Petrelis Files

No on 8 Gay Leader Took 1 Month
AK Vacation During the Campaign

Who knew the Advocate was back to reporting hard news, and news that is critical of the Democratic Party hacks running our community organizations? Kudos to the magazine for telling me something of importance I didn't know.

Sure, I've known about and reported on No on 8/Equality California's leader Geoff Kors taking a two-week vacation in Spain during the campaign, a troubling sign of terrible executive decision-making first reported by the Bay Area Reporter, but I had no idea Lorri Jean, the executive director of the Los Angeles gay community center, did likewise.

Actually, she did better than Kors in the amount of time devoted to enjoying a complacent holiday. Jean was gone for a full month.

From the Advocate, italics mine:

Observers say problems were evident from the start. Bankhead had never run a campaign of anything approaching this magnitude. In July, when the Mormon Church was beginning to build its organizing machine -- signing up volunteers, raising money, spreading the word -- key members of the No on 8 leadership were literally absent. Kors took a 2½-week vacation. Jean went to Alaska for the month.

“Any time that anybody took off did not in any way have a negative impact on the campaign,” Jean says in her defense. “I’m flattered to think I was that indispensable.”

Yet, according to many, the complacency that the campaign leadership has been blaming on their base started at the top.

First, Jean implies that more than she and Kors took time off for a vacation, raising the question of why these leaders were committed to a few months duration of waging a winning battle at the ballot box. Anyone got a clue as to how many of the top No on 8 directors hit the holiday trail during the campaign? I doubt Jean and Kors were the only ones who took long breaks, and are now accusing the rest of us of complacency.

Second, Jean is clearly not indispensable. She is just another greasy bureaucrat keeping the wheels of the Gay Inc machinery churning for the benefit of the Democrats. It's time to ask Jean to resign from her LA gay center position, and allow new and better leadership to emerge from the ashes of the Prop 8 failures of Jean, Kors and Kendell.

Third, is Jean really worth the quarter-million salary she earns? The latest IRS 990 tax filing by the LA center is from 2006 and shows that two years ago this nincompoop was compensated $241,923. I'd wager that her pay has increased since then to at least $275,000 for her, ahem, visionary leadership.

Click here to read the 2006 filing. I've made a request to the center's information officer, Jim Key, for the 2007 IRS report for his organization, because we need to know what Jean is earning now.

And allow me to point out that Jean and her gay center are as transparent as tar when it comes to showing the community their IRS 990s. Jean's gay center does not share their three most recent IRS tax filings, as many other nonprofits do, nor does the center's web site tell visitors how to locate the filings at Guidestar.org.

Frankly, after watching Jean since the November 4 electoral loss, leading marches and speaking against the Mormon influence on the race, I give her lots of credit for diverting the community's attention from her failures. Keeping the community in the dark about her IRS 990s is in keeping with keeping prying eyes away from her and her management style.

There must be some accountability exacted from the gay leaders who burned through $40 million of community funding, inflicted massive psychological damage on openly gay people with an internalized homophobic TV campaign, allowed the Yes on 8 forces to defame and malign us with impunity, and generally proved themselves as devoid of empowering their gay brothers and sisters.

In the case of Jean, on top of all that, she also didn't deliver the Los Angeles vote.

For these and lots of other reasons, Jean should offer her resignation. We cannot allow the Prop 8 failures of Jean, Kendell and Kors to leave them remaining in highly paid leadership positions. If we do, future community-wide setbacks are guaranteed.