Human Rights Campaign

Mission

Throughout the organization's history, the HRC's overarching mission has been the realization of equality and fairness across gender identities and sexual orientations. The means to this end have changed during the organization's development. Originally founded in 1980 by Steve Endean as the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), the organization functioned as a political action committee (PAC) that funded political candidates positively disposed toward the needs of the LGBT community, particularly concerning discriminatory health policies and hate crime legislation. In 1989, the HRCF became a membership-based organization—though with an attached PAC—and began to lobby for antidiscriminatory health care and hate crime policies with success. In 1995, the name of the organization officially changed to the Human Rights Campaign, and with the new title, the operations and scope of the organization also expanded. In addition to financially supporting political candidates and lobbying Congress, public education became central to the HRC framework. The HRC uses education, advocacy, political funding, and lobbying to secure equal rights, recognition, and protection for LGBT individuals and families in the home, community, and workplace.

Current Structure and Focus

The HRC operates in conjunction with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC Foundation), which raises and provides funding for HRC endeavors, conducts research, and offers education and outreach to the general public. Education and outreach include such Web-based resources as FamilyNet with information and advice about issues such as coming out, employment-related policies, and state and federal laws regarding civil unions, second-parent adoption, and hate crimes. These educational programs are intended to raise awareness about and concern for LGBT issues both within the general population as well as within the government, and ultimately garner support for HRC causes.

The HRC currently advocates and lobbies for equal rights and opportunities for LGBT individuals on multiple fronts at both state and federal levels, including health care reform, workplace equality, immigration laws regarding same-sex partners, hate crime legislation, federal judicial nominations, and trans-gender discrimination. Legal recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions—a topic that relates to many of the aforementioned issues—is currently at the top of the HRC agenda. At the state level, the HRC attempts to create initiatives that would secure the right to marriage or civil unions with all the benefits given to heterosexual unions. At the federal level, the HRC and HRC Foundation have organized a national petition, “Million for Marriage,” that supports same-sex marriage and opposes constitutional amendments and legislation that deny equal marriage opportunity to couples within the LGBT community.