Queer Democrats Decide “San Diego Democratic Club” No
Longer Communicates Their Agenda
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTO: Members of
the San Diego Democratic Club debate changing their name at their September 22
meeting. Jess Durfee is standing at the back, in the center, while Andrea Villa
is sitting at the right.
In 1974, local
attorney Robert Lynn and 19 other brave souls put their names on an application
to the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee to charter the San Diego
Democratic Club. Bravery was required because by signing the charter
application for a club explicitly founded to fight for equal rights for Gay
people — back when “Gay” was still an all-inclusive term for people with a
romantic, relational and/or sexual orientation to partners of their own gender
— they were identifying themselves as either Queer or Queer-friendly at a time
when sex with same-gender partners was still illegal in California. The issues
the club has worked on since — laws to protect Queer people from employment
discrimination, ending the ban on Queers serving in the U.S. military, legal
recognition of same-sex marriages — would have seemed like pipe dreams then.
Until September
22, 2011 the club kept the rather bland name “San Diego Democratic Club” even
as it grew to be the largest Democratic club in the county — and one of the
largest Queer-oriented Democratic clubs in the nation — and, slowly but surely,
those causes that seemed like pipe dreams in 1974 became reality. With Queer
sex legal nationwide, bans on job discrimination against Queer people in force
in enough states to cover about half the U.S. population, the end of the “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting Queers from serving openly in the military,
and same-sex marriage equality legally recognized in New York and several other
states, many club members felt it was time to adopt a new name that would be
more open and out-front about the club’s real agenda.
“The proposal
came forth earlier this year that the club change its name to more accurately
reflect our status as an LGBT [Queer] organization,” club president Doug Case
announced when he brought the name-change item forward at the September 22
meeting. “The original proposal was ‘San Diego Stonewall Democrats.’ We did an
online survey and found that twice as many people were in favor of changing the
name as keeping it ‘San Diego Democratic Club,’ but they weren’t sure ‘San
Diego Stonewall Democrats’ was the name to change it to.” Eventually the club’s
board decided to present three proposals — “San Diego Stonewall Democrats,”
“San Diego LGBT Democrats” and “San Diego Democrats for Equality” — to the
membership and hold two votes, first on whether to change the name at all and
then, if that passed, on which name to adopt.
The case for
changing the name was made forcefully by Jess Durfee, former president of the
club and currently serving an unprecedented fourth term as chair of the San
Diego County Democratic Central Committee. “When this club was first founded,
the name served a purpose,” he said. “A lot of members couldn’t afford to be
out. Today we cannot afford to stay in the closet. We can’t delude ourselves
into thinking people ‘get it.’” Durfee claimed that as many people think the
Uptown Democratic Club, which meets in the same space (the Joyce Beers
Community Center in the Uptown District mall) two days before the San Diego
Democratic Club, is San Diego’s Queer Democratic club since it covers the
Hillcrest and North Park areas, which have the highest concentration of Queer
residents in San Diego.
“Every time
there’s a new wave of folks in political activism, they don’t know” that the
San Diego Democratic Club is a predominantly Queer organization, Durfee said.
“I used to think that identifying myself as president of the San Diego
Democratic Club would ID me as a member of the LGBT community — and women would
hit on me. When we started, we were the only LGBT political club in San Diego. Today the Center has a public policy
department, the Human Rights Campaign has a San Diego chapter and Equality
California does big events.” Durfee also argued that a new name would help
attract new members to the club, citing the fact that five current board
members (including himself) are former club presidents.
Another former
club president, Andrea Villa, was pressed into giving the argument against a
name change after former club treasurer Mel Merrill, who had written the
newsletter article against the change, was unable to attend the meeting. Villa
pointed out that she makes her living in marketing, and her professional
expertise convinced her that “the San Diego Democratic Club has established a
very strong identity.” A name change, she said, “risks confusing our brand.”
Villa also responded strongly to the idea that keeping the current name was
“just backwards old-school thinking. It has nothing to do with wanting to be
closeted. It has everything to do with fully inhabiting our identity.” She said
that even if the club wanted to change its name, it should wait until after the
2012 election, saying that the challenges facing Democrats next year are severe
enough that the club didn’t need the additional task of building a new public
identity at the same time.
The club voted
overwhelmingly to adopt a new name — 33 in favor and only seven opposed — which
triggered the debate over what the name should be. Craig Roberts, former club
president, urged that the club call itself “San Diego Stonewall Democrats” to
align itself with clubs in other cities as well as the National Stonewall
Democrats, the federation of Queer-oriented Democratic clubs of which Roberts
was elected co-chair in March. “Of the 58 clubs we know about, 37 have
‘Stonewall’ in their names, 10 have ‘LGBT’ and the others don’t have anything”
readily identifiable as Queer, Roberts said. Alex Sachs, who served as the
club’s vice-president for political action until he relocated to Iowa but was
visiting San Diego and attended the September 22 meeting, also argued for “San
Diego Stonewall Democrats” as a way of linking the club more closely to the
national federation.
Arguing for “San
Diego LGBT Democrats,” David Warmoth, the club’s media and marketing director,
said, “The mission of the San Diego Democratic Club is to secure all Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people equal rights. We say it in our mission
statement and we should spell it out in our name.” Responding to the argument
from other club members that “San Diego LGBT Democrats” might discourage
Queer-friendly straight allies from joining, Warmoth said, “I’m a member of the
NAACP and I’m not Black.” [Actually, of the board which founded the NAACP in
1909, only one member was
African-American.] “I’m a former member of NOW and I’m not a woman. Only Gay
men and Lesbians of a certain age are afraid that if we tell who we are, no
one’s gonna like us anymore.”
Greg Bolian, the
club’s legislative advocate, argued for “San Diego Democrats for Equality” on
the ground that “the name should reflect the mission,” he explained. “When I
tell people this is an LGBT club, the first question I get is, ‘Am I welcome?’
‘San Diego Democrats for Equality’ is inclusive and won’t be off-putting to any
members.”
Vanessa Cosio,
who spoke as a person under 30 in a debate in which a lot of older people were
trying to decide what might appeal to young people, said she favored “San Diego
Democrats for Equality.” She noted that many of the Queer community’s leading
organizations — the Human Rights Campaign, the Victory Fund (which helps elect
openly Queer candidates to office) and the various Equality lobbies, including
Equality California — “don’t have anything Gay in their names.”
“If the purpose
is to make it clear that we are a Gay club, use ‘LGBT,’” said longtime member
Michelle Krug. “To me, when I hear ‘equality,’ I think it means you’re working
for rights for undocumented immigrants.”
At least two
people wanted to include the word “club” in the new name. One member said that
“Democrats” reminded her too much of the habit of Republicans referring to “the
Democrat party” instead of “the Democratic party.” Alex Sachs said that keeping
the word “club” in the name “keeps us together and shows that we are a
continuation of the San Diego Democratic Club.”
Though president
Case was prepared to have more than one ballot — the rules for the vote were
that the final name had to be approved by a majority of those voting — in the
end “San Diego Democrats for Equality” won the required majority on the first
vote, with 24 favoring it, 10 for “San Diego Stonewall Democrats” and eight for
“San Diego LGBT Democrats.” A subsequent vote to add “club” to the new name
narrowly failed, with 18 favoring “San Diego Democratic Club for Equality” to
22 for “San Diego Democrats for Equality.”
