Whatever one might think of the group's real-politik approach to LGBT activism, one has to admit that the Human Rights Campaign is pre-eminent among LGBT activist groups in using the press release to maximum advantage.
They've shown their mastery of the flak art once again by releasing yet another rebranding of their annual "Equality Index" survey. The survey is a major undertaking, for which the group deserves praise. And HRC has never been shy about generating praise for itself, as it demonstrates with its flurry of press releases touting the release of a list what they call the "Best Places to Work for GLBT Equality." [see Qnews summary]
And, of course, since Seattle companies did relatively well on the Equality Index [see Qblog post], they are also well represented on the "Best Places" list. Microsoft, Starbucks, WAMU, Nordstrom, and REI had perfect 100% scores on the index, so they're given HRC's "Best Places" seal of approval. Boeing and Adobe --which aren't (any longer) headquartered here, but have significant workforce in the area -- are also among the "Best".
We're not sure whether it's the companies themselves or HRC that generated the press releases that result in these stories, but the rebranding of a previously released survey certainly managed to generate considerable coverage for HRC. Here's a small sample of the stories about the list that have shown up in Google's news search in the past couple of days:
Two local businesses among best places to work for GLBT employees | Austin American-Statesman
Report: Dell, Freescale gay-friendly | Bizjournals.com
Only One Indiana Company Makes Human Rights Campaign List | Inside INdiana Business
Business news briefs | Pittsburgh Post Gazette
That's a good bit of coverage from what bloggers are wont to call "MSM" (for mainstream media), but it isn't matched by the blogs themselves, esepecially not by the LGBT bloggers like the small, but fairly representative sample that we include in the Qticker section on our home page.
Most queer bloggers and a high percentage of activists (who are, these days, often one and the same) have still not forgiven HRC for succumbing to political reality by -- eventually -- throwing support to the legislative compromise that managed to get an LGB non-discrimination bill passed by the House. Of course, it was an LGB-No-T bill that passed the chamber, rather than the fully inclusive version that activists/bloggers had insisted on. HRC's competing national activist group "NGLTF -- The Task Force" led the charge against reality and managed to get most local activist groups, including Equal Rights Washington and the Pride Foundation here, to support their position that it was better to have no protections at all if Congress couldn't manage to pass a fully inclusive bill.
Even though HRC's "Equality Index" and its "Best Places" awards mark off points for companies that fail to include the "T" in in their employment policies, bloggers don't see ready to forgive the group for its refusal to mount a forlorn hope for the "T" in Congress. Amazon, for example, isn't on the "Best Places" list because it fails to provide protection from bias because of gender identity or expression and doesn't offer diversity training on that issue.
The list could have provided bloggers and local activist group with another reason to explain again why gender identity belongs along with the sexual orientation categories. But they haven't used the opportunity probably because doing so would require them to mention HRC -- a group that has earned their enmity.
And all of that provides yet another example of how childishly unrealistic activists can become when they don't get exactly what they want.