With all the LGBT groups that advocate for community rights on the national level, you’d wonder if there’s room for another. GetEQUAL Now, however, is different. Upset that the original GetEQUAL quickly moved to focus on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, rather than on its promise of racial inclusiveness, co-founder and D.C.-area activist CD Kirven left GetEQUAL to founded the new organization to live up to that unfulfilled promise. As Queerty put it in their profile of the new group:

it’s forming a grassroots army of butch dykes, trans folk, poor old queers, and people of color to contend with Gay Inc. so “fringe queer culture” will finally get some representation in gay mainstream politics and culture

“There’s this idea that if you want a lesbian clothes store you should build it yourself, that if you want to be a member of this community you better have thousands of dollars for the price of admission, just to have access,” Kirven says. “But that doesn’t address the fact that queers of color often lack the education, the training, and the means to raise that money. We don’t usually get a seat at the table until it comes to needing our vote or needing tokens for a photo-op afterthought.”

Kirven is adamant that GetEQUAL Now is not just about the black/white divide: “First, our membership isn’t mostly black; we have Asians, hispanics, transgender people, older people and whites all working together. Also none of us are getting paid, all the organizing is out of our own pockets and we’re really reaching out to younger people and grassroots organizing rather than setting the agenda from above.”

But why do we need a “separate-but-equal” organization, instead of change in the current groups that make up Gay, Inc? Part of it, as Kirven says above, is the need to break out of the high-paid lobbyist model of activism. Another part, she says, is outright hostility towards discussions of racial inclusiveness, even within GetEqual. After asking how the LGBT rights movement could be made more inclusive at April’s LGBT Leadership Town Hall, Kirven says other GetEQUAL members told her she was “dragging the movement down” by bringing up racial inclusion.

Pam’s House Blend has a discussion going right now, trying to answer Kirven’s question.

Elsewhere…

California – Many commentators are saying yesterday’s closing arguments at the Proposition 8 trial won the case for same-gender marriage, but regardless of how Judge Vaughn Walker rules, the case will likely move on to the decidedly conservative Supreme Court. (Pam’s House Blend, Towleroad, Firedoglake, The New York Times)

D.C. – The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce cuts ties with McDonald’s over the COO’s homophobic remarks yesterday. (Joe.My.God)

New York – NYC housekeeper forced to take HIV test as part of her job application. Now she’s suing for violations of her medical privacy, and for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (EDGE)