EQCA to Angry Gays: Drop Dead
For the 234th time, the A-gays running Equality California have insulted their base and this time, even a former EQCA board member, Ron Buckmire, is calling them on their shite. In keeping with their closeted tradition of running ad and social marketing campaign that fail to say the word 'gay' and that don't have the wide support of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks the EQCA says it represents, the group has a new ad out this week that is receiving tough criticism.
Before we delve into today's complaints against EQCA from other bloggers and commentators, let me remind us of a few facts.
As with their No on 8 ads and recently launched "I Do" social marketing campaign, EQCA didn't hold any public meetings about the "Hope" TV spot hitting the airwaves.
Behind closed doors, with no community debate or scrutiny, EQCA honchos, who haven't proved themselves adept in the least in mending fences with the large number of pissed off queers in CA over the group's ineptness during Prop 8, created the ad and then dumped it on the community.
It would kill gay millionaire Geoff Kors and his minions at EQCA if they had to regularly meet with their alleged constituency in public meetings and run their campaigns and ideas by more of the community than just fellow A-gays and nincompoops, and get true community buy-in of a given campaign BEFORE the damn ads on foisted upon us.
Who the eff told Kors that this week, of all weeks, with millions of dollars of free media, both domestic and foreign, being generated by Thursday's state Supreme Court hearing, statewide March 4 vigils the night before the hearing, and lots and lots of people expected in Civic Center Plaza for rallies on March 5, and with two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn and gay pols launching an effort to win state recognition for "Harvey Milk Day", that this was the perfect time for a timid and closeted ad?
Here are some of the criticisms targeting EQCA and their lame ad, starting with a post by Ron Buckmire, who used to sit on the EQCA board:
What do you notice is missing? Yup. The words "Gay" or "Lesbian" or "Bisexual" or "Transgendered."
This is from Andy Towle, who really got the criticism ball rolling today. Be sure to read the many angry comments directed at EQCA at his Towleroad site:
I hate to sound like a 'debbie downer' because the images and issues here could not be more serious, but would Harvey Milk have approved the soporific, feel-good elevator music and the groovy stoned sounding narrator that accompanies this ad? Where's the anger?
The popular gay mainstream news site Good As You, asked readers for their reactions to the ad. Here's a sampling:
1. What a waste of money to air this.
2. Not one more penny.
3. And they STILL can't bring themselves to utter the words "gay" or "lesbian".
4. It's awful... so typical of EQ CA. I don't know what century they are in but it is not the 21st. EQ CA just wants to make more $ for themselves.
5. I wish I could say this surprised me, but seeing as how EQCA has already demonstrated how incompetent they are ... Is there any way to get some people from EQUtah down to help out in California? They seem to know what they're doing.
I like that idea of importing our brothers and sisters from Utah to provide better leadership than we're currently getting from the burnt-out A-gays running the EQCA club. Being stuck with gay milionaire Kors after his disastrous "leadership" on Prop 8 is equal to still having Michael "heckuva job" Brown in charge of FEMA after Katrina hit New Orleans. Can we retire Kors and get new blood FINALLY at EQCA before it totally runs the movement into the ground?
Reacting to all the anger, EQCA's bland and relentlessly upbeat blogger George Simpson posted this "drop dead" message:
Potential allies, people on the fence about issues like marriage, they often don’t understand the centuries of persecution our community has faced. Moreover, all too often, people from our own community don’t understand its history.
The ad includes images from our long history of struggle, including heroes like Harvey Milk who said “you’ve got to give them hope.”
Barack Obama won by a landslide with his simple message of hope. It could work for our movement, too. He didn’t win by angrily lashing out at George Bush’s mistakes over the airwaves—and there was plenty to be angry about. Anger is not going to move people. Showing our history and creating empathy will.
Where is the proof that gay anger is not going to move people? Just because a fool at EQCA says something, doesn't make it true. Considering the folks who've created the new ads are the same ones who gave us the lousy losing ads for No on 8, only idiots will accept that they now know what they are talking about when they say showing part of our collective gay history will move people.
If EQCA's blogger George Simpson and his boss Kors are such experts at using social marketing to create change for gays, why did we lose Prop 8? And if they've truly heard the anger of the gay grassroots in the last four months, and EQCA has rebuilt bridges they burned to gay activists across the Golden State, why the eff don't we see it reflected in their new ad and strong embrace of the spot?
