Dean Fires Gay Outreach Adviser After Partner Writes Letter Critical of Democrat LGBT Efforts
Posted on | May 3, 2006
In a move to "shore up" gay support, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has fired gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock. The move comes after Paul Yandura, a former whitehouse staff member under the Clinton Administration and is Hitchcock’s partner. In his open letter to various gay rights organizations, Yandura criticizes the Democrats for failing to respond to efforts by the Republican Party to ride the gay marriage issue to win elections and for failing to step up to the plate on gay issues in general. Yandura suggested groups withhold donating money to Democrats until they cleaned up their act.
The letter reads as follows:
Dear Friends:
The Republicans have announced that they intend to use gay equality issues as a divisive election year tactic- AGAIN this year. Neither the DNC, nor any of the national committees (DCCC,DSCC), have a strategy to combat this hatred (unless you count avoidance as a strategy).
Dont believe me? Ask Howard, Ask Nancy, Ask Harry, Ask Rahm, Ask Chuck.
For many months a number of us have made appeals to Howard Dean and party officials to care about and defend the dignity of gay and lesbian families and friends, in the same way they defend the dignity of other key constituencies.
As the enclosed article shows, the DNC is fighting the vicious attacks being waged upon immigrants by the Republican party. Its the right thing to do and I applaud their action. Why then is it so difficult for them to do the same for us?
Why are gays and lesbians continually left to fight these battles alone? Where are our allies?
All progressives need to be asking how much has the DNC budgeted to counter the anti-gay ballot initiatives in the states. We also all need to know why the DNC and our Democratic leaders continue to allow the Republicans to use our families and friends as pawns to win elections.
We need answers to these questions. Until we get them my advice is don’t give any more money to the Dems.
-Paul
Given Yandura’s relationship with him, Hitchcock’s firing seems to just scream "retaliation". However DNC spokesperson Karen Finney denies the allegation claiming that "It was decided we needed a change. We decided to hire a proven leader." Yandura does not buy it and I am not sure I do either. Firing Hitchcock answers none of the questions raised by Yandura. John Aravosis goes so far as to draw comparisons to the Valerie Plame outing in which Bush Administration officials exposed the identity of a CIA operative in retaliation for her husband’s exposing a lie perpetrated by Bush about Iraq gaining nuclear weapons material from Africa.
The Democrats have hired Brian Bond, who held the position until 2003, to replace Hitchcock. Bond was recently offered the position of Executive Director with the National Stonewall Democrats and he was expected to accept.
Like many other gay bloggers, I have lost faith in the Democrats especially in the arena of gay rights. This is just the latest example. The party seems to take the gay voters for granted because, with the Republicans making anti-gay policies a full party platform in and of itself, we get stuck voting Democrat just simply because we have no one else to vote for.
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May 5th, 2006 @ 1:55 am
i am curious to see the result of actually having the DNC and like organizations ‘walk the walk’ so to speak on gay issues. (i am, btw, in no way not weighing in on the firing of the gentleman mentioned in this post) but i would like to ask (to no one in particular) what exactly we should expect from party officials and politicians, as a homosexualist myself. maybe my expectations are simply so low as an individual who recently moved from idaho to massachusetts and i am content with anyone even paying lip service…but what is an actual draft of what needs to be happening which is also pragmatic and targeted to win races? i don’t rightly know myself, although i ponder the question often.