junafi. 2003
fíJíTTTiTTTÍTInews
ew National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force executive director
Matt Foreman— the first man to
head the group since the late
1980s— sat down in Chicago dur
ing the Memorial Day weekend International
Mr. Leather festivities to discuss his plans for the
venerable queer rights organization.
M att
in the
NG LTF's new executive director feels the heat
from both sides of the political spectrum by R ex W ockn er
historically, has been that
o the task force spends time
| and resources on issues that
® some people don’t perceive
as gay issues. Is that true,
and is that an important
part of N G LTF’s mission?
M F: It’s true the task
force has put energy into
other progressive areas in
ways that other organiza
tions haven’t. I wouldn’t
say we’ve devoted an enor
mous
or
significant
amount of our resources to
that w ork.... T here are
not enough [queers] to
make things happen with
out allies. You don’t build
allies without putting
some power and credibility
into their areas, such as
choice and affirmative
actio n .... T h at’s the way
in which coalition politics
works, and if anyone
thinks that we can move
the agenda on our back
alone, I think that they are
sadly mistaken.
RW: Actually, you do have some Daddy
boots on.
MF: I' ve worn these boots for about 12 or 13
years— not this exact pair but this style. 1 just
got these. It took me a long time to find them on
the Internet.... I’ve got to have the round toe,
not the pointy toe.
RW: Do you have anything new planned
for the task force?
M F: Just strengthening what we’ve been
doing for the last couple years...state and local
organizing, beating back the right wing’s refer
enda.... If there’s one thing I really do want to
do, that is to figure out ways to use our
grassroots strength to leverage money from the
federal government for our community. W e’re
desperately short-changed in terms of the tax
dollars that we pay and what comes back to ser
vices for our community. T h at’s an opportunity
we have in D.C. We don’t really have opportu
nities around legislation, but we do have oppor
tunities around funding. I also think we have
opportunities around pushing back against all of
the punitive HIV prevention and education
stuff that’s coming out of D.C. now .... We can
push back with our allies; we don’t have to
always be on the receiving end of the right
wing’s bullshit.
RW: The task force has a reputation as a
fairly left-wing group, and yet it gets criti
cized both from the left and the right. A lot
of people on the left think it’s not left-wing
enough, especially when it comes to nongay
issues, such as the war in Iraq. A lot of peo
ple on the right think the task force has long
been infected with political correctness run
amok. How would you respond to the critics
that the task force seems to chronically
attract from both sides?
M F: From the right, they’re right to criti
cize u s.... Our role is to be progressive, to
push the envelope, so that more pragmatic
war, rather than this horizontal animosity
towards the task force for making a statement
either for or against the w ar.... We don’t hold
ourselves out to be the mainstream, compro
mising, apologist organization— and the move
ment is better served when we have those type
of organizations and then the task force and
other organizations.
M iddle
Rex W ockner: What are you doing at IML?
You’re not wearing leather.
Matt Foremans Well, we had a big debate
over what 1 should wear today. [My boyfriend)
Frank said, “You should wear your chaps," and 1
thought, “No, it’s too early in the day to wear
chaps.”
Matt Foreman is the first man to head the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force since the late 1980s
groups can come in behind and get more
from the space we’ve created. We damned
right are progressive.... O ther groups can be
pushing incremental legislation and limited
legislation.
On the left, it’s fascinating to me— the reason
why I think the task force is criticized by the left
is because people who come to Creating Change
and other places know that the task force actual
ly cares what they say and is listening to them. A
lot of other organizations would be utterly dis
missive. I get where that’s coming from.
RW: Some of the criticism from the right,
23
RW: The task force is
fairly routinely savaged by
the gay right. Their argu
ment is that 3 0 percent of
gays in exit polling vote
Republican.
MF: Twenty-five percent.
RW: And something like 8 0 percent of
Americans backed Bush’s decision to go into
Iraq. When the task force aligns itself solely
with the progressive approach to gay liberation
or gay equality, it cuts itself off from a segment
of gays who simply aren’t coming from that
point of view.
MF: There’s a role for a national gay organi
zation to take stands on broader issues that
affect America. [But) I think we would have
been much better served as a community if
people who felt strongly about the war would
have gotten involved with organizations that
were specifically focusing on trying to stop the
RW: When you talk about the task force’s
work on the state and local level, it sounds
reactive. You want to keep us from losing
these battles initiated by the right wing. What
do you hope to do on a proactive level?
M F: If we beat just a couple more referen
da, the right wing is not going to keep going
at it, because now they’re losing [them].
Proactively, we want to pass any kind of
proactive legislation that we can at the grass
roots level. For example, in Topeka (Kan.)
we’re looking seriously at resurrecting that
battle again this year to pass a local nondis
crim ination law. We have two planned cam
paigns in O hio, to advance a nondiscrimina
tion measure in one locality and to repeal an
anti-gay ballot initiative that passed. T h a t’s
just a start. There is an enormous amount of
potential for advancing things, and that’s
where we want to be. But it’s like any battle,
if you can ’t get to the front line because
you’re always being beaten back, then you
can ’t go beyond the front line. I feel like slow
ly but surely we are now beating them b ack ..
I’m also interested in going after, political
ly, local legislators and leaders that have
launched these anti-gay initiatives. “We beat
you, now we’re gonna go back and we’re going
to affirmatively punish you”— people who
launch this stuff, so that they understand not
only that they’re not going to win, but that
there are consequences to it. W e would set up
a PAC and go in and terrify them with a cred
ible challenge.... So we go in, for a modest
investment of money, and torture these peo
ple, which would give me endless satisfaction.
And the word would go out very quickly, “You
know what, this really isn’t worth it.”
RW: Is getting the right to marriage for
same-sex couples something the task force is
interested in?
,
MF: We want full equality under the law,
which, right now, means the freedom to marry.
But we’re also hopeful that we create different
ways in which people can form relationships
and families that don’t come with all the bag
gage and the downsides of marriage. One of
the great things about where we’re going is
that we are creating new ways for people to
relate, new ways for people to obtain rights
and benefits. JT1
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