LGBTQ Activists Spar Over HRC Center in Former Harvey Milk Site

Some LGBTQ activists are hopping mad over a move by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, to take over a lease at the site of Harvey Milk’s former Castro Camera. Milk was the famous openly gay San Francisco Supervisor and subject of the Academy Award-winning 2009 biopic Milk.

The retail location was where Milk planned and orchestrated his historic campaigns in several local elections. The space has been home to several other for-profit businesses since Milk’s assassination in 1978.

HRC plans to set up one of its action centers, which sell HRC-related merchandise and other items, in the space. The San Francisco store’s profits will go both to HRC and a local organization that supports an elementary school named in honor of Milk.

Bil Browning, publisher of the gay rights blog Bilerico.com, lodged some of the first complaints against HRC’s decision to take over the Milk landmark lease.

"What's next? Removing the Mona Lisa's face and replacing it with the Wal-Mart smiley face?" Browning said in a post on his blog.

AIDS Memorial Quilt founder Cleve Jones, who earned his first political and advocacy stripes under the personal tutelage of Milk, said in an Associated Press story that HRC’s decision was a stain on Milk’s legacy.

"It's spitting in the face of Harvey's memory,” Jones says.

Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for his Milk screenwriting, has also spoken out against HRC. Two scenes in Black’s film explored Milk’s often tumultuous and adversarial relationships with high profile LGBTQ leaders of his day, several of whom went on to start or later work for HRC. Black tells the AP the old Castro Camera store would be better as an LGBTQ youth services center.

"He was not an 'A-Gay' [also known as an ‘A-list gay,’ or a wealthy, well-connected, upwardly mobile gay man and woman] and had no desire to be an A-Gay. He despised those people and they despised him," Jones says. "That, to me, is the crowd HRC represents. Don't try to wrap yourself up in Harvey Milk's mantle and pretend you are one of us."

HRC says its action centers are often the first point-of-contact for many budding or future LGBTQ activists. Buying a T-shirt or some other item or learning about specific LGBTQ action items while in their stores, they say, often provides the inspiration for many to return to their hometowns and speak out for equality.

"They live in small towns in Texas and flyover states. Those are the people we need to help find the spirit that Harvey Milk had," HRC creative director Don Kiser tells The AP. "If they can go back and take a little of the spirit the Castro has, we will see sea changes."

There’s little doubt HRC has the best of intentions in mind. In fact, part of me wants to offer some applause for the group’s decision to preserve the location and its memory. As pointed out by other LGBTQ activists, the store could have easily ended up in the hands of another for-profit business completely uninterested (or even hostile to) the legacy of one of the nation’s early LGBTQ political leaders.

That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Jones’ argument that HRC’s “A-Gay” status is seemingly at-odds with Milk’s more grassroots and “in-your-face” legacy. Perhaps HRC’s move to the Castro storefront could introduce it to a community that values the grassroots over the treetops.

The other concern, that most of the profits of the store will be transported away from San Francisco and into the Washington, D.C., Beltway, is also a concern of several LGBTQ activists. Some say the group’s large-scale fundraising events like its annual state and local fundraising dinners take money out of local communities that often are in more need of financial resources.

An article I wrote in February 2009 for Charlotte’s LGBTQ newspaper explored some of those concerns.[Disclosure: The author still works as the publication’s editor.] Ryan Wilson, a former president of the South Carolina Pride Movement, told me he wished HRC devoted more resources to local initiatives:

Wilson says he’d like to see some of HRC’s funds benefit other local projects. “Here in South Carolina, something as little as $100 will make a huge difference,” he says. “$1,000 could revolutionize a program we run. If the national organizations would toss us a bone, that would feed us.”

[…]

National sponsor and supporter [Mitchell] Gold says folks need to be reminded of HRC’s mission when talking about money and local reinvestment. In his opinion, HRC’s “singular goal is to get national legislation passed.”

“HRC is a national lobbying organization,” he says. “Their goal isn’t to get North Carolina laws passed. It isn’t to get North Carolina community centers built in Charlotte or Raleigh. It is important for people not to think negatively of HRC just because they don’t come into North Carolina and do the things North Carolina organizations already do.”

Unfortunately, Gold was right then and he is right now. HRC’s mission is clear: They work to make change at the federal level. Why should its resources be invested locally? It’s a harsh fact, yes, but ultimately true. And, as much as we might disagree over the future of Milk’s legacy in the hands of HRC, the real question facing grassroots LGBTQ activists should be about how to proactively change HRC for the better or either work around them entirely. Snarky comments, open-ended criticism, and fruitless, never-ending complaining only ever go so far.

At the end of the day, some activists need to put a pause on their rhetoric and stop to ask themselves: “What am I doing to create change?”

Matt Comer is a staff writer for Campus Progress.

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