Change is coming, gay-rights leader tells native state

LITTLE ROCK — Chad Griffin said he came to his native state on his first day as the head of the nation’s largest gay-rights organization to drive home the message: Change is coming, get on board or get ready to be swept into history’s dustbin.

Griffin named head of Human Rights Campaign

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At a news conference Monday in the Old Supreme Court Chambers at the state Capitol, then before a standing-room-only audience at the Clinton School of Public Service, Griffin, the newly minted president of the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, emphasized repeatedly that America’s younger generation overwhelmingly supports same-sex marriage and, more broadly, gay rights.

He drew a parallel between the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s and today’s movement for equal rights for homosexuals, both led by the young.

“Our politicians and our leaders, they’re either going to catch up with them or they’re going to get left in the dust. And they’re going to forever be remembered with a legacy of bigotry and discrimination,” Griffin said to the Clinton School audience. “We’ve had governors of this state and in states across the country that forever have their place in history books because of racial discrimination.”

Griffin praised state Sens. David Johnson and Joyce Elliott, both Little Rock Democrats, state Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, and the state’s first openly gay legislator, Rep. Kathy Webb, D-Little Rock, for ushering into law Johnson’s anti-bullying legislation, which contained provisions to protect gay youth. Arkansas is one of 11 states with such protections, he said.

But Griffin said it’s still difficult to grow up gay in this state.

Interviewed at the Clinton School by Webb, Griffin said he grew up in the church in Arkansas and believes many clergy have become more accepting of gay people, but promised to hold religious leaders accountable for negative statements about homosexuals.

“We all know there is a lot of positive work happening, but what we hear is that hate and bigotry. And so it’s so important that we work with these communities, but also that we condemn the hateful words that come from certain pulpits,” he said.

Before taking the helm at the Human Rights Campaign, Griffin, a White House aide to former President Bill Clinton, recruited the lawyers who had battled before the U.S. Supreme Court over the Bush-Gore 2000 election to seek to overturn California’s 2008 constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. That case is likely to go to the Supreme Court, he said, predicting victory.

He said he preferred a federal solution to gay rights.

“One’s state borders should not determine one’s civil rights,” he said.