Ken Britt, the executive director of Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird, recently became co-chair of the Human Rights Campaign board of directors. (Photo by Matt Schafer)
KEN BRITT DOESN’T HAVE ANY desire to run for public office, but he was recently appointed to what he considers one of the most important positions of his life: a leader of his people.
More specifically, on Nov. 3, Britt became the new co-chair of the board of directors for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization. The board co-chair title formalizes the status the Atlanta resident has earned over the past 25 years as one of the most dedicated gay rights activists in the country.
“This, for me, really is the highlight of my community activism,” says Britt, 59. “Serving the LGBT community at the national level is really, really important to me.”
For more than 20 years, Britt has epitomized gay success and gay service in Atlanta. He was one of the founders of the gay business group the Atlanta Executive Network, served as board chair of AID Atlanta and Georgia Equality, held other leadership positions at HRC, and donated generously to everything from YouthPride to Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.
Most impressively, Britt has engaged in gay rights causes while serving as executive director of one of Atlanta’s most prestigious law firms, Alston & Bird, defying longstanding fears that being involved in gay activism jeopardizes career opportunities.
Britt had many of those fears when he decided to come out to co-workers in the mid-1980s, but after rolling up his sleeves and joining the early fight against AIDS, he knew it was imperative that he began living more honestly.
“I felt, for my own integrity, I had to come out here, and they would respect me for the person that I was, or I would have to find another place that would,” Britt says. “For me, if I didn’t stand up for the GLBT community and if I didn’t work towards gaining our equality, then I couldn’t expect other people to do it for us, particularly other people who aren’t gay.”
THE DAY AFTER BRITT officially became co-chair of HRC’s board of directors, the nation elected what many consider to be the most gay-friendly president ever.
“So it was a good start for me,” Britt jokes.
But the jubilation over Barack Obama’s victory was quickly tempered by the success of Proposition 8 in California and anti-gay measures in other states. As average gay people began to voice their outrage at these ballot initiatives, some people — especially popular gay bloggers — directed much scorn toward HRC, which they said didn’t do enough to fight Prop. 8.
Britt considers the criticism to be “positive backlash,” though he disagrees with suggestions that HRC is on the brink of becoming irrelevant.
“There has to be a balance between what really works in Congress, which is where we primarily lobby, and the sincere activism that is coming out of Prop. 8 and other initiatives this election,” Britt says.
“There’s a new generation of gay activists popping up, and they’re pushing the agenda further and faster, which I think is terrific,” he adds. “There has to be a balance between what we want, if we could wave a magic wand and accomplish everything overnight, and reality.”
Britt believes his experience as board director at AID Atlanta has prepared him well for some of the challenges HRC faces.
“We had to turn [AID Atlanta’s] mission around constantly and tweak it because that disease moved so quickly and changed so that things became obsolete,” Britt says.
RECOGNIZING MANY PARALLELS BETWEEN the gay rights struggle and the Civil Rights Movement, Britt believes it is time for gay organizations to begin adopting the more aggressive strategies that finally made equality for African Americans possible. Most notably, gay organizations need to be more reactive to the needs and priorities of their constituents, and more forceful in their responses to anti-gay bigots like singer Pat Boone, who this week compared Prop. 8 opponents to the Mumbai terrorists.
“We need to be much, much more aggressive about pushing back against that kind of rhetoric — the lies and deceitful tactics being used by the right wing and Mormon Church to take away our rights,” Britt says. “We need to be forceful in our voice and recognize that if we don’t speak up for ourselves, no one is going to do it for us.”
Britt is hopeful that “low-hanging fruit” such as a gay-inclusive hate crimes law and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act become a reality during the first year of Obama’s administration, but warns gay people to be practical.
“We have to be somewhat patient because the first thing that Obama is going to have to do is get the financial crisis under control, deal with the housing debacle and deal with two wars,” Britt says. “We have to be aggressive and assured about what we want, but we have to be patient.”
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