LGBT Rights: Everywhere

I just saw something very disturbing.

It’s a short clip showing what happened in the streets of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, earlier today, when thousands of people turned out to shout down – and shut down – a modest rally for LGBT rights. Today is International Day Against Homphobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), and what makes today so important is right there for the world to see. See it for yourself here.

All too common
The scene is all too common: a small band of courageous activists, of people refusing to let an ignorant society circumscribe their lives, set upon, surrounded, and endangered by our antagonists. As the recently released annual Department of State Human Rights Report makes all too clear, what we saw today in Georgia could be practically anywhere around the world. Russia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, China, Albania, Belarus, Iran, Fiji, Iraq, Mexico – and scores more.

Or right here in the United States of America.

Time to Give OUT!

I remember that October day so clearly. It was 1987, the day of the second great LGBT march on Washington – and the first time I’d found myself with so many others like me.

Seas of … us.

A quarter century later, the internet has birthed ways of coming together that none of us dreamed of then. Millions of us. Coming together on-line, of course, isn’t the same as being in one place at one time. But the potential is huge.
A new way to give
Now there’s something brand new – and incredibly exciting – that can bring millions of LGBT people together around one of the most important things any of us – or any ally – can do. It’s called Give OUT Day and it’s coming on May 9, 2013.

Give OUT Day is this brilliant idea to have a single day on which LGBT people coast to coast donate to LGBT nonprofit organizations that help, serve, and save hundreds of thousands of LGBT people – every day. Without these groups, the LGBT movement would be pretty much nowhere. Without them, LGBT communities from California to Maine to Louisiana would be unrecognizable. So would many of our own lives.

Helping Ourselves: A BAR Op-Ed

A few days after Thanksgiving, I stepped out of a modernist East Side building into a cold New York evening – elated. The building houses the rather grand offices of the Ford Foundation, generally regarded as the world’s most influential private foundation. And Ford had good news for the LGBT community.

A foundation steps up
That day, Ford had gathered people from the foundation and LGBT advocacy worlds to launch a major new initiative called “Out for Change.” It came with a commitment to grant $50 million over the next five years to LGBT causes.

Advocates like Horizons Foundation and the national Funders for LGBTQ Issues have long called for more private foundations to fund LGBT causes. While that advocacy has helped bring millions of dollars to our community over the years, total LGBT funding remains but a small fraction of one percent of all foundation grants. So the dollars alone promised by Ford will help. Equally important, Ford pledged to put its considerable institutional weight to work as well and encourage other wealthy private foundations to fund more LGBT work.

Not just another meeting

Foundations rarely just “meet.” They “convene.” In fact, alongside perennial foundation-world buzzwords like “community” and “partnership,” convening might be the field’s most gratuitously overused word. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with community, partnership, or convening. It’s just that when deployed so relentlessly, the words begin to drain of meaning.

But sometimes “convening” fits the occasion. I write this while flying somewhere over Ohio, heading home after a gathering that does merit the grander moniker. The world’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, brought together 150 or so leaders from LGBT advocacy and foundation worlds. It was an honor to be there.

A Magnificent Evening

I’m about to violate Rule Number One of blogging: Keep those blog posts short! And, generally speaking, it’s an excellent rule to follow. Most people aren’t enamored about reading rivers of words, much less on small screens.

But for every rule (well, most every rule) there’s an exception, and this is one. Just over a week ago, Horizons held its annual gala at the grand Fairmont Hotel here in San Francisco. It was a great evening – a real celebration of community – with terrific honorees (Barney Frank and Kate Kendell), dancing late into the night, a rich mix of people, and a rare and wonderful energy that suffused the goings-on from the first glass of champagne to the last dance.

After dinner, I had the chance to make some remarks. The goal of the remarks was to convey not only a bit about what makes Horizons so important, but also where we all find ourselves today as a movement – and where we are headed, both as a foundation and as a community. We’ve copied them just below.  – and they’re really not that long!

I hope they communicate something of what Horizons is all about and the exciting vision that we have for the future of the LGBT community. Thank you for taking the time to give them a look.

Roger Doughty
Executive Director

Signs of the Times

Later today, Horizons Foundation’s board of directors will be presented with a slate of recommendations – made largely by a panel of community members – for what we call “Community Issues” grants. It’s a high point of the year, and an annual tradition stretching back to Horizons’ origins 32 years ago.

Harvey Was Right

Perhaps more famously than anybody, it was Harvey Milk who exhorted LGBT people to come out. It was, he declared, the only way “to break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions” that drive anti-gay prejudice.

I probably wasn’t the only one who thought of Harvey upon hearing that Anderson Cooper had come out last month. As big a star as Cooper is, though, I wasn’t going to write anything about it. His announcement – not exactly shocking to many – was getting plenty of attention, and there didn’t seem to be much to add. And after the predictable torrent of news stories, the waters seemed to quiet quickly.

LGBT Mapping

Even for those of us for whom LGBT work is our day-job, sometimes it’s difficult to keep clear what’s happening in this movement. A law changes here, a new policy – for good or for bad – is adopted over there, and, somewhere or another, at any time, some basic right is almost certainly hanging in the balance.

There’s simply a lot going on.

From The Land Of Everest

Just 10 days ago, I found myself under a scorching, pre-monsoon sun in Kathmandu’s Lazimpat district searching for 344 Khursanitar Road. Address-spotting in Nepal isn’t always easy, as many streets are small, date from centuries ago, and have no official names or, where they do, people may not know them. They find their ways around perfectly well, of course, but with the opposite of our learned dependence on GPS navigation. Their maps reside in their heads.

Too Many LGBT Nonprofits?

It’s both sad – and a sure sign of the times. For years, Tenderloin Health took care of thousands of the Bay Area’s most marginalized and needy people with HIV. But today, the one-time multi-million dollar agency is effectively no more, its programs and clients handed off to other providers.

There are, of course, always issues particular to any organization that closes its doors, but the demise of another large nonprofit spotlights another question: are there simply too many (LGBT) nonprofits? Shouldn’t more nonprofits simply merge?