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This is sitting in my email box right now. I just want to compose my thoughts...because it's feedback time. There's no way in hell I'm giving them a dime right now.
Dear Terry,
As we head into a new year—HRC’s 25th anniversary year—the time has come to move forward together, both as an organization and as a community. Please join us by renewing your 2005 membership early today.
While our goals of full equality for GLBT Americans have not changed, our strategies are completely new. We will use major financial and human resources to engage America in a direct conversation about our lives. That means different approaches, different tactics and different conversations that are relevant and real in every part of the country.
We will launch this new strategy in three areas:
Meeting Government Where it Touches our Lives
We have to show how government and legislation affects our everyday lives and, by telling the stories of our families, America will understand why our laws must end discrimination.
For example, like most Americans, we’re afraid Social Security won’t be there when we need it. But when our partners die, we don’t get the benefits other American families get even though we’ve paid into the system just like everyone else.
Reaching out to Communities of Faith
We are going to strengthen our relationship with communities of faith through the creation of a religious institute. This will include a speakers’ bureau where people of faith talk to each other and take on the anti-gay rhetoric used by our most strident opponents.
We will look at launching a media watchdog project so that more spokespeople of faith are credible and thoughtful, rather than the strident and cartoonish figures too often selected for TV talk shows.
And we’ll conduct research to find the most effective way to speak with Americans of faith so that they can relate to and support our cause.
Coming Out and Coming Together
The Human Rights Campaign has long been considered a “gay rights” group by the media and others. As we’ve come out to families and friends, we’ve shattered stereotypes. Now, we must come together with our straight allies as we become an organization fighting for equal GLBT rights, rather than simply a GLBT group.
We will engage in outreach to those who support us. All of our publications and other communications will reflect a broader new membership base of GLBT and straight Americans who support equality.
The road ahead isn’t going to be easy but the threats facing us are too extraordinary to ignore. Of course, we will continue to win and lose battles along the way. But what is important for you to understand is that the Human Rights Campaign is in this for the long haul. And that is why we need you to stand with us today, and for the duration by renewing your membership now.
It will take all of us and then some — with all the strength we can muster — to continue making progress towards full equality for GLBT Americans We don’t have to tell you what we’re up against. But I hope that you will be facing it with us.
Gratefully,
Hilary Rosen
Interim Director, Human Rights Campaign
P.S. Thank you for your membership and activism this past year. If you’ve already renewed your HRC membership for 2005, thank you also for that, and I apologize for this gentle reminder.
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