This week
Advocate.com is going to highlight our remaining People of
the Year, who range from activists to entertainers,
politicians to students. Today we take a look at
environmentalist Al Gore, political strategist Chad
Griffin, and slain student Lawrence King.
Not only did
former Vice President Al Gore make the case for gay marriage
for his cable channel Current, but he's been a
staunch environmentalist way before it was hip.
For more than a
decade, Chad Griffin has used his political nature to
influence Hollywood, but this past year, he used his clout
in an attempt to give Proposition 8 a run for its
money.
Most of the world
only knew of 15-year-old Lawrence King after his murder
in February, but his legacy lives on as another face in a
movement to stop violence and start tolerance in
schools.
Al Gore
Of all the
political surprises in 2008, perhaps none was sweeter than
Al Gore's January announcement -- in a
Current.com video -- that he supports marriage
equality. In the casual one-minute clip, part of the
site's "Make Your Point" series, the former
vice-president, sitting in what appears to be a
classroom, said that "gay men and women ought to have
the same rights as heterosexual men and women -- to make
contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join
together in marriage." He added that he didn't
understand why same-sex marriage "is considered by
some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage,"
asking, "Shouldn't we be promoting...faithfulness
and loyalty to one's partner?"
At the time,
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were slugging it out
in South Carolina (the video went live just days before the
state's primary) and Democrats were focused on
what was fast becoming an epic showdown. Meanwhile,
Gore's remarks, while certainly welcome, seemed
positively out of left field--not least because,
unburdened by electoral concerns, he spoke freely on a
subject most politicians get tongue-tied talking
around.
But after a year
in which marriage equality was bigger news than ever
before, the Nobel laureate seems downright prescient with
his show of support. It also suggests that mass
acceptance of equal rights is not that far away. After
all, this is the guy who was telling the public about
environmental issues well before green became a cultural
adjective.
Chad Griffin
Chad Griffin got
his first taste of politics in 1992 working at Bill
Clinton's campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark.,
under the tutelage of Dee Dee Myers. When Myers set
off for Washington, D.C. -- she'd eventually become
Clinton's press secretary--the 19-year-old
Hope, Ark.-native followed and became the youngest
person ever to work on the president's staff.
One of
Griffin's responsibilities while working on
Pennsylvania was serving as a White House contact for
director Rob Reiner, who was researching his 1995 film
An American President, and the two became
friends. Griffin eventually passed on a job offer at
the State Department to become the head of Reiner's
nonprofit organization, now known as Parent's Action
for Children.
Today the
35-year-old Griffin keeps a hand in both politics and
entertainment as president Griffin Shake, a political and
philanthropic communications agency, and Armour
Griffin, a political advocacy and advertising agency.
So it's no surprise that the folks at Equality
California called him when Proposition 8 fell into trouble
this September.
Griffin
immediately e-mailed Brad Pitt -- he had helped facilitate
Pitt's New Orleans relief organization Make It Right
-- and within 24 hours, the actor had pledged $100,000
to fight the proposition. He tapped Pitt's
collaborator, client Steve Bing for another $500,00, asked
former supermarket magnate Ron Burkle to host a
$500-a-head fund-raiser (featuring performances by
Mary J. Blige and Melissa Etheridge) at his Hollywood
home, and conceived and executed anti-Prop. 8 ads like the
one featuring Sen. Diane Feinstein. Despite all his
efforts, Griffin isn't dwelling on the loss;
he's already begun gathering a coalition to
planning the next move. For the boy from Hope, success is
all in a day's work.
Lawrence King
Lawrence King was
a force of nature. As an eight-grader at E.O. Green
Middle School in Oxnard, Calif., King generated awe because
of his extravagant look (high-heeled boots,
occasionally eye shadow and lipstick), concern because
of his turbulent life with adoptive parents (he lived
the last months of his life at the Casa Pacifica group home
for abused, neglected, and troubled children), and
contempt because of his brazen flirtation with the
school's alpha dog, Brandon McInerney. While he
was legendary at school, the rest of the country
wouldn't learn about King until February 12,
the day McInerney shot him in the head during computer
class. Three days later, King died after being taken off
life support.
Immediately
fingers started pointing -- at McInerney's
dysfunctional parents for raising a disturbed child,
at E.O. Green for allowing King to dress
provocatively, at Casa Pacifica for encouraging King to
express himself. Having already been judged by the
court of public opinion, all these parties will likely
defend themselves again when Brandon McInerney goes on
trial for the murder in 2009. McInerney, who committed the
murder at age 14, is being tried as an adult. If
convicted, he faces a possible lifetime in prison. As
for King, his force of nature has, in death, become a
call for acceptance.
