FROM:  Patti

First, as some context, I'm wrapping up my third year of co-chairing the DFW Nat'l Coming Out Project, and on Friday (Oct 11) we were savoring the publication that day of a special 8-page pull-out section in the Dallas Morning News around our 9th annual National Coming Out Day signature ad calling for the end of discrimination against the GLBT community.  

It featured not only our annual ad, but also included 4 articles about the coming out process (it's our 10th anniversary year in North Texas) and the GLBT community, along with non-profit & commercial advertisers.  This was truly historic for the Dallas community - the first time that a major daily in Texas undertook a GLBT-focused feature like this.  Since it came out <hehe> on the 11th and we were flying up to DC that day, we were able to take a small stack of them up with us - particularly to thank Candace Gingrich, Kim Mills, & Elizabeth Birch who found funds somewhere for HRC to do a full-page ad on the back cover.  Another of our three co-chairs, Gregory Pynes, was there all weekend too - so throughout the weekend we were sharing the special section with folks who had participated in it or helped to make it happen.  Some of our "lifetime of the ad" folks were there all weekend, including Betty DeGeneres and Judy Shepard (who is in our ad with her husband Dennis and the Matthew Shepard Foundation), and we got a chance to share it with them as well.  I had the pleasure of interviewing them both at different times last year, so it was great to see them again.  Betty took one look at the special section and (her many years in the South showing) exclaimed, "Oh my god, this is the *DALLAS* Morning News!...that's amazing!"

At the Saturday lunch, HRC had a media panel moderated by Tammy Haddad that included Mark McKennon (communications consultant for the Bush White House), some journalists from the Wall Street Journal & MTV/VH-1, and Rita Braver from CBS News Sunday Morning.  At one point they showed her segment with Melissa from the previous week's show.  The discussion following was primarily political, with comments from Michael Berman and Andrew Tobias, both of whom were in the audience.  Later "Will & Grace" creator Max Mutchnick walked in and took a seat in the back, but Elizabeth Birch spotted him & had him get up and say a few words about the progress of GLBT images in primetime television.

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Later in the evening, Erin & I ran into Julian Potter, former Clinton White House liaison to the GLBT community whom we had worked so closely with during the ExxonMobil protest in Dallas back in May.  In typical Julian
fashion, she said, "You hussies!  We had 200 crabs boiling at our house yesterday and you didn't call us!"  We had a great chat and got to meet her partner Mirian, also an alumnus of the Clinton administration in Roberta Achtenberg's HUD group (where she & Julian met) and who now works as a public housing policy consultant and serves on the DC school board.  Julian had worked with Al Gore for many years before taking the liaison position & is very tight with the Gores & their family (& of course was very active in the 2000 campaign)...and is the nat'l co-chair of Stonewall Democrats.  We gave her a copy of the special section....she said "This is HUGE! You guys are doing SUCH great work in Dallas!"  Julian then said, "Hey, let's meet Tipper, wanna?"  She then marched us over past the Secret Service folks and introduced Erin & I to Tipper Gore, and Julian gave Tipper the copy of the special section we'd just given her and explained what it was -- Tipper looked at it and gasped, "Oh - my - god....this is the *DALLAS* Morning News!  <looking at each page> ....This is fanTAStic!"  Elizabeth Birch had announced earlier in the evening that the Gores had given a $50,000 donation to HRC earlier this year - their first big donation to anything since he left office - and that they had given another $50K donation to HRC that evening.  Julian was ribbing Tipper about it "Does Al know about the check?" and Tipper laughed, "Yea, one of the benefits of the Supreme Court decision is that we're back in the *private* sector."

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Patti, back in Dallas and STILL beaming about the fine FINE weekend in DC :)

(I had to leave the same signature on both pages... she had SO MUCH to be beaming about! *Smile*)