Why we still give

Yes, that was none other than Maggie Gallagher herself – the take-no-prisoners founder of the National Organization for Marriage – quoted last week as admitting that her side had lost its fight to stop the scourge of marriage equality. Her troops, she wrote, “are in shock … awed by the powers now shutting down the debate and by our ineffectualness at responding to these developments.”

It can’t but be a great day when Maggie Gallagher concedes defeat. Like Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly and Lou Sheldon and Frank Shubert, she’ll now fade into a footnote – if that – in the histories of the LGBT movement.

But hold that champagne …
It might be tempting to see Gallagher’s lament as another sign that the LGBT movement has, after decades of struggle, landed on a kind of glide path to equality, freedom, and justice. Can we just start taking it a little easier? Let history take its course?

Quite simply, no. We can’t hang up our marching shoes. We can’t lay back. And we can’t put away our wallets. Not while LGBT people in more than half the United States have no legal protection against basic discrimination. Not while 40% of homeless kids identify as LGBT. Not while thousands of LGBT elders have to go back in the closet to get services and transgender people can’t find housing or jobs.

Most of us know we’d be fools to wrap ourselves in a kind of smug cloak of inevitability. We know that Roe v Wade not only didn’t fully secure women’s reproductive rights, but those rights have been steadily chopped away in the 40 years since. We know that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t end racial discrimination. And we know that’ll be true with LGBT rights as well.

… we’ve all still got roles to play
One other thing that most of us know: equality, freedom, and dignity don’t come for free. Literally. Winning them costs money. Yes, of course, there needs to be much more than just money; we need courage and passion and good leaders and smart strategies, to name just a few.

But money’s needed for all of those. Money is like the water that simply has to flow if a farmer’s crops are going to grow.

All of us have roles to play. On May 15, every LGBT person and our allies has an exciting and novel opportunity to power our movement simply by giving. May 15 will be the second annual Give OUT Day, a single day on which thousands upon thousands of LGBT people will contribute to groups they care about. In its debut year in 2013, Give OUT Day raised more than $600,000 for nearly 400 organizations across the country. More than 600 have registered this year.

Find out all about it at www.giveoutday.org. Find a group you care about. Give to a nonprofit you’ve never heard of. Give to a queer youth organization, or an elders nonprofit or one helping victims of anti-LGBT violence or a cultural group. Or give to an organization that once helped you.

The important thing is to give. Tell your friends to give. Tell your co-workers. Spread the word. Together, we make not just a difference, but a movement.

A Grand Day

Dear Friends,

We won!
By now you’ve heard the great and grand news: the Supreme Court has struck down DOMA and restored the right to marry for California same-sex couples. This day, June 26, 2013, joins a handful of others as truly historic, world-changing milestones on our long road to justice, dignity, and freedom.

At last
At last, survivors like Edie Windsor will be spared having to deal with rank discrimination while grieving their partners’ loss. At last, binational couples – thousands and thousands of them – will be able to sponsor their spouses for green cards, and the stain on our nation’s laws known as the Defense of Marriage Act will be erased.

And, yes, at last, after five years of struggle, loving couples from San Diego to Modesto to Eureka – and all points in between – will be able to choose to marry.

And, yes, oh happy words to write: The insult to all of us – LGBT people and all lovers of fairness and freedom – that was Proposition 8 is dead.

I remember another end-of-term Supreme Court decision, now 27 years ago, when the court upheld anti-sodomy laws in the infamous Bowers v. Hardwick case. I remember so easily the rage that I felt upon hearing the news.

Today is so, so blessedly different. Today, we have not one, but two, splendid legal victories. And they’re much more than simply courtroom triumphs. The process of litigating these cases – and the other challenges to DOMA in particular – that turned America into a countrywide classroom in which the absurdity and wrongfulness of DOMA and Prop 8 were there for all to see.

All of us, together
All of us at Horizons Foundation extend many, many congratulations to these cases’ plaintiffs, their attorneys, and the legal teams. They have helped make history. 

History, however, has been made by every single one of us who has donated, marched, persuaded, protested, written, canvassed, voted, lobbied, educated, spoken out, or litigated to move LGBT people down this road to justice, dignity, and freedom. History happened today – and in all the thousands of days and hours and minutes of hard work, generosity, vision, and commitment that led to today.

We all have a great deal – a grand deal – to be proud of.

With profound gratitude and in deepest pride,

Roger Doughty,
Executive Director

No matter what… celebrate!

My first San Francisco Pride took place 21 years ago. I’d become involved in planning the 1993 March on Washington, and someone had obtained the giant rainbow flag, the one that stretches for something like half a city block. Dozens of volunteers carried it. My job was to walk alongside and exhort spectators to toss money into the flag.

