Washington Blade - July 13, 2007
Lou Chibbaro Jr

In a joint statement released Tuesday, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and MTV's Logo gay cable television channel announced they were jointly organizing the one-hour forum, which is set to take place Aug. 9 in a Los Angeles television studio.

The event will be broadcast exclusively over Logo's cable channel as well as through live streaming video on the Logo and HRC web sites, the statement said.

HRC and Logo organizers have arranged a strict "non-debate" format that requires the candidates to appear onstage by themselves, one at a time, with the others remaining out of sight until they are called in to answer questions.

The joint HRC-Logo statement says the candidates "will appear sequentially" to engage in "conversation" with lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge and HRC Foundation President Joe Solmonese, who will serve as panelists questioning the candidates on important gay- and AIDS-related issues.

"We still need to work out details and logistics with the candidates," Solmonese said.

Solmonese said HRC and Logo were in the process of selecting a moderator to preside over the event, and that the moderator would most likely be a prominent broadcast journalist.

The format was used in a similar gay presidential candidates forum organized by HRC on July 15, 2003, at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington. Seven of the nine Democratic candidates seeking their party's 2004 presidential nomination, including John Kerry and Howard Dean, participated in that event. ABC News senior correspondent Sam Donaldson served as moderator. A live audience of about 500 gay people attended the forum.

C-SPAN, the national public affairs television network, taped the 2003 forum and broadcast it later. It ran one hour and 35 minutes and HRC billed it as a "historic" first-time gay forum for U.S. presidential candidates.

HRC said at that time that the candidates insisted on the strict ground rules barring a joint appearance on stage and barring a direct debate because each had committed to a series of "official" Democratic Party-sponsored debates and promised not to participate in competing debates.

Damien LaVera, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said the DNC was officially sanctioning six debates this year for Democratic presidential candidates at the candidates' request. He said the DNC has not placed any restrictions on other debates organized by news media outlets or private organizations.

Groups such as HRC are free to arrange, through agreement with the candidates, their own ground rules and formats, including whether to structure the event as a debate or forum, LaVera said.

Andy Juniewicz, a spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), said HRC and Logo officials made it clear to Kucinich that the event would be a forum rather than a debate and that the candidates would not appear together and could not interact with each other.

"Congressman Kucinich would have no objection to appearing with the other candidates and engaging in debate," Juniewicz said. "We agreed to whatever format they wanted."

Solmonese said HRC Foundation, an educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign, extended invitations to all major Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

He said HRC Foundation and Logo decided initially they would hold two separate forums, one for the Democrats and the other for the Republican contenders, but only if at least two of the three leading candidates for each party agreed to participate. When Clinton and Obama confirmed they would participate in the Democratic forum, Solmonese said, the two groups moved ahead with that forum.

He said a decision was made not to hold an HRC Foundation-Logo forum for the GOP candidates after former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney turned down the invitation and the campaigns of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not respond.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) was undecided about whether to participate at press time. Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, a Democrat, was not invited, according to an HRC spokesperson, because he has not raised $100,000, a threshold established by HRC and Logo to secure an invitation.

Gravel's campaign expressed shock at being excluded.

"The senator is the most progressive candidate with LGBT issues our country's ever known, and that he's been excluded is shocking. And the reason stated, which has to do with fundraising, is just incomprehensible."

"We're baffled, but we're hoping that we can revisit this with the HRC and the senator will indeed be invited to attend."

Scott Tucker, a spokesperson for the national gay group Log Cabin Republicans, said the Republican presidential candidates have discussed gay-related issues in several debates and forums this year and their decision not to participate in an HRC-Logo forum should not be viewed as an effort to dodge gay-related questions.

"With Melissa Etheridge, a Democratic activist, asking the questions, it should be no surprise that the Republican candidates decided not to participate," he said.

Gay Republican activist Carl Schmid, who is backing Giuliani, said HRC and Logo should have invited Log Cabin to organize a Republican candidates forum because the candidates and their campaigns would have been more likely to participate in a forum organized by a Republican group.

The forum will take place at 6 p.m. West Coast time and 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time at HD Vision Studios in Studio City, Calif., near Los Angeles. The Los Angeles area was chosen as the site of the event because of California's early presidential primary election, which is set for Feb. 5, 2008.

"We're honored to give the presidential candidates a historic opportunity to share their views directly with the LGBT audience," said Brian Graden, entertainment president of the MTV Networks Music Group and president of Logo.

He said HRC Foundation and Logo chose Etheridge as Solmonese's co-panelist for the forum because she is "an incredibly committed activist" who is knowledgeable on the issues important to the gay community.

Solmonese noted that presidential candidate forums organized by other organizations and television networks, including MTV, have used panelists other than journalists to question the candidates.

He said some of the questions he and Etheridge would ask the candidates would come from HRC members and Logo viewers, who would submit questions by e-mail.

Logo describes itself as an "ad-supported television and broadband network for lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) viewers, launched by MTV Networks" in June 2005. It says it has about 27 million subscribers across the U.S.

In Washington, which is served by Comcast cable TV system, the Logo channel is only available for subscribers of Comcast's digital service.
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