No Good Deed, Etc...

JMG reader Mike wrote to the Tennessee Equality Project to ask why they'd made no mention of our successful fundraising campaign to pay for the funeral of gay bullying victim Jacob Rogers. With Mike's permission, here's the bulk of their response to him.

We generally do not repost such fundraising efforts because they are not within our organization's control. We typically do not have any way of knowing how those funds will be distributed. With regard to Dan Savage, Joe My God and Towleroad we could not in good conscience condone their efforts out of respect for Jacob and his family. That may seem counter-intuitive on the surface. So allow me to explain.

Each of these bloggers pledged to donate part of the contributions received for the funeral to other organizations. Had they pledged to only raise money for the family, we might have considered re-posting their efforts. Dan reports that the goal was to raise $5000 for Jacob's funeral. They raised $9000. That means that $4000 will be divided between GLSEN, the Trevor Project, and the ACLU's LGBT Youth Project. Will these organizations spend that received money to confront anti-LGBT bullying and harassment and advance policy and legislation to support that effort in Tennessee? We simply don't know. We do know the past practice of many national groups and celebrities outside of Tennessee. Without mentioning names, many national organizations in 2011 used the passage of the Don't Say Gay bill in the Senate and the workplace discrimination law we call the "Special Access to Discriminate" Act (HB600/SB632) to raise funds for their organizations. We know of several examples where these organizations and individuals received such funds and did not reinvest in efforts to promote safe schools or workplace equality in Tennessee.

TEP has been very careful about providing a positive way to respond to this tragedy without making an "ask" of contributions to TEP or other organizations. TEP's email alert about our petition to the Cheatham County School Board did not include any of our standard links to donate to our organization. We believe that it is unethical and morally wrong to raise funds for TEP or other organizations following the news of a tragedy. I do believe that Mr. Savage, Mr. Towle, and Joe.My.God have good intentions, but we could not condone their approach in this situation.

Dan Savage responds: "How many schools in Tennessee has GLSEN worked with? How many calls from Tennessee has Trevor taken? How many cases has the ACLU queer youth project taken on in Tennessee? And how many kids in Tennessee have been reached by the It Gets Better Project?"

As noted on all three blogs that day, our donation buttons were yanked once we reached the goal of $5000. But due to the overwhelming response, a total of $9000 had flooded in by the time we updated our posts. Through the accounting office of Seattle's Stranger, $5000 was delivered to the Tennessee funeral home hired by Jacob's grandmother, whom he'd been living with after reportedly being kicked out for being gay. The remainder was divided equally to the above four organizations, also as promised that morning.