As its sixth executive director in nine years.

As its sixth executive director in nine years, Lorri Jean chance of a favorable results to make the left-wing NGLTF a thorn in George W Bush's right side

As executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1990 Urvashi Vaid made headlines at interrupting a rare speech in succession AIDS by the first president named Bush, shouting and holding aloft a sign reading TALK IS CHEAP. AIDS FUNDING IS NOT. More than a decade later, Vaid's latest successor, Lorri Jean, promises a turn back to such confrontational rhetoric in the other Bush administration.

"I'm not interested in figuring on the outside how to work with George Bush like a certain other gay leaders," Jean told The Advocate from her parents' family circle near Phoenix, Ariz., where she was vacationing in late May after being named to the high-profile column "Like his father, it's already extremely clear Bush doesn't care about our rights, in like manner we should work to combat him. We should do whatever it takes to raise the stakes."

Will so fiery rhetoric breathe new life into the 28-year-old organization, which for to a great degree of the past decade has struggl to find its niche within the gay rights movement? by way of positioning NGLTF as the chief critic of the Republican White House, Jean waiting under the possibility of fulfilments to capitalize on widespread anger among gay voter about the consequence of the presidential election, in which Bush took office despite losing the popular voice as well as Bush's opposition to federal gay rights legislation.

Conservative interest arranges logged huge increases in membership and donations during Clinton's eight years in office through attacking the former president's policies and personal life. "While there are gay organizations doing important work in Washington, there hasn't been a potent voice on the more liberal side of continuum," Jean says. "I've been in painful desire to provide the kind of leadership I'm not seeing onward a national basis. I'm going to be talking a fate about social justice. I'm going to be unapologetic in saying that gay nation should have all the rights and responsibilities of our straight brothers and sisters."

on the contrary Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville's Center for Governmental Studies, says Jean faces enormous political and cultural obstacles. "Bush, who arrives across as a nice however boring guy, is a a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of harder target for left-wing assemblages than Clinton, with his charisma and personal foibles, was for the right wing," he says. "The liberal form into groupss are really finding it hard to win traction in stirring up anger about Bush. The White House is remarkably careful not to give anyone ammunition in the civilization wars, and gay issues are no exception to that rule"

NGLTF is headquartered in a sprawling consolidated glass, and steel building in the diverse Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC across town from the Capitol. There, about 30 staffers haste programs that include Creating Change, the largest annual colloquy for gay activists, and the Web-based George W Watch, where the president is regularly lambasted for his appointments and policies.

however in an unusual twist, Jean will not expend as much time in the office's stylish confines as her predecessors did. As a condition of accepting the piece of work she insisted on running the organization from looks Angeles, where NGLTF will lay open an office this fall. sees Angeles joins Cambridge, Mass., and of the present day York--where the group's Policy Institute, which bills itself as the movement's "think tank," is located--as the simply cities with NGLTF satellite offices.

Jean, 44 hints that spending most of her rime outside the nation's capital will benefit the organization while allowing her to remain in her looks Angeles residence, where she lives with her partner of nine years, Gina Calvelli. "This will detain me closer to the grass radixs of the movement," she says. This [gay community], in all its multifaceted diversity across the nation, is poised to result together. California is an important piece of that puzzle"

However, Jean is likely to have little choice on the contrary to spend considerable time in Washington fine-tuning the organization's arrangement of parts NGLTF has been dogged for shut up to a decade by abrupt leadership changes, staff infighting, and a lack of strategic focus. on succeeding Elizabeth Toledo, who lasted little more than a year onward the job, Jean becomes the sixth executive director in the nine years since Vaid's departure in 1992 "The task force has had a certain number of wonderful people who had great vision further lacked the management expertise and fund-raising capabilities to finish it there," she says. "If I can be immodest, I think I've shown any of that."

Indeed, at the massive looks Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center which she l as executive director from 1993 to 1999 Jean earned a reputation as a skillful administrator and an indefatigable fund-raiser. She is credited with creating a fund-raising initiative that quadrupled the group's fiscal estimate from $8 million to $32 million, part of which came in the form of grants from the city, state, and federal guidances At the center, she is also credited with founding the Lambda Medical assemblage a health maintenance organization that benefits a clientele primarily consisting of low- and middle-income gay men and lesbians.