Chris Geidnder's "State of Play" provides much needed Real Talk about LGBT advocacy

Chris Geidner from Metro Weekly produced a "Real Talk" article about LGBT orgs., Obama and the state of LGBT advocacy.

I was glad to read this part from Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

''Congress and the president have lots of priorities, they really do. They have to be working on the economy, they have to be working on health care, they have to be working on the environment – and they have to be working on LGBT rights,'' she says. ''Their job is to work all those priorities together. Our job is to make sure they put our rights in their priorities. … And you know what? We weren't able to do that this year.

''We had a colossal fail this year. But it is simplistic and unhelpful to say that any particular person failed, because every single one of us failed.

''The community failed. The movement failed. The organizations failed. Congress failed. The president failed,'' she says. ''Government failed – part of why government failed is because they didn't prioritize us. Partially that's because we didn't make them, partially it's because the Republicans were just obstructing everything, partially it's because our community didn't step up enough, partially it was because our community was scattered in what they wanted. But we failed together.''

Despite that, Keisling says the community has to be ''realistic'' about the past two years.

''We still made a lot of progress, we really did. We still got more done in the last two years than we've ever gotten done in two years before.''

Keisling's comments are harsh but not altogether negative and reflect the current reality as assessed by the leaders of many LGBT organizations looking back over the past two years.

I would encourage you to take a look at this piece. Chris is (I believe) one of the few LGBT journalists who tries to be unbiased in his work.

pic from Metro Weekly