This column first appeared in The Amendment, a new biweekly newsletter by Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor-at-large. Subscribe today to get early access to future analysis.
The last year in our politics has seen an erosion of rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, who are facing an assault on their very existence, with bans on books that affirm their experience, to hundreds of bills in statehouses targeting the rights of transgender youth.
A year ahead of an election that again feels existential for millions of voters, Kelley Robinson — who marked her one-year anniversary this week as the first Black, queer woman to lead the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization — sees the moment as one in which she is uniquely positioned to lead.
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I spoke to Robinson about how she sees the fight for equality now, the stakes for 2024 and how she is thinking about her role as one of several Black women and queer people currently leading legacy progressive organizations that were historically helmed by White people. One thing she told me: This is not the worst things have ever been.
“It took so many decades and really centuries of people that were never written into the Constitution, fighting for that to be real, for us to get involved in fights that affirmatively declared our humanity in a country that did not want it to be so,” Robinson said.
She pointed to the gains of the last several decades — including remarkable progress toward ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the legalization of marriage equality — and added that a new strategy is needed to achieve real change in the next half century and beyond.
“We can’t underscore enough that for us to be sitting here is actually the result of so much positive change the movement has driven,” she told me. “I think what’s also true is that we’ve been dealing with the symptoms and not the root causes of too many of these issues. What we have the opportunity to do in this moment is to not just deal with the symptoms, but to address the root causes of white supremacy and of racism that have resulted in a democracy that was not built for us.”
Robinson’s leadership doesn’t just look different; she’s also thinking differently about the role of the Human Rights Campaign, an approach that she said is like “turning a cruise ship into a battleship.”
“I’ve really been kind of embracing these concepts of disruption right now,” Robinson said. Four decades after the HRC’s founding, she said, assimilation should no longer be a requirement for acceptance, agency or allyship.
“The history of the movement has been like, ‘We’re queer people, but we’re just like you! Don’t be afraid!’ In this season, we have to be sure that people are acknowledging that we don’t have to be ‘just like you’ to deserve rights like everyone else. There’s got to be a place where equality does not require uniformity, which I think has been true across a lot of social movements.”
It’s a mindset Robinson hopes will help build a coalition who will stand with LGBTQ+ people at the ballot box next fall. Democratic victory at the top of the ticket is a priority, but so is increasing representation in state legislatures and local governments, where many of the battles to roll back rights are being waged. In those places, the HRC is looking down the ballot to recruit and support candidates aligned with them and trying to connect teachers, local officials and workers with resources that create safer and more equal environments.
And Robinson added that next year’s election is about not just trying to get candidates into office but to set new expectations for a government that legislates with their community front of mind. They want the president and governors to make appointments that increase representation and want to elect a Senate that will end the filibuster to get legislation like the Equality Act passed.
And for would-be allies, Robinson added, that means more than attending a Pride parade — it means advocacy that prioritizes LGBTQ+ people as active stakeholders in our politics.
“Part of our work in the election is about making sure that we maintain the White House and that we maintain the Senate with a pro-equality majority,” Robinson said. “But it’s also that when those folks are in office, they are governing on our issues first, so they understand that to fight for LGBTQ+ people and trans lives, you have got to focus on restructuring democracy so that our votes and our voices matter,” Robinson said.
Outside of politics, Robinson highlighted the efforts of HRC’s membership at the state level to push for equality in schools and workplaces, building on the long-standing work of the 40-year-old group to “think about the ways that we ensure that LGBTQ+ people are protected everywhere that we live, work, learn and heal,” she said.
It has been a year of highs and lows, Robinson reflected, but she said she looks forward to the fight ahead.
One low point — but also a proud one — came in June, when HRC declared a first-ever state of emergency in response to the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation proposed and passed in statehouses across the country. The HRC created a state-by-state breakdown of laws about pronoun use, school sports and drag shows; information about accessing health care; warnings about traveling to states that had restricted rights; and ways for people could get involved like attending school board meetings or filing complaints with federal agencies.
“It became really clear that this isn’t business as usual, and for us to not to do something, to declare something more definitive about what we’re experiencing, was being complicit in the wake of so much pain and harm,” Robinson said.
There were more highs, from her family life to HRC’s advocacy at the federal level. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made progress in areas where they can act without Congress, she said, responding to restrictions passed by some states.
“Having the president at our national dinner speak affirmatively and definitively about his support for the community mattered; last year, having the vice president come mattered,” Robinson said. “Making sure that they are in full-throated support for the community and doing it in a way that people can feel is so important. People are looking to the federal government to really be bold right now to show that there are things that they can do with their power to protect people.”
In the years ahead, Robinson hopes to continue to use her role to do the same, and says it feels like “there’s something really important happening” in this moment with leaders who look like her, who are thinking about intersectionality not as a theory, but as a means of survival. She lives that intersectionality every day, along with her wife, gun violence prevention advocate Becky George.
“The test of our success in the next few years will be about how well we are able to validate all of our identities, and how much we were able to really push for the case for democracy, and the need for all of our voices to be included,” Robinson said. “My wife’s mom and my mom, they never expected much of this country. And now, they truly believe that because of their parenting, because of the work that me and my wife do, that it’s possible to believe that our federal government would listen to us to bring equity to our lives as Black and brown queer women. I mean, it’s just remarkable, you know, seeing how far we’ve come.”
To keep moving toward equality, though, means pushing back against numerous forces in the country looking to halt that progress. The story of our democracy has always been one of the expansion of rights, though our more recent record has included an erosion of freedom and fairness. The expansion has only come with fighting, and the battles ahead are ones Robinson welcomes.
But the backlash is real and it is fierce — and it is organized. In red states across the country, conservatives are winning the culture war with voters, creating a landscape for LGBTQ+ people where their right to exist in public is increasingly threatened. I’ll be watching what the HRC and other progressive advocacy groups do in the next year and beyond to support the candidates and messaging that will help make the promise of gender equality in our democracy more real.