As long as Kors and his sycophants continue in their clueless and closeted ways, any dollar donated to them might as well just be used as toilet paper and CA gays will have an even longer road to equality than necessary.
(Photo credit: A doped-looking Kors at the January EQCA summit in LA, snapped by Rex Wockner.)
15 comments:
With respect, Michael ... I'm not saying that I condone this ad, nor am I disagreeing with your points about the need to shatter the closet and stand up for our rights ... but my personal belief is that there is a very big difference between stridency and vitriol and the fine line between the two is, in my opinion, all too often crossed ... and in doing so we not only repel members of our own community but - more to the point - we repel those who we *really* need ... namely the larger population of straight folks whose support will be critical for any successful efforts. Please know that I'm not discounting the need to respect and honor our own ... far from it ... But I do think that finding a better balance between standing up and speaking out and sounding like a bunch of petulant whiners is a balance we've not *yet* managed to strike.
I'm hopeful we shall.
As always, in solidarity ...
there can be no real solidarity with the inept geoff kors in charge of 'our' statewide org. until he steps down as ED of EQCA, say, becomes the chief fundraiser, and new leadership takes over the org, i will not rest in peace.
it is time to dump kors.
Michael,
Isn't it telling that EQCA's ad shows the word "Fag" on a sign but they can't muster the courage to say the word "gay" out loud and with pride in the same ad?
I find it incredible.
"The ad includes images from our long history of struggle, including heroes like Harvey Milk who said “you’ve got to give them hope.”
Jesus Christ. This idiot sounds more like Marie Antoinette than Harvey Milk. If gays continue to give their money blindly to these organizations, they don't actually deserve the right to marry or any of the other rights they timidly beg for. Begging for a place at the table has really gotten the gay community far in the last 20 years, hasn't it. Listening to people at the Prop 8 event last week made me realize how difficult this battle will be as long as people continue to give these morons money and platforms. As George Simpson's post demonstrates, their problem is they would sooner counter Jeffrey Dahmer references with Richard Simmons rather than Ted Bundy. That's their problem.
Yes this is a class issue. ASnd we're not going to get anywhere until we recognize the role that class plays in our culture as a whole and LBGT culture in particular.
Gay Power comes from the streets, not from the suites!
From Vermont, on the brink of marriage equality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1gr2aZTzx0&feature=channel_page
From Massachusetts, which fought for many, many years to keep marriage, successfully, and significantly on the grounds that CA establishment gays could have started on a long time ago, rather than now. But instead, they flushed the $45 milion with their friends and career contacts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQBfrImBYBA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oG3M1tRn7E&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuMGyUhAPu4&feature=channel_page
This last one, by the way, it what Ogilvy PR tried to copy with their first commercial, the Thorons. But they missed the point. They made Mr. & Mrs. Thoron read some script. You didn't know their daughter's name. If she was married. I happen to know the parents got a little emotional during the shoot, standing up for their kid, as any parent would. You have to wonder what might have happened if anyone had used that.
So what you're saying, Michael, is that you want design by committee, resulting in ads that are based primarily on what that subset of gay people who typically show up at activist rallies and townhall meetings thinks are good?
yep, it would be a start at bringing in more of the community to this supposed 'community-based' org, EQCA, if they had a committee or two, and a committee for average gays, not just the a-gay who can afford to attend galas.
what would be so terrible if EQCA had committees?
All these issues are thorny because our gay orgs dont really believe in grassroots organizing as more and more wealthy people control the orgs -- some do it because they got nothing else in their lives going on and what better way to get name recognition, feel powerful and good about yourself. Their money gives them access to boards, senior management positions and so on. They don't represent the diversity of our community and bring their own prejuidices to the table, namely, race and class. I can name quite a few people in gay orgs who didn't rise through the ranks but rather "appointed" themselves to be our "leaders." That way they keep like minded people in top management to share monies, career contacts, power and networks. But then we the entire gay community pay a price with hardly any progress made on the issues which affect middle class or poor LGBT persons.
For those reasons you can see why there are no people of color on EQCA statff except that newly hired communication person..how can this Cors lead the whole community and fight for equality if he can't even show diversity with in his own group. Can you imagine what does the gay community look like from outside presented by these Agays to the world..in words of a blogger -- crowd at Republican Convention.
