What follows is a brief history of Outright Libertarians written by one of our founders on the occasion of our eighth anniversary:

September 8, 2006

Happy 8^th Birthday Outright Libertarians

Like so many of our birthdays, this one went by without any fanfare. But Outright Libertarians USA had its 8^th birthday the first week in August. Or it could be the first week in October depending on which event you choose to count, our first organizational meeting or when we adopted our By-Laws and could shed our ad-hoc status. Perhaps the exact dates are in the records somewhere, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember them. To commemorate the event of our founding, I thought I would share with you a bit of Outright’s history, mission, and my thoughts on its future.

In the spring of 1998, I started to plan for that year’s LP outreach booth in the Atlanta Gay Pride Festival. I remembered comments and questions made in previous years from people who volunteered for the booth, and from visitors, wishing that gay libertarians had an organization like the Log Cabin Republicans. So, I started looking for one.

I had already heard of a couple of gay and libertarian groups, and an internet search turned up two others, so I tried to contact them. One was apparently out of business, another did not charter local chapters, the third was a source of good writings on gay and libertarian subjects but were not activists, and the last did lobbying in DC and could not directly support a political party or be active on a party’s behalf. So, I decided to promote the idea that we start our own organization. I set a goal that by the end of Pride I’d come up with at least 4 other people who were interested in starting a new national GLBT Libertarian organization; an organization that would essentially function like the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and be a Libertarian voice in our community.

By the end of Pride that year there were more people interested than I had hoped. Due to scheduling problems, it was the first week in August when eight people met at my home for the first time. We formed an Ad-Hoc committee to build the framework for what would ultimately become Outright Libertarians USA. Those eight people were:  myself, Allan Wallace, then Vice Chair of the DeKalb County LP (I was elected Ad-Hoc Chair); Doyle Jones, Local Representative on the LPGa Executive Committee (elected Secretary); Mark Cole, Local LP and Bisexual Activist (elected Treasurer); Helen Eaves, Secretary for the LPGa Executive Committee (elected Database Coordinator); Jeff Collins, a local entrepreneur and Activist; Helmut Forren, a straight LP Activist concerned with grass-roots party building; Corbett Griffith, a college student and local LP Activist; and Lloyd (Russ) Russell, a long time gay rights advocate, LP Activist, entrepreneur, attorney, and the 1998 LPGa candidate for Lt. Governor. (To our great sorrow, Lloyd passed away earlier this year.)

In the following 2 ½ months we decided what kind of an organization we wanted and put together a mission statement, chose a name, wrote a set of By-Laws, and planned our first public meeting. That meeting was held in a local bar called Menergy (formerly Hoedowns before it moved) in Atlanta October 20, 1998 and featured several LPGa Candidates including our own Lloyd Russell. There were about 30 people in attendance.

Our Name

We held that first public meeting under the name “Stonewall Libertarians” because we liked the images it brought up of protest against the powers that be, of beating the odds and making a difference. Unfortunately, we discovered a similar group in California for Democrats using the name Stonewall that began operations about a year before us and they were in the process of starting an Atlanta chapter. There was no legal reason we couldn’t keep the word Stonewall in our name as well, but knowing the gay community as we did, we decided to find another name.

Our youngest founder, Corbett Griffith, then a first year engineering student at Georgia Tech, suggested a name that was similar to the name of his favorite hangout in Midtown, OutWrite Books. He thought that the word the name was based on, outright, might have a good application for our group. (The dictionary defines out*right as without reservation or qualification; openly.) And we all agreed, our name would be Outright Libertarians.

Our Reach

Our original intention was to build an organization that would support and encourage only GLBT people to speak up in our own communities on behalf of libertarianism and the Libertarian Party. Since then we have realized that there is more to the “gay community” than just GLBT individuals. We were leaving out people, even straights, who love differently than the traditional societal norms. And, we were unintentionally leaving out sympathetic straight libertarians who don't "love differently". Unintentional, because we've never even asked anyone to self-identify their sexuality as a condition of membership.

At the time of our founding, freethinking young people were using the term “Queer” (a word that many of us older folk found offensive because of its usage as an aspersion toward us in the past) to describe themselves whenever they didn’t fit exactly into G, L, B, or T, and to describe their essentially straight friends who had sexual appetites that are not considered mainstream or were questioning (another Q word). And, some of the people