Posted on 03/17/2005 11:49:40 AM PST by SmithL
NEW YORK - After 12 years advocating for abortion rights, Joe Solmonese might have opted for a less divisive field of work. Instead, he is taking over leadership of the largest national gay-rights group at a time when the same-sex marriage debate rivals abortion for volatility and virulence.
"My challenge is to talk about why the equality we seek is not just important to our community, but should be important to everyone," Solmonese said. "I have to believe in the optimism and fair-mindedness of the American people."
Solmonese was named last week as the new president of the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign and will formally assume the post April 11. He plans to start his tenure by traveling around the country, meeting with state and local activists.
Since 1993, Solmonese has been a strategist for EMILY's List, a political action committee supporting state and federal candidacies of Democratic women who favor abortion rights. He was its chief executive for the past 2 1/2 years, helping break fund-raising records but also seeing candidates his group endorsed lose 2004 Senate races in Florida, South Carolina and Missouri.
Solmonese, 40, graduated from Boston University with a degree in communications after growing up in Attleboro, Mass. One of his role models was the local congressman, Barney Frank - who disclosed his homosexuality in 1987 when openly gay politicians were almost unheard of.
"Barney Frank is an incredibly heroic person, but also someone who is absolutely in touch with his constituency," Solmonese said in a telephone interview. "He's a man who values family more than anyone I know."
Solmonese came out as gay in his early 20s; he recalls attending a Human Rights Campaign dinner when he was 22. Before joining EMILY's List, he was an aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and a fund-raiser for Frank.
He credits his parents, both schoolteachers, with inspiring him to pursue a career of political activism.
"After a decade in the reproductive rights movement, I see myself having been in the fight for a progressive America," he said. "Groups like the HRC are very much at the forefront of that fight."
Another common denominator for the abortion-rights and gay-rights movements is their determined and politically well-connected opposition. Conservative leaders who focus on those two issues have claimed credit for the Republicans' strong showing in the 2004 election.
"The American people fear a whole range of things right now, from terrorism to their economic future," Solmonese said. "Our opposition has been pretty crafty at capitalizing on that fear, using whatever means necessary to make political gains."
Many conservative groups are now waging a two-pronged fight against gay marriage. They are lobbying Congress to approve a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman; they also hope many more states will join the 17 that already have amended their constitutions to ban gay marriage.
The Human Rights Campaign was among numerous gay-rights organizations participating earlier this month in a strategy session aimed at competing effectively in upcoming state ballot campaigns regarding gay marriage.
Solmonese says he hopes his home state will demonstrate to Americans nationwide that its pioneering legalization of same-sex marriage has positive, not negative, results.
"Massachusetts is still there, with loving, committed families going on with their lives and experiencing the same rights and responsibilities that all Americans do," he said. "We want to shine a light on what happened in Massachusetts, and tell the American people who we truly are."
He replaces another Massachusetts political activist, Cheryl Jacques, who stepped down as HRC president late last year, citing differences with its board. Her departure coincided with speculation in the gay media, and elsewhere, about discord among the HRC and some other major gay-rights groups. Solmonese said he has detected no serious rifts since his hiring was announced.
Several other national gay-rights groups are undergoing leadership changes. The Family Pride Coalition and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays recently named new executive directors, while Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is stepping down in June.
Culture of Death bump.
Ping
A lawmaker recently passed a bill that was more of a statement. If being gay is a gene, and we discover that gene, What about abortion for gay babies? Does a woman have a right to abort her child if he or she is gay.
FYI: Gay is not a gene, and the research was fabricated. If it was a gene, they would have bred themselves extinct because gay couples cannot breed at all.
Gee, one would think this guy's position would be FOR adoption by gays, rather than abortion.
I'm confused.
Pure cowchips....she was run out on a rail. I wonder how long this male will last in a largely man-hating organization.....
I assure you, so is he.
Too bad his Mother didn't have an abortion.
why do you say that? It would seem just the opposite.
just curious about what you know that we might not.
Ever noticed that Queers and Baby Killers are always in the same canoe!!!!
He's confused about life and death. He's confused about his sexuality. He's confused in his politics. He's confused about who is a good "role model." He's confused on so many levels.....
Nail on the head bump
zero-population growth at its best, I would guess
Amazes me how much time and energy that homosexuals spend injecting themselves into an issue which should be a mute point to them by virtue of their sexual choice of being in relationships that can not naturally produce children anyway?
Nuff said
Why not? -- government imposition and promotion of one type of sinful activity is as good as government imposition and promotion of another type of sinful activity.
lol
thanks
If he was the result of his belief he wouldn't exist.
Homosexual Agenda Ping.
Category of "know your enemy".
I could only read until I got to this statement:
"Barney Frank is an incredibly heroic person, but also someone who is absolutely in touch with his constituency," Solmonese said in a telephone interview. "He's a man who values family more than anyone I know."
Let DirtyHarryY2K and me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
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