WATCH: Saturday Night Live Has 'Fair Point' for Hillary Clinton on Equality

When Hillary Rodham Clinton made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live alongside the show’s only out cast member, the writers had a “fair point” to make.

Clinton poked fun at her own slow decision making on the Keystone Pipeline proposal, which she opposes, and also mocked her slowness in backing marriage equality. Both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders supported marriage before Clinton.

In the sketch, “Hillary Clinton,” played by Kate McKinnon, is drowning her political sorrows with some vodka at a New York bar when “Val,” played by the real Clinton, shows up to provide some bar tending and consolation. 

The two fast friends get interrupted by a bar hand, who is a big Clinton fan, and they talk about same-sex marriage.

Bar hand to HRC: “My sister’s gay. Thank you for all you’ve done for gay marriage.”

HRC: “Well, you’re welcome.”

They shake hands, and Val offers some support.

Val to HRC: “It really is great how long you’ve supported gay marriage.”

HRC: “I could have supported it sooner.”

Val: “Well,” then some more consoling, “You did it pretty soon.”

HRC: “Yeah. Could have been sooner.”

Val: “Fair point.”

Clinton had earlier in the day been at the Human Rights Campaign to deliver a speech to volunteers ahead of its big annual gala. In the speech, she thanks activists for bringing her around on marriage equality while pledging to keep fighting to finish the entire job for full equality.

Watch the entire sketch below:

Lucas Grindley

www.advocate.com/comedy/2015/10/04/watch-saturday-night-live-has-fair-point-hillary-clinton-equality

50 Cent blames Empire ratings drop on too much ‘gay stuff’

Rapper 50 Cent has blamed Empire’s drop in ratings on too much ‘gay stuff.’

The second season of Fox’s hip hop drama premiered to 16 million viewers last week. But on Wednesday (30 October), ratings dipped to 13.7 million viewers for the second episode.

50 Cent, who executive produces rival show Power, shared an Instagram post to throw some shade.

‘There are 3 million less viewers who tuned into last night’s Empire episode!!!! did you watch it?’ the since-deleted repost read.

‘We could not take the extra gay stuff or celebrity stuff last night!!!!’

50 Cent and Empire star Taraji P Henson have been feuding on Twitter since December when the rapper accused the Fox show of copying Power’s promotional campaign.

And during Wednesday’s episode, Henson’s character Cookie Lyon calls 50 Cent ‘thirsty.’

The post 50 Cent blames Empire ratings drop on too much ‘gay stuff’ appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/50-cent-blames-empire-ratings-drop-on-too-much-gay-stuff/

Pope’s Former Gay Pupil Speaks Out More About Their Meeting

Yayo Grassi, the Pope’s gay former pupil who brought his partner to meet the pontiff in Washington D.C., is speaking out more about his experience, saying the religious leader treated him like an old friend.

RELATED: Pope Francis Met Privately with Gay Couple During U.S. Visit: VIDEO

Pope Francis specifically made time for his former Argentine pupil after Grassi wrote a letter to the pope expressing that he’d like to see him, ABC News reports:

“I said, ‘I know you’re going to be very busy but I would love to see you, and if you have time, and if you think that it would be possible, let me know.’ And he wrote back to me and said, ‘Let me think of a time and schedule that will work for both of us.’ Something like that, something to that effect.

“He called my cell phone. And I just couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a prank at the beginning. But he called me by the nickname when I was a student so I knew it was him. … I said ‘Oh my God what are you doing.’ And he said, ‘Well I have your phone number you told me to call you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but call me from Washington … you don’t have to pay long distance!’”

RELATED: Will Anti-Gay Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Be Shown the Door After Kim Davis Meeting?

Grassi brought his boyfriend of 19 years, Iwan Bagus, to the private meeting held at the Papal Nunciature in Washington, D.C., where the former pupil and teacher embraced each other as old friends:

“When he [Francis] shows up on that corridor and I see him, and we embrace, it was so wonderful.

