Brody's Notes... McGehee & Her GetEqual Colleagues Make No Apologies

GetEqual Activists  Photo By The Advocate

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) June 1 | The recent rapid rise to prominence in the media, in what some figures in Washington's political circles have referred to as rabid self-destructive activism, including openly Gay Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D), caused LGBT activist organisation GetEqual's head Robin McGehee to remark;

“Do I want [Barney Frank] talking shit about me in the press? No,” she says. “But to people who would argue that what we’re doing is unbecoming, you’re asking us to settle, to just sit and take it. We’ve been lobbying our representatives for 40 years. We’re no longer OK with being complacent.”

The group has even antagonised and angered President Barack Obama, heckling him at separate Democratic Party fundraisers in California for U. S. Senator Barbara Boxer's reelection campaign.  The President, in response to the heckling from GetEqual's co-founder Kip Williams last Tuesday quipped; 

“Maybe he didn't read the newspapers because we are working with Congress as we speak to roll back ‘don't ask, don't tell.”

Some of GetEqual’s recent actions, such as a counter protest of the Westboro Baptist Church as its members picketed Mississippi gay teen Constance McMillen’s graduation, have been positively received. But critics have dinged GetEqual for throwing fits in public spaces and Congressional hearings, alienating the very politicians they should be courting at this crucial point in time.

The Advocate's Senior White House correspondent Kerry Eleveld, writing with Advocate staff writer Andrew Harmon, in an article titled 'The Rise of GetEqual ' published today online writes:

Although GetEqual appears to have sprung up from nowhere and arrived with haste, the group is an amalgamation of grassroots passion, Beltway savvy, and well-heeled support. Conceived out of a desire to revive the legacy of civil disobedience as exemplified by the civil rights movement and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), the group has both directed and inspired a spate of protests by activists nationwide. Its members have taken on the Fred Phelps “God Hates Fags” clan, disrupted congressional committee meetings, and heckled President Barack Obama at Democratic fund-raisers, as Kip Williams, who founded the group with McGehee, did last week, leading to his second arrest since GetEqual’s founding.

Along the way, they’ve have been portrayed as “rude, rash and paranoid, and virtually impossible to please” — words used to describe ACT UP members in a 1990 New York Times story. The historic compromise vote in the House and the Senate Armed Services Committee to begin the process of DADT repeal did little to modulate GetEqual's communiqués: "We keep asking the question, 'When will the military discharges end?' and have not yet received an answer from the legislative or executive branches," one recent release reads. "It is the President’s moral responsibility to issue an executive order banning the firings under 'don’t ask, don’t tell' until the process can play itself out." 

McGehee says she’s certain that GetEqual is helping to fill a void, however intransigent the message may seem.

“We’ve heard from the top political advisers all the way down to organizational figureheads that we need to have both roles in the movement, from the suites of power to streets of activism,” she says. “Without the street pressure, political insiders would not have made the gains they have.”

Some of GetEqual’s recent actions, such as a counter protest of the Westboro Baptist Church as its members picketed Mississippi gay teen Constance McMillen’s graduation, have been positively received. But critics have dinged GetEqual for throwing fits in public spaces and Congressional hearings, alienating the very politicians they should be courting at this crucial point in time.

Eleveld also comments-Whatever you may think of it, the new grassroots direct action group GetEqual has the ambition — and the funding — to further agitate the political establishment.