Cheryl Jacques vs. the Human Rights Campaign

For those of you not in the know, I'm talking about the largest gay civil rights group in Washington, DC and their former executive director who was recently fired.

Jacques seems to have started a PR offensive to portray herself as the great defender of gay rights, including marriage, and at least to my read, she's implicitly trying to get the point across that HRC is not the great defender of either gays or gay marriage. (Though Jacques doesn't say this directly, nor can she - she and HRC have mutually agreed not to comment on the circumstance surrounding her leaving HRC.)

The issue comes up again today because of today's article in the Boston Globe about Jacques, entitled "Jacques stands by marriage rights goal." The title on its face is a bit odd since I'm not sure who in the community isn't standing with the marriage rights goal. A lot of us, myself included, are not wholly convinced it was the best issue for us to be debating right now, but we also recognize that it's not like we had a choice. The issue came up, it's a central point of discussion now, so we have to engage and win on it. But as for "standing by marriage," again, this isn't really news. Unless, the article is implying Jacques is with marriage but "others" are against (i.e., HRC).

2. Jacques launched her own Web site today, in which she positions herself alongside MLK and Susan B. Anthony, defending gay America against un-named individuals who aren't as keen on aggressively defending our rights as she is (again, we are left guessing who she means). The open letter on the site is hardly objectionable - it's hard to disagree with Susan B and MLK, the mom and apple pie of civil rights politics. But I'm still left wondering why launch this site and this article now? What's she up to?

A friend noted the last line of the Globe piece: "Jacques, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2001, also said she might consider another run for office." Cheryl may be positioning herself for a run in local Massachusetts politics or nationally. Thus, the need to clear her name after being fired, but also to win over the gay vote. And again, that's understandable.

But here are a few thoughts, questions that nag at me:

1. I don't know why Jacques really left HRC. I suspect there had to be something pretty big for them to force her out within a year of her hiring. I've heard via the grapevine that some folks thought she was a bad boss, and clearly Jacques thinks that she got fired for being too aggressive. Honestly, I don't really care. I want to see HRC, and the rest of the gay rights movement, and the rest of the liberal movement and the Democratic party get its act together and start fighting back hard. I find the Jacques/HRC debate a distraction to all of that - worthy of inside-the-beltway wonks perhaps, but relevant to the national discussion, not really.

2. The counter argument is that the Jacques/HRC thing is very relevant to the national debate as, if she's right in her apparent implication that HRC is backing off somehow of the marriage issue, and more generally HRC feels it was too aggressive last year, then the public needs to know that our largest group has gone soft. My response to that is this. I can't name a single large gay group that was aggressive last year other than the gay Republican group, Log Cabin Republicans. The notion that HRC was "too aggressive" and "too edgy" last year strikes me as laughable. I WISH our groups were so aggressive as to be accused of being TOO truly aggressive, we should be so lucky. So it doesn't ring very true in my ear that Jacques was forced out for being too aggressive. I just don't buy it.

I've known folks at HRC for years - they contributed to our StopDrLaura.com campaign (even though that move was "controversial" to some) and I've worked with them over the years on a lot of issues of mutual interest, though so far I've not had them as a client (though I'd be happy to). I've worked with HRC staff since the early 90s, as well as people working at the other top gay groups. I've had my complaints with all the groups, and I still do, and document them here all the time. Just like I have complaints with most of the groups working on the left, gay and straight politics alike, and that includes the Democratic party. What bothers me about this Jacques/HRC thing is that it forces us in the gay community to take our eye off the ball.

The issue isn't whether HRC was TOO aggressive last year. The issue is why HRC wasn't MORE aggressive last year. The issue is why the other gay groups weren't more aggressive last year. Why the other liberal groups, women, anti-guns, civil rights, enviros, weren't more aggressive. And why the Democratic party and John Kerry weren't more aggressive. The idea of all of this descending into a debate as to how boldly aggressive HRC was last year is simply laughable. No offense to my friends at HRC,but the organization has been accused of many things over the years - being overly aggressive isn't one of them. And to some degree, that's the nature of big non-profits. It's hard to be as aggressive as you want to be, or need to be. I get that. And that's part of the reason I think outside agitators (including yours truly) should be better funded by the movement.

But getting back to the point, I'd like to see this story go away, but I doubt it will. Jacques feels the need to tell her story, to the best of her ability within the constraints of her agreement with HRC not to talk. And I get why she feels that need. And HRC will naturally feel the necessity of responding, and I get that too. And in principle, I like the idea of having a public debate about these kind of issues in general, because we need to know what went wrong in our movement over the past year(s), and what went wrong across the left, if only so that we can figure out how to do things better next time.

But having said all of that, I'll say it one last time. Other than the gay Republicans, I can't think of a single group on the left, gay or straight (and ironically, the gay "republicans" aren't really on the left, are they), that was "too aggressive" last year. To claim otherwise strikes me as an untrue effort to rewrite history, whatever its motivations.

Let's keep our eye on the ball, folks.