“I joked with him, we told each other a couple of jokes, and then I introduced all my friends to him, and they had things to bless and we talked. He asked me how my business is doing, what kind of food I was cooking, really things of a friend, that a friend would ask another friend.”

Although Pope Francis met with anti-gay clerk Kim Davis, Grassi came to Pope Francis’ defense, asserting that the Pope was blindsided into meeting Davis and had no idea who Davis was. Davis’ Liberty Counsel lawyers maintain that the Vatican lied, saying Pope Francis offered Davis her unconditional support.

RELATED: Pope Francis Did Not Ask to Meet Kim Davis, Did Not Offer Unconditional Support, Vatican Says

The post Pope’s Former Gay Pupil Speaks Out More About Their Meeting appeared first on Towleroad.

Anthony Costello

Pope’s Former Gay Pupil Speaks Out More About Their Meeting

Did Hillary Clinton Quash the LGBT Backlash Over Harsh Email?

Hillary Clinton’s speech on Saturday was a welcomed laundry list of promises to LGBT voters who she’s wooing for her presidential campaign, but it also might have reassured them about any lingering doubt that she’s truly their ally.

The speech before volunteers at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., comes at the end of a week when a newly released email shows Clinton once castigated her staff at the State Department for moving too quickly on LGBT equality. And that email was beginning to set off backlash that characterized Clinton as a weak ally.

In the email in question, revealed as part of the investigation over her private email server, Clinton demanded the name of whoever decided to substitute “Mother” and “Father” on State Department passport forms with “Parent One” and “Parent Two.” The change in nomenclature was quickly dropped after Clinton inquired. But it’s the tone of her email that really raised eyebrows.

“Who made the decision that State will not use the terms ‘mother and father’ and instead substitute ‘parent one and two’?” Clinton wrote to her assistant, Cheryl Mills. “I’m not defending that decision, which I disagree w and knew nothing about, in front of this Congress. I could live w letting people in nontraditional families choose another descriptor so long as we retained the presumption of mother and father. We need to address this today or we will be facing a huge Fox-generated media storm led by Palin et al.”

To get a sense of what was happening among the grassroots before the speech, here’s a selection of reactions to Clinton’s email.

In her column for the Huffington Post, “Hillary Clinton Can Maybe, Barely, Tolerate Your Family,” health policy attorney Corey Prachniak — who is also chair of LGBT Health Link steering committee — wrote:

“Yet in what she thought was the privacy of this newly-released email, Clinton sounds a lot less like an advocate. Stating that she “is not defending that decision” and did not agree with making the form gender-neutral, Clinton allowed that she “could live [with] letting people in nontraditional families choose a descriptor so long as we retained a presumption of mother and father.” The idea that Clinton could barely live with recognition of households that do not have two opposite-sex parents is jarring enough. Even worse is her notion that maintaining heteronormative families as the ideal, and making sure others knew they were second-rate, was somehow doing them a favor….

“What Clinton does not get is that being an advocate, or even simply an ally, means more than begrudgingly taking down the “do not enter” signs on society’s institutions. It means actually helping to hold the door open and let people in.”

Writing for Slate, Mark Joseph Stern warned that “Hillary Clinton’s Email About Gay Parents Should Seriously Trouble Her LGBT Supporters:”

“It’s easy to sympathize with Clinton’s concern about a conservative media maelstrom and insist that, at most, Clinton displayed cowardice, not animus. Four years ago, defending LGBT rights was still a somewhat risky proposition; even President Barack Obama was still too timorous to say that gay Americans should be afforded their constitutional right to marry. But if Clinton was only nervous about political blowback, her choice of words is curious. Why note that she “disagree[d]” with the decision? Why say—hesitantly, almost begrudgingly—that she “could live” with letting gay parents use a gender-neutral form?

