Human Rights Campaign-Hillary Rodham Clinton

Recently, Hillary Clinton told the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's leading homosexual-rights group in an unpublicized speech, "I am proud to stand by your side." She said, The marriage amendment " was wedge politics at its worst. It was mean-spirited, it was against the entire forward movement of American history. It was the first time anyone was proposing we amend the Constitution to deny citizens rights rather than widen the circle of rights and opportunities."

"In the end, we stopped the Federal Marriage Amendment and we sent a strong message that we will not stand idly by when anyone tries to write discrimination into our Constitution."

She assured the pro-gay group, "I want you to know this is exactly the kind of partnership we will have when I am President."

"I have long supported civil unions," she said. "We're going to make sure that nothing stands in the way of loving couples, gay or straight, to adopt children."

Hillary also said as President she would end the military's policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

At the end of her speech, Hillary joked to members of the Human Rights Campaign, or HRC that "We can accomplish these goals because we have the same determination, the same can-do attitude and the same initials."

>>>Human Rights Campaign<<<

"The heroes are the folks that we probably won't see in Time or Newsweek", said Donna Red Wing of the Human Rights Campaign.... Maybe folks like Williamson Henderson, who was inside The Stonewall and arrested after the first night of the rebellion (sic).... He'll never forget the night he helped give birth to the Gay Rights movement. Stonewall helped unite Gays and lesbians, eventually growing into a powerful force, felt in all reaches of the national spectrum. "Stonewall was the first time I saw in a public way my GLBT community fighting back", said Donna. And, from the S.V.A.'s Jeremiah Newton: "Yes, we were part of the Stonewall Rebellion. Yes, we survived. Yes, we're still here.... It starts with one person standing up for their rights and the rights of their loved ones. That's Stonewall! It's an amazing, amazing story...." reflected Jeremiah. Do they consider themselves 'heroes'? "Well, I never regarded myself as one", Williamson said. "None of us regarded ouselves as 'heroes'. We were all victims of happenstance", he said. "But, after all these years, I think, yes, in fact, we are 'heroes'".

Obituary of Harry Hay's

Henry “Harry” Hay, the founder of the modern American gay movement, died on October 24, 2002 at age 90.

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Hay devoted his entire life to progressive politics, and in 1950 founded a state-registered foundation network of support groups for gays known as the Mattachine Society.

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Hay was also a co-founder, in 1979, of the Radical Faeries, a movement affirming gayness as a form of spiritual calling. A rare link between gay and progressive politics

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“Harry was one of the first to realize that the dream of equality for our community could be attained through visibility and activism,” said David M. Smith of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC. “When you were in a room with him, you had the sense you were in the company of a historic figure.”

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“Mattachine” took its name from a group of medieval dancers who appeared publicly only in mask, a device well understood by homosexuals of the 1950s. Hay devised its secret cell structure (based on the Masonic order) to protect individual gays and the nascent gay network. Officially co-gender, the group was largely male -- the Daughters of Bilitis, the pioneering lesbian organization, formed independently in San Francisco in 1956.

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Though some criticized the Mattachine movement as insular, it grew to include thousands of members in dozens of chapters, which formed from Berkeley to Buffalo, and created a lasting national framework for gay organizing. Mattachine set the stage for rapid civil rights gains following 1969’s Stonewall riots in New York City.

NAMBLA emerged from the tumultuous political atmosphere of the 1970s, particularly from the leftist wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Although discussion of gay adult-minor sex did take place, gay rights groups immediately following the Stonewall Riot were more concerned with issues of police harassment, nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas.

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