By Jen Colletta
PGN Staff Writer
© 2008 Philadelphia Gay News
With the Democratic National Convention just a little more than a week away, political pundits from around the country are preparing to converge on Denver.
This year, about six percent of all the delegates identify as LGBT, an increase over previous years’ conventions.
The 2008 convention will host 278 openly LGBT delegates; when LGBT alternate delegates and committee members are factored in, however, that number rises to 360, a 27-percent increase over the 2004 DNC.
The number of LGBT participants surpassed Stonewall Democrats’ original participation goal by about 13 percent. Stonewall, a sexual-minority contingent of the Democratic Party, launched a national campaign last year to enhance LGBT representation at the convention.
Jonathan Marble, communications director of Stonewall, said the organization’s Pride in the Party campaign functioned to expand LGBT involvement at the 2008 DNC as well as raise awareness about political issues among the national LGBT community.
“We wanted to increase the number of delegates and participants at the convention but also get more people involved overall with the Democratic Party so we can eventually have a greater influence on the policy positions of the party,” Marble said.
The campaign’s Web site offered an extensive guide on “the ins and outs of how to run for delegate,” and campaign officials worked with Democratic leadership from 47 states and Washington, D.C., to set individual goals for each state’s LGBT representation at the convention.
According to data Stonewall released last week, 21 of the states and D.C. met their goals based solely on the number of LGBT delegates; seven additional states fulfilled their quota by including LGBT alternate delegates and committee members.
Although Marble acknowledged that many states did not meet their objectives, he noted that 48 states are sending at least one LGBT delegate and 36 have increased their LGBT convention participation.
Nebraska and North Dakota have yet to identify an LGBT delegate.
California leads the pack with 51 LGBT delegates, followed by Florida with 25 and Texas with 20.
Pennsylvania will be sending 11 LGBT individuals to Denver, meeting its goal and surpassing the state’s 2004 seven LGBT participants.
Pedro Rivera, Colleen Cooke, Steve Lucas, Harrisburg City Council Vice President Dan Miller, Jesse Salazar and Jim Shepard will serve as Pennsylvania’s LGBT delegates at the convention; Steve Dorko, Rob Hopkins, Joe Knox and Roger Lund will be going to Denver as alternate delegates; and Renee Gillinger will serve as a volunteer for the delegation.
The participants all have to pay for their own travel and hotel costs, which Gillinger said will top out at more than $1,000 per person.
To defray some of the costs, Hopkins set up a Web site
(www.palgbt.com) asking for donations from community members.
Hopkins said the trip’s real value lies in the impact the delegation can make on non-LGBT participants.
“My main focus is going to be reaching out beyond the LGBT community to push the LGBT issues to the larger population of delegates there so they can understand why these issues are important,” he said.
The delegates will take part in the final approval of the Democratic Party platform, a draft of which was endorsed by the party’s Platform Committee Aug. 9.
The draft includes language that opposes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act and expresses support for expanded hate-crimes legislation and a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
The platform has been hailed by LGBT activists as one of the most progressive Democratic platforms ever, despite its exclusion of the words “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual” and “transgender,” which do not appear anywhere in the platform.
The platform does, however, mention “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
Lucas, 21, a junior at Penn State University, said the convention will afford him valuable political experience that he didn’t realize he could have at his age.
“I’ve always been really engaged in politics and I was really passionate about Hillary Clinton’s campaign when it was going on,” Lucas said. “A friend suggested putting my name in to be a delegate. I didn’t know how to do it at first, but thankfully I got chosen to be a delegate.”
Gillinger, who attended the 2004 convention in Boston as a delegate, said the DNC, as well as the Stonewall Convention taking place next weekend, will give the LGBT attendees from Pennsylvania the chance to reconnect with other LGBT supporters from every area of the country.
“It’s so much fun, and so exciting, especially for a lot of us who live and breathe politics all the time,” she said. “This will be a great chance to get to see folks from around the country that we’ve been working with and share best practices and talk about how we can be more effective in our home states.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at jen@epgn.com.