“Clinton’s decidedly non-inclusive language might be forgivable if she had a sterling track record on LGBT rights. She doesn’t. Clinton only came out for marriage equality in 2013, in what the Economist dubbed a “farcically late conversion.” Even then, she seemed to endorse the Dick Cheney position that states should be allowed to decide whether or not to deprive gay people of their fundamental right to wed. A painful interview with NPR’s Terry Gross only aggravated matters, as Clinton tried to claim that a federal gay marriage ban somehow granted states the right to recognize same-sex unions. (The act, signed into law by her husband, actually impeded states’ efforts to legalize gay marriage, which the Supreme Court recognized when striking it down.)”

And then there was the notion that Clinton doesn’t get it, a phrase she specifically used to assure the HRC audience on Saturday. Anthony Infanti wrote, for the Huffington Post, “What Hillary Clinton Does Not Get About Being a Gay Dad:”

“What Clinton does not seem to get is that we still live in an overwhelmingly heteronormative world and are always already surrounded by the presumption of mother and father. As a gay dad, I get a unique experience of this world by not just being part of a family headed by a same-sex couple but also by breaking the stereotype that only women are nurturing enough to raise children.

“Yes, it really is frustrating to constantly have to cross out ‘mother’ and ‘father’ on the forms that you fill out….

“What Clinton really missed when she expressed her disagreement and dismay in that email is that on the rare occasion when an individual, or here a government agency, makes your life a little easier by not assuming that you are part of the hetero norm just because you have a child, it feels like just a little bit of weight has been lifted off of your shoulders.” 

In Clinton’s speech at the HRC, she specifically called out discrimination against same-sex parents as one of the remaining things to do. She pledged to defund any agency that refused to serve same-sex couples in foster care or adoption. 

(Watch the complete speech)

Lucas Grindley

www.advocate.com/election/2015/10/04/did-hillary-clinton-quash-lgbt-backlash-over-harsh-email

My Transgender Life: Optical and Other Illusions
Over the years I have been fascinated by my relationship with mirrors and how it has changed.

There were the years when I truly hated what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I hated that I had to wear glasses to see anything at all; I hated seeing my uncontrollable wavy and curly hair; and yes, as you know by know, I was so confused to see that boy, then man, looking back at me when I sensed that there was something terribly wrong.

There were the years after college when I lived on my own, and had long hair, and morphed from the hippie look of embroidered jeans, to the glam days of platform shoes before I got married. The mirror was my friend in those days. The illusion I saw of someone different that who I really was was more pleasing to me, but it still did not soothe my soul.

The years when I was married and raised a family, I had so many mixed episodes with mirrors and the illusions I saw back. There were the good days, the great days of being dad, when nothing else in the world mattered at all — not the future, not my career, not my underlying dysphoria. There were days when there was the feeling of being trapped, and I wondered whether happiness for me was an illusion that would never see the light of day. I never was quite sure who I would see back in the mirror each morning, and how hard it would be to get through each day.

I kept going. Day after day, year after year. Some days were plodding while some were filled with adventure and excitement, but I usually felt I was at the mercy of forces that were outside of my control.

I was taught that what I saw in the mirror was a view of reality. It took me a long time to understand that the mirror was only a two-dimensional representation — one with no depth at all, of me — a real multi-dimensional person. It was only an illusion of who I was. Yet, this illusion had so much power that I never knew it was not the true me.

The power of illusion fought to take over my life after my marriage ended. In 2001, I was single again at 54 years old and after 25 years of marriage, after raising a fabulous family. My apartment became a huge “closet” for me as my gender dysphoria was allowed to run wild. I was a closeted cross-dresser (or so I thought at the time) and would never leave the safety of my apartment. After work, I spent almost every evening staring at the “woman” in the mirror, changing my outfits uncountable times.

Were the optical illusions I saw reflected really me? I wanted this to be true, oh I wanted it so much, but was so confused, so afraid and so full of shame. I knew these feeling were not illusions. I took picture after picture in the mirror to prove her existence. I would look at the pictures over and over to prove her existence. A battle was raging within me as to whether the male version or female version of me was the reality or the illusion. As I have mentioned before, deep down I always knew the answer, but the confusion, fear and shame would not let that answer bubble to the surface for many more years.