>>Barack Obama won by a landslide with his simple message of hope. It could work for our movement, too.
In the last 40 days, the stock market has tanked and budget deficits have blasted into Carl Sagan types of numbers.
One would be well advised to bring anything related to BHO's name into this. It would just remind people we need that they're 401K is down 65% and they won't be retiring anytime soon.
How can they call what they're doing Obama style politics? Obama built a movement from the ground up. He knew the power of the grassroots and utilized his experience as a community organizer to get people involved. He wasn't afraid to address problems and controversies in his campaign HEAD ON.
EQCA is using CLINTON era politics, trying to weasel their way into fundraising and "not causing a fuss" but avoiding "controversial terms". Maybe, they think, if we can get people to FORGET that it's gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people that we're talking about here. Maybe THEN they'll support us and everything will be hunky-dory.
The wealthy A-Gays attend their galas, have their board meetings and take their vacations in the middle of a damned election cycle all while patting themselves on the back for what their doing for their "brothers and sisters" across the state. They operate in a politics where supportive church leaders (supportive church leaders in the African-American community for heaven's sake!) are told that they are unimportant and they don't matter.
Have they forgotten that not every LGBT person in this state or in this country for that matter is wealthy and white? How about the gay kids attending those churches?
They are not giving hope to anybody. You do not give hope through bowing your head and putting your ears back. You do it by, let's say, standing up at the Oscars and telling Gay and Lesbian TEENS that there's a place for them in this world.
I disagree with you on one thing, Michael. We shouldn't kick Kors out of his position at EQCA. I say SCREW EQCA. As a community, let's stop giving them money and start a grassroots group that will give damn about the 95% of us who can't write them an enormous check.
Sorry for the long comment.
Off of the airwaves and into the communities!
One size fits all TV ads cannot sway people as well as a people to people grassroots campaign would.
But that would place the A-Gays outside their comfort zone and force them to cede control.
-marc
marc salomon
On this particular ad, I have to disagree with you Michael. And as much as I love to hate EQCA, this is a good ad -- now whether it is used wisely is another matter.
What this ad reminded me of was a quote of Bayard Rustin's:
"[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment."
--Bayard Rustin; From Montgomery to Stonewall (1986)
I think that this ad is an effective, because it makes very clear -- I think -- to people who oppose LGBT equality, just which side of history they are on. We know that we are on the side of right, on the side of justice, on the side of truth and we know that the arc of history is bending (albeit erratically and at a snails pace) toward the validation of our dignity as human beings. John Q. Public needs to understand that the era of being able to hide behind religion and "tradition" as justification for his own intellectual laziness and moral bigotry is drawing to a close and this ad is a step in that direction.
I agree with Rustin, our job is not to make people love us, our job is to create an environment where open hostility to our equality is scorned, regarded with contempt, and where the individuals behind it are deemed unworthy of of our attention or respect.
If this ad only airs in West Hollywood and San Francisco, then you are right, it is a self-loathing piece of crap and EQCA should be ashamed of itself. If they actually have the balls to air it where it should be seen (that is, everywhere between Modesto and Bakersfield), then it has value and should be supported.
Yes, it would be terrible if campaigns were designed by committees--especially those things which required creative input. That's exactly what I'm saying.
You're getting so ridiculous that I'm almost ready to use your opinion as a litmus test for a GOOD ad: It's ready to go if Petrelis says NO.
Jesus fucking Christ, you're about as far away from the demographic of those who voted Yes on 8 as can be. And i'm willing to wager you have very little idea what it would actually take to convince people like that to vote in our favor.
But hey, as long as we feel GOOD about the ads we put out there, who cares, right? At least we all had our INPUT heard and our committees in place, right?
I agree that money has been allowed to become the determining factor as far as "leadership" in the "community." But that goes back at least 15 years, when the gay mainstream started pushing the "we're just like you" theme to straights.
With so many people upset at EQCA and other organizations, I think it is an ideal opportunity for people to form new organizations that reflect the values said to be so lacking in the established groups.
But I'm only reading about people complaining and doing nothing else. At least Join the Impact was/is an attempt at doing something else, but because they are so new and trying to figure out what their function is, people are hating on them for not doing more.
It's almost as if you can't win.
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