrote for Huffington Post.
His presence in the Indiana fight was only slightly better. At least he sent out some tweets, but frankly, every press release that came out of HRC quoted people lower down the organizational chain. For instance, here’s a tweet from Griffin:
But instead of that link going to some broad overarching statement or splash page about what HRC is doing to combat the raft of hate bills that are coming our way, it links to a blog post and quotes HRC field director Marty Rouse. Not to belittle Rouse and his work, but if you want to see what a campaign can look like, check out the site LGBT activist Scott Wooledge put together.
Perhaps, the organization’s best work on these bills to date is the ad they purchased to run in the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s most widely read newspaper. The ad—which boldly states, "Arkansas wants your business, but at what price?"—was a shot across the bow at Gov. Asa Hutchinson as he woos Silicon Valley investors to come to his state while simultaneously trying to pass a second anti-LGBT bill.
We need more of this—a lot more of it. But Griffin is still virtually MIA. CNN’s widely shared story the morning of Indiana’s bill signing didn’t even include an HRC quote. The Washington Post story about HRC’s Silicon Valley ad quoted the organization’s press release.
Are you kidding? There’s more than a dozen more of these horrific bills waiting in the wings and HRC’s president still doesn’t have his bullhorn out? We’re talking about a guy who engineered having a 400-page book written about the Prop 8 lawsuit by a New York Times reporter who likened Griffin to Rosa Parks.
The person who made the biggest splash after Gov. Mike Pence signed the religious freedom bill was a Silicon Valley business man, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, who got 8,829 retweets (and counting) when he pledged to cut all business ties with Indiana.
Chad Griffin knows how to create a media storm if he wants to. He also knows how to run a national media campaign—as evidenced by the Proposition 8 lawsuit he orchestrated with legal eagles Ted Olson and David Boies that drew headlines for a solid four years and helped change the national conversation.
I am only left to conclude that while Griffin was and still is very much invested in marriage equality, his heart simply isn’t in the fight to beat back the backlash that marriage equality has exacted. And that would be ok if he weren’t still leading the nation’s largest LGBT equality organization.
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Here’s some suggestions on what the LGBT movement can do to combat this wave of anti-equality bills before the haters lock in discrimination across the country, just like they did with the anti-gay marriage amendments of 2004, 2006, and beyond.
•Mount a national media campaign: A high-profile media push that both articulates a broad vision for LGBT equality in America and demonstrates to the American public what discrimination against LGBT people looks like and the consequences it has. (I wrote about how this can be created at length here.)
•Regular press availabilities: The immigration advocacy group America’s Voice has weekly "office hours" every Friday morning where different people from the movement tell reporters about the issue’s latest developments. As a reporter, I call in on a regular basis to get updates and find the calls extremely useful. Having them at the same time each week makes them easy for me to schedule in and probably much easier to coordinate for America’s Voice. On the LGBT front, we have now reached a place where these anti-equality bills are moving so quickly that a weekly call-in time for reporters—both LGBT and mainstream—would be invaluable.
•Build coalition partners: Organize a unified coalition of progressive groups (not just LGBT groups) raising the alarm bells about these bills and the harms they will cause. Broadening the definition of what is legally permissible under the rubric of "religious freedom" has far-reaching implications for everyone, not just gays.
•Launch a preemptive business initiative: HRC touted the roll out of its Corporate Equality Index this year by noting, "366 major businesses — spanning nearly every industry and geography — earned a top score of 100 percent." That’s 366 companies at the ready for a pre-emptive appeal on these bills. HRC (or anyone) should be reaching out to every one of these companies who have subsidiaries or do business in any states that have bills. Those companies should be both lobbying privately and making public statements about the business consequences that signing such a bill will have. Business allies of LGBT Americans have been far and away the most outspoken and attention-getting equality advocates in the wake of Gov. Mike Pence’s bill signing.
2:38 PM PT: UPDATE: Please also read legendary activist Peter Staley's call to arms on FB: "[Chad] needs to pull together the coalition he's been cultivating (does it exist?) since joining HRC, and stand with leaders of other movements (civil rights, immigration, unions, etc.) at a press conference where they all say "no more business in Indiana until the law is repealed."