When and after I transitioned, I learned that there are so many more illusions besides what we see in the mirror. In my book, No Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth I share an interview with my youngest son and his wife , when I asked him if he had any losses when I transitioned. Their reply on illusions is I believe, priceless. Here is an excerpt of the conversation:

Grace: I have a question here that asks, do you think my transition has cost you any losses? Are there other things beside the awkwardness you mentioned earlier?

Elie: Well, there was not a loss here. I was worried that Grace would be so vastly different from Larnie that there would be a loss, but I don’t feel that you are that different.

Grace: Interesting, because I feel I am vastly different. Since I no longer am hiding who I truly am, I think I am more open and softer. I think I live in a space of compassion now, to others.

Becca: Elie has said that the masculine/feminine piece has never been an issue for you, (to Elie) but since you always want to remember the good things, and not the bad, the biggest thing you lost was the illusion that your dad was happy for his whole life, before he transitioned. The thing that you thought was that everything was always good, always. What you lost was the illusion that things were always good, always. That was really hard for you: to realize that your dad really did not have a happy life.

Elie: Yeah, We always had the coolest family on the block and always had people over. I had good friends whom you knew who never let me over at their house because they had a weird family situation or a weird home or whatever… and maybe we had a similar situation, but we always had an open door.

Elie: It seemed like you were just living your life the way you were supposed to. I see this all the time. Like people are twenty-eight and say, I got a job, I got married, I have kids; that’s just what I do. This is just what you do. So many people seem to do that. We really don’t want to live like that. That’s wrong, that must have sucked.

Becca: (to Elie) That’s the biggest thing that happened after we found out your dad was transgender. You said, “I need my life not to be living like that. My dad has apparently been unhappy for sixty years; we need to make sure we don’t do that.” We always make sure we are living the life we want to live.

Grace: And that’s become my mission, when I heard you say this.

Becca: It sounds so terrifying to not live the life you want. It is so sad.

I am good with mirrors now, and yes my kids understood and understand. Not living your true life is so sad. I learned that it is never too late to live your truth! Be True!

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Gay Escort Imprisoned After Extorting Businessman, Revealing Sordid Video To His Wife Via Text

A gay escort has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for blackmailing a UK businessman, and sending sordid video to the man’s wife of their drug-fueled sex sessions. 

The victim solicited John Walker, 29, through an escort website, and met him in a hotel room earlier this year in February where they both took drugs and had sex, Metro reports. Walker texted the victim the next day threatening he would reveal all to his wife unless he wired him money.

Although the victim wired £3,000 to Walker from his business and personal bank accounts, Walker sent a text the next month to the victim’s wife that featured a video of her husband wearing women’s lingerie in a hotel room.

The victim confessed to his wife and took Walker to court where he was later convicted. Court Recorder Mark McKone lectured Walker, saying he took advantage of the 49-year-old victim’s patronage:

“‘The complainant had been generous to you and that made you greedy.

“‘You embarked on a scheme to obtain money from him.’”

RELATED: Former Rentboy’s Powerful Reminder Why Escorting Isn’t Always About the Sex: WATCH

The post Gay Escort Imprisoned After Extorting Businessman, Revealing Sordid Video To His Wife Via Text appeared first on Towleroad.

Anthony Costello

Gay Escort Imprisoned After Extorting Businessman, Revealing Sordid Video To His Wife Via Text

WATCH: Hillary Clinton Outlines Lengthy Agenda for LGBT Equality

Hillary Clinton went to the largest LGBT activist group on Saturday and issued a thank you for helping change her mind on full equality, while pledging to finish the job. 

“I’m really here to say ‘thank you’ for your hard work and your courage and for insisting that what’s right is right,” she said. “You’ve helped change a lot of minds, including mine, and I am personally very grateful for that.”

