Tuesday, June 14, 2011

GLAAD Board Member Helped Install Antigay Judges

As the scandal mushrooms regarding GLAAD's leadership selling the group and the community out to AT&T -- having sent an AT&T-written letter opposing net neutrality to the FCC and backing the AT&T/T-Mobile merger -- we are now learning much more about the former AT&T lobbyist on GLAAD's board, Troup Coronado.

Jane Hamsher exposes how Coronado, a Republican operative who once worked for Orrin Hatch, helped to put antigay judges on the federal bench, all in the interest of helping his corporate clients and employers:

After the 2004 election, George Bush wanted to jam 10 extreme right-wing judges onto the bench who had been filibustered by the Democrats in the Senate: Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, Charles W. Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, David W. McKeague, Henry Saad,Richard Allen Griffin, William H. Pryor, William Gerry Myers III and Janice Rogers Brown. Troup Coronado played an affirmative role in helping him do that...

...Now, I know why Coronado was part of the effort. Bellsouth, AIG and BofA were “corporate members” of the group, and the Chamber was in a no-holds barred war to get Bush’s corporate-friendly judges onto the bench. But for any LGBT group, the bottom line should have been that when LGTB rights were pitted against corporate rights, Coronado was willing to give a group of people with seriously homophobic judicial histories enormous power to determine the future of lives of people within the LGTB community.

Why is this guy on on the boards of any LGBT groups? And how could GLAAD continue to allow him to serve after the damage he's done to the group and to their president, Jarrett Barrios, who at this point has lost the faith of so many and has no choice but to resign?