“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may no longer be the law of the land, but the bigotry behind it is alive and well – in our schools, in our workplaces, and, perhaps most unfortunately, in the halls of Congress.

January will bring anti-gay leadership to the helm of the House of Representatives. The right-wing political machine – committed to destroying marriage equality everywhere – will be emboldened and aggressive.

We need your help to keep fighting back in 2011 and to protect our gains. The resources and political muscle we’ll need in 2011 can only come from HRC members. That’s why we’re launching a major campaign to get 2,011 supporters like you to become first-time HRC members this month – that’s just 62 from Washington.

We need you now. Be one of 2,011 new members. Join HRC today.

85 percent of our funding comes from people like you – not from grants and foundations.

So it’s no exaggeration to say that people like you won the debate on DADT. But the battle over this law revealed some shocking truths about the kinds of people who will be our next leaders in Congress.

On the day of the vote, John McCain launched into a ridiculous tirade against “liberal bastions” who supported repeal and declared, “Today is a very sad day.” He was so angry that he stormed out of the Senate.

And after we won, Sen. Jon Kyl said that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would literally “cost lives.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert suggested during the House debate that repealing DADT would move us “toward the end of [our] existence as a great nation.”

Carmen – we’ve got only four weeks to prepare for the next twelve months of attacks from right-wing groups and lawmakers alike. Extremists are emboldened across the country – and now there will be even more of them in Washington. They’re likely to go after marriage equality in multiple states, to introduce new bans on adoption rights, and to fight tooth and nail to roll back the anti-discrimination laws we’ve already passed.

Your membership gift will serve as a clear response to the urgent threats we face. With your support, we’ll go right to work in Congress and around the country, defending our progress and fighting for marriage equality. We’ll be keeping our foot on the gas as we take on opponents of equality like the National Organization for Marriage. Our NOM Exposed campaign has upended the marriage debate by uncovering the dirty secrets of this radical anti-LGBT group.

We’ve got a lot of work to do and very little time to do it. We can make 2011 a year of even more progress for the LGBT rights movement. Carmen, we need 62 members from Washington in 2011. Be one of them.

Join HRC today.

Everything we’ve achieved and everything we will achieve is because of you.

On to 2011,

Joe Solmonese
President

P.S. Please accept my deepest gratitude if you’ve already put a check in the mail or given to HRC by some other means. If you haven’t yet contributed, I hope you’ll consider making a gift now so that we can keep making progress toward a more equal nation.