In her speech, Clinton promised that as president she will sign the Equality Act, which amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other parts of federal law to outlaw discrimination in housing, employment and everywhere in everyday life where LGBT people are still vulnerable. 

She aggressively went after Republicans with outmoded views on LGBT people, mocking Ben Carson for blaming the fall of the Roman Empire on marriage equality and Ted Cruz for complaining about pride parades. On the more serious side, Clinton attacked supporters of “religious freedom” and the likes of Kim Davis, even calling out Mike Huckabee for “celebrating a county clerk who is breaking the law.” She condemned the failed “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” in Indiana for trying to let businesses deny service to LGBT customers. 

“Think about how that must sound if you’re a young gay or transgender kid,” she said. “The message is unmistakable: There’s something wrong with you.”

Most tellingly, Clinton assured those in the room that “I get it.”

“You know the obstacles that remain better than I do, but I want you to know that I get it,” she said. “I see the injustices and the dangers that you and and your family still face, and I’m running for president to end them once and for all.”

Her shoring up of support among LGBT voters comes after a string of newly discovered information about how uncomfortable she once was in her political career to align with LGBT equality. Among the emails released from her time leading the State Department is Clinton castigating employees for wanting to accommodate same-sex parents on forms by changing semantics to “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” instead of “Mother” and “Father.” And a Bill Clinton biographer said the former president had worried the she is “a little put off” by gays “acting out” and that it might hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York.

That’s a description of Hillary Clinton that would be hard to imagine compared to her appearance on Saturday. 

Joined in the room by past presidents of the group, plus famed Supreme Court plaintiffs Edie Windsor and Jim Obergefell, Clinton drew enthusiastic applause. “There’s no one I’d rather share my initials with than all of you,” joked Clinton, of speaking to the HRC, with its logo splashed all over the backdrop and podium.

Still, Clinton was famously supportive as her husband passed the Defense of Marriage Act and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy during his presidency. And she is the last of the top three possible Democratic potential contenders — Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden — to support marriage equality. Sanders is technically the frontrunner in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to polls, and he isn’t shy about noting his decades-long support for LGBT people and marriage equality.

Instead on Saturday, Clinton touted her pushing for equal benefits for same-sex couples who worked at the State Department, and even made her kind words for a young, gay boy featured on the blog, Humans of New York, a centerpiece of the speech. She was introduced to the crowd with a reminder of her very well-received speech as Secretary of State when she said “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

While Clinton was missing from the marriage equality fight, she outlined a robust agenda of work that remains, including fighting for equality worldwide, and ending discrimination in the U.S. foster care and adoption system against same-sex parents. She even called for an upgrade of service members for those dishonorably discharged from the military under DADT, and she called for transgender people to be able to serve openly. She highlighted violence against transgender women, especially women of color, saying “they are loved, they deserve to be treated fairly.”

“We still have work to do,” she said, “because our work isn’t finished until every single person is treated with equal rights or dignity that they deserve.”

Watch the complete speech below:

Lucas Grindley

www.advocate.com/election/2015/10/04/watch-hillary-clinton-outlines-lengthy-agenda-lgbt-equality

Rep. Jason Chaffetz Announces Bid for House Speaker: WATCH

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) announced he’d like to be House Speaker in a FOX News Sunday interview:

“Kevin McCarthy is a good man.  He’s a big reason why we have such a solid majority. But things have changed and there’s really a math problem.  You need 218 votes on the floor of the House.  There’s 246 Republicans that will vote, but there are nearly 50 people and a growing number that will not and cannot vote for Kevin McCarthy as the speaker on the floor.  He’s going to fall short of the 218 votes on the floor of House. “

RELATED: Rachel Maddow on Kevin McCarthy, Benghazi, and the Terrifying Thought of Him as Speaker: WATCH

Added Chaffetz:

 “I think the American public wants to see a change.  They want a fresh start. There’s a reason why we see this phenomenon across the country, and you don’t just give an automatic promotion to the existing leadership team.  That doesn’t signal change.  I think they want a fresh face and fresh new person who is actually there at the leadership table in the speaker’s role. You’ve got to speak, you’ve got to be able to articulate the Republican message to the American people and take that fight to the president, but you also have to bridge internally.”