By the end, I’d shouted myself hoarse but had lived a magical hour. I’ll never forget turning onto Market Street down near the Embarcadero, looking up through that canyon of buildings, the street lined with thousands of excited people, and that vast flag in front, its colors fluttering in the morning breeze.

We all have our “first Pride” stories, chapters in our own tales of awareness, acceptance, and embrace. This time of year, especially if you’re a victim of “Pride Day fatigue” – that “been there, done that” feeling – take a moment to remember your first Pride. I’ll bet you can remember the thrill, the sense of discovery, celebration, and simple power, too.

Holding Our Breath
This year’s Pride feels a little different. Right now, it’s as though we’re holding our collective breath. We’re keeping an eye on Supreme Court blogs and legal listservs waiting for The Decisions to come down. It might be tomorrow – or not until June 27, the very eve of Pride weekend –and the last day of the court’s term.

For us, of course, these decisions will be more than headlining news items; they’ll be more than historic events. They’ll be markers – important markers – along our road to equality, justice, and freedom.

No Matter What. . .
The Decisions, though, don’t tell the whole story. Not by any means. For irrespective of what nine justices have to say, I know three things to be true this Pride.

First, we have an enormous amount to be proud of. Just look at where our community stands today – now 12 states plus D.C. with marriage equality. More openly LGBT people in public office than ever before. Soldiers getting married. Nearly 60% of Californians voicing support for same-sex marriage, and even higher percentages favoring nondiscrimination protections.

We – all of us, together, no matter what the Supreme Court rules – are moving a mountain. Rock by rock, and after we’ve chipped away, decade after decade, that mountain has started to crumble under the weight of its own falsehoods.  And that’s something to be deeply proud of, in this Pride season and for many to come.

Second: we’ll still have a lot of mountain to move however wonderful – or disappointing – the rulings turn out to be. Except in the most optimistic scenarios, same-sex couples will continue to be excluded from marriage equality in more than 70% of the United States. Public opinion trends notwithstanding, in more than half of the states, it will still be legal to fire someone for being LGBT. Life hasn’t gotten better yet for tens of thousands of LGBT youth who are surrounded by hostility and ignorance. In Russia, “gay propaganda” has just been outlawed, with severe penalties promised those brave enough to defy the ban.

Third, it’s our individual and collective pride that will propel us to keep at that mountain. We know that we demand, as we always have, no more than equality. No more than simple justice. No more than freedom. Nor do we – nor will we – accept less than full equality, justice, and freedom. No proud people would. 

. . . Celebrate!
The freedom we’ve always sought includes the freedom to celebrate – to celebrate ourselves, to mark each of our journeys from shame to pride, from isolation to community, from powerlessness to power. Freedom to celebrate what we’ve accomplished – together.

That immense rainbow flag that rippled down Market Street was held up by many, many hands. The flurries of coins tossed into it came from many pockets. The shouts arose from many voices. And whatever the Supreme Court says, it’s just that – all of us, acting and giving together – that will win us what we all have dreamed of for so long.

As every year, with gratitude and pride,

Roger Doughty
Executive Director

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.

“…Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall…”

There it was. Right there in the President’s inaugural address, about three quarters through. “The most evident of truths,” he stated, is “that all of us are created equal,” and that this truth “is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall….”

Seneca Falls. Selma. Stonewall. Sites of events that proclaimed, each so bravely in its day, that women, that African Americans, that LGBT people, stood in the embrace of equality – and moved America closer to its most vaunted and most precious ideals.

Seneca Falls. Selma. Stonewall.

True allies

The French in the American Revolutionary War. Abolitionists in the fight against slavery. Urban consumers boycotting grapes to support farmworkers. Ruth Brinker, a straight woman, founding Project Open Hand in San Francisco early in the AIDS years.

Allies. They’re critical in just about every social movement I can think of, especially social movements that aim at justice for a group that’s unpopular or wields little political power.

The LGBT movement lost a giant ally earlier this week when Jeanne Manford, the founder of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, died at age 92. She started by standing up – 40 years ago – for her gay son, marching in the New York Pride Parade with a sign reading simply “Parents of Gays Unite in Support of Our Children.”

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

Marriage Marches On

Something’s definitely happening out there. The march of marriage equality seems to have gone into hyper-drive. Marriage laws enacted in Washington and Maryland. Another court knocked down a key part of the federal DOMA. Marriage-equality passed by New Jersey’s legislature, and, of course, the Ninth Circuit’s Prop 8 ruling just one month ago.