Gay institutions vs. progressive queers, in the Village Voice ("Does Gay Inc. believe in free speech?")

We've been thinking it, you've been thinking it, and now the Village Voice's Steven Thrasher has written an excellent article on it: GLAAD, HRC, the LGBT Center and other gay institutions are obstacles to queer community organizing, not helpers. They answer to their boards full of finance industry gay-bots, not queers. They use queers -- and especially queer tragedies of violence and exclusion -- as their platform for taking a seat at the table with corporations and politicians. There, they hold on to power by not making waves, and pulling the curtain over queers who do.

The article is "Does 'Gay, Inc.' believe in free speech? In the battle over gay rights, dissent during wartime isn't always tolerated."  It ranges over the Center's weird, wrong banning of Palestine-supporting queer groups, and the larger lockdown on queer political organizing that squeezes out "radical" ideas like ensuring that all people can access health care. It charts the almost-funny contortions that BGOs have to go through to define homophobia and equality in ways that serve them, but make no sense in real life. Here are some pull-outs:

'I first learned the term "Gay Inc." from Lieutenant Dan Choi when I was writing a profile about him in 2010... Choi was a darling of the gay establishment, including the Human Rights Campaign, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, and the Courage Campaign. His name was attached to e-mail blasts routinely to raise money or rally activists.

But Choi was so outspoken, he couldn't really be "handled." He chafed at the PR box Gay Inc. tried to put him in and was apt to go "off message" anytime. He described Gay Inc. as "those groups so desperate for a place at the table, they'll do anything to keep their place at the table."

By the day "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was first on the floor of the U.S. Senate in September of 2010, Choi had worn out his welcome. As we got lunch in the cafeteria before the failed vote, a good chunk of Gay Inc.—HRC, SLDN, and various staffers of Democratic legislators—was assembled at one table like a high school clique. Choi was clearly at odds with them.

Almost two years later, I was reporting last week from the East Room of the White House as much of Gay Inc. attended President Obama's LGBT Pride Month reception. There was no denying, as the president affirmed his commitment to a number of Gay Inc.'s issues, that there is a benefit to having a place at the table. But many of the most radical voices that had helped push Obama to that point (including Choi) were noticeably absent.'

and

'The first and only time I covered an HRC event in person was on the eve of the National Equality March in 2009 in Washington, D.C. President Obama addressed 3,000 donors at a black-tie gala in the Washington Convention Center, but he was only a warm-up act, he joked, for a rising talent named Lady Gaga. 

The real stars of the evening for me (a neophyte at such functions) were the ads. There were endless videos promoting various corporations, mostly defense contractors. Like supporting a telecom merger, I wondered naively, "What does peddling the latest hardware in the military-industrial complex have to do with being gay?"'

There's more -- it's a good read! One correction to the article: ACT UP chapters around the country have been demanding single payer health care for many years. Real queer organizing lives on in the shadow of the Gay Inc. behemoths.