Watch the interview:

Towleroad readers know Chaffetz for the anti-gay positions he has taken.

In 2010 he introduced an unsuccessful bill to try to overturn marriage equality  in Washington D.C.

In 2013, when asked about Senator Rob Portman’s reversal on marriage equality and his gay son, Chaffetz said that even if he had a gay son he still would not support marriage equality.

Chaffetz was in the news this week for his ugly grilling of Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards.

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch this clip of Richards shutting down Chaffetz over an abortion chart that was sourced from an anti-abortion group Americans United for Life:

The post Rep. Jason Chaffetz Announces Bid for House Speaker: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

Rep. Jason Chaffetz Announces Bid for House Speaker: WATCH

LGBT Supporters, Opponents Gather for Catholic Bishops' Meeting

As LGBT Catholics and their supporters wind down from Pope Francis’s visit to the United States, with questions about the nature of his meeting with Kim Davis, the news that he met with a gay couple, and the Church’s recent announcent that it fired a high-ranking priest who came out, they’re gearing up for another major event in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Synod of Bishops on the Family will convene Sunday at the Vatican, with bishops from around the world meeting to discuss a variety of issues related to the family, including divorce, remarriage, and birth control as well as LGBT issues. It will continue through October 25.

It’s the second of two such meetings the pope has called. The first one, held last fall, ended in disappointment for supporters of LGBT equality, as the document that came out of the session contained supportive language as a work in progress but not in its final form.

A working paper that is supposed to guide discussion at the meeting didn’t offer much encouragement when it was released in June, saying that LGBT Catholics deserve respect and support but going no further, certainly not challenging the church’s opposition to same-sex relationships. But LGBT activists are already on the ground in Rome and hoping to influence the synod’s outcome.

The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a coalition of LGBT and supportive groups that grew out of last year’s synod, is holding its first meeting, with the theme “LGBT Voices to the Synod.” It opened Thursday and continues through Sunday. At the end, it will have “a statement of pastoral concerns to be sent to the Vatican and to all the bishop participants in the synod,” according to a blog post from New Ways Ministry, one of two U.S. groups in the coalition, the other being DignityUSA.

The coalition has also organized a Saturday afternoon meeting called “Ways of Love: Snapshots of Catholic Encounter With LGBT People and Their Families,” devoted to the presentation of case histories of inclusive treatment of LGBT people by Catholic clergy and laity. The session will include an interview of former Irish President Mary McAleese, who is the mother of a gay son and an equality supporter, by journalist Robert Mickens. It will close with an address by Mexican Bishop Raùl Vera, known for his supportive approach to LGBT Catholics.

Of course, groups that endorse church doctrine on homosexuality — that celibacy is the only acceptable choice for gay people — will make their voices heard as well. A conference titled “Living the Truth in Love,” sponsored by Courage, a support group for celibate gay Catholics, and organizations with similar views, met Friday in Rome.

This all sets the stage for the bishops to engage in extensive debate on the status of LGBT Catholics, as Religion News Service observed. Andrea Rubera, president of Nuova Proposta, an Italian group that’s part of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, told the service he has suggestions for the bishops but is keeping his expectations realistic.

Rubera, a gay man who is the father of three, said LGBT people and their families could contribute much to the church, given the right circumstances. “If we keep having a dialogue based only on an ideological basis, we will never get anywhere,” he said. “We have to meet and create a dialogue on a human basis. … We have to meet real people, real lives, real histories.”

But he doesn’t look for the church to change right away. “If I have to be pragmatic, I think that nothing of what I mentioned will come out from this synod,” he told the news service. “I hope that the synod will be a step forward regarding what they finally produced last year, which was more or less nothing.”

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/religion/2015/10/03/lgbt-supporters-opponents-gather-catholic-bishops-meeting

Hillary Rodham Clinton Speaks to 'Human Rights Campaign': HRC to HRC
Hillary Clinton delivered a passionate speech to members of the LGBT community at a breakfast hosted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). HRC is the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization in the forefront of every fight for the rights of the LGBT community. They have at times been attacked for their lack of diversity and sometimes seem to have had a hard time moving on from the days when they were known as HRCF, nicknamed the Human Rights Champagne Fund. But the reality is running a major organization like HRC takes a lot of money and rich people with money in our society are still too often mostly white and male.

The organization has been making needed strides to become more diverse and we as a community need HRC to be strong and successful. Marriage-equality is now a reality and HRC is leading the fight for a comprehensive civil rights bill. They have undertaken a southern strategy and a global strategy to help members of the LGBT community here and around the world.

Chad Griffin, President of HRC, introduced Hillary reminding everyone he has known her from their days in Arkansas. He shared some slides of him as a teenager with Hillary and quipped Hillary was the ‘first HRC he worked for’. Hillary began her speech saying “Hello, Human Rights Campaign! It’s great to be back with the HRC. There’s no one I’d rather share my initials with than you.”

From there the speech turned serious as she passionately described her commitment to the human rights of all people and reiterated the statement she made as Secretary of State in Geneva on Human Rights Day in 2011 declaring to the world “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” She spoke of where we are as a community and pledged to work with us to protect the rights the LGBT community has already won and fight with us until we secure all our rights.

As we in our own community strive to be more inclusive it was encouraging to hear Clinton speak of the need for inclusiveness in government, the military and society as a whole. Anyone who has followed her career from her days at the Children’s Defense Fund knows she has spent her life fighting for civil and human rights for people around the world including African Americans, women, and LGBT people. She received one of her loudest ovations when she said, “I’ve been fighting alongside you and others for equal rights – and I’m just getting warmed up.”

Clinton struck a chord when she said “Don’t ask, don’t tell is over – but 14,000 men and women were forced out of the military for being gay, some long before ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ even existed. Many were given less than honorable discharges. I can’t think of a better way to thank those men and women for their service than by upgrading their service records, and making sure they get the honorable discharge they deserve.” She spoke of transgender people and said banning them from serving “is an outdated rule – especially since you and I know that there are transgender people in uniform right now.” Adding ” Now we pride ourselves on having the world’s best military – but being the best doesn’t just mean having the best-trained forces or biggest arsenal. It also means being a leader on issues like this – on who we respect enough to let serve with dignity as themselves.”

Clinton spoke from the heart when she said “I’m really here to say thank you for your hard work and your courage. And for insisting that what’s right is right. You’ve helped change a lot of minds, including mine. And I am personally very grateful for that.” She went on to say “There are still public officials doing everything in their power to interfere with your rights. There are still too many places where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans are targeted for harassment and violence. There are still too many young people out there feeling hopeless and alone. Now we assure them that “it gets better” – but it can still be really hard to believe that. Especially when you turn on the TV and you see a Republican candidate for President literally standing in the courthouse door in Kentucky, calling for people to join him in resisting a Supreme Court ruling, celebrating a county clerk who’s breaking the law by denying other Americans their constitutional rights.” Clinton added “I see the injustices and the dangers that you and your families still face. And I’m running for President to end them once and for all.”

She spoke of fighting for national healthcare and ensuring affordable drugs for HIV/AIDS patients. She said “The stakes in this election are high for the country. We have got to stay focused, stay united. You deserve a President who will bring people together – who won’t leave anyone behind. I’m fighting for an America where, if you do your part, you do reap the rewards. Where we don’t leave anyone out. Where you can pursue your dreams however you define them. That’s what I’m fighting for. And I’m proud to be fighting right alongside you.”

This was the most heartfelt and passionate speech many ever heard Clinton make on LGBT rights. It was received with thunderous applause and appreciation.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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