The largest gay political group is the Illinois Federation for Human Rights, which has 3,200 members statewide and a budget of $220,000. "We're different from other states in that we have a working relationship with the Republican Party," says federation executive director Rick Garcia. When the Democrats nominated a rabid homophobe, Congressman Glenn Poshard, as their gubernatorial candidate last year, gay support went massively to the successful GOP candidate, George Ryan, who, as Secretary of State, had promulgated a policy of nondiscrimination against same-sexers in his office. Ryan subsequently appointed four open gays to his transition team, including Garcia. But the attempt to add sexual orientation to the state's human rights law has been kept from a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, while in the House (where the Democrats have a two-seat advantage), Speaker Michael Madigan--a Daley crony--keeps Democratic legislators from swing districts from voting for it. Playing the insider game, the federation has hired two contract lobbyists who are political pros, one Democrat and one Republican--but neither of them is gay. Despite a letter of endorsement from Ryan and the four other top GOP state officials, another bill, which would have extended protection of Illinois's civil rights laws to same-sexers, was defeated in the state House by two votes at the end of March.

Office seekers are, perforce, coalition-builders, and some recent victories reflect that fact. A shining example is Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin, who last November became the first openly gay or lesbian person ever elected to Congress (other gay members came out after they were elected). With universal healthcare as her key theme, Baldwin--a well-liked state legislator--stitched together an alliance of labor, students and women (she was also the first female US rep ever from her state) in a campaign that emphasized field organizing, with thousands of volunteers.

Openly gay state legislative candidates also won first-time victories last year in Massachusetts (Liz Malia), Connecticut (Evelyn Mantilla), Arizona (Republican Steve May), Wisconsin (Mark Pocan) and New York, where City Councilman Tom Duane--a staunch ally of the labor-based Working Families Party--became the first gay State Senator in New York and the most senior openly HIV-positive elected official in the country. These wins brought the number of openly gay state legislators to thirty-one--and there were also recent victories for gay city councilors in the District of Columbia and Long Beach, California; judges in Dade County, Florida, and San Diego, California; and a lesbian sheriff in Baltimore.

However, thirty years after the Stonewall riots against police brutality in New York City launched the modern gay movement, same-sexers are faced with a paradox: As more and more people have come out, and as the commercialization of gay culture and gay images has amplified our visibility, the national movement has become more and more conservative. For instance, when the Christian right last year launched its poisonous "homosexuality can be cured" ad campaign, the HRC initiated an expensive newspaper ad blitz of its own. But as longtime activist Leslie Cagan--who helped organize several of the earlier gay marches on Washington--puts it, the HRC's ads "presented images of gay families that in essence said, 'We're just as good as any Christian, white American family,' which simply bought into the right's definition of who's an acceptable American."

Then, the HRC and the national Metropolitan Community Church unilaterally called for a Millennium March on Washington in 2000 around the theme "Faith & Families" without any meaningful consultation with other national organizations--let alone with state or local groups. In protest, two leading black lesbians who had received HRC awards for their work--Mandy Carter, field director of the National Black and Gay Leadership Forum, and author-activist Barbara Smith--returned their awards to HRC. The organization was also roundly criticized for refusing to send a representative to a New York City Town Hall meeting in February on the "crisis of accountability" in national gay organizations (although other groups did). And at the end of April, when HRC executive director Elizabeth Birch and other HRC leaders finally appeared before a critical audience at New York's Gay and Lesbian Community Center to defend the D'Amato endorsement and the Millennium March, paranoia was running so high that HRC spent precious gay dollars to hire two plainclothes security guards with walkie-talkies to protect its contingent (something of a first for a community meeting of gay activists).

Interviews with some sixty state and local activists for this article revealed little enthusiasm for the HRC-led march. Now, NGLTF executive director Kerry Lobel has resigned from the March's board of directors for refusing to "open itself to greater input and scrutiny from the communities we claim to represent" and for concealing "information about March management and finances." Lobel also demanded "the linking of our agenda to those of other groups working for social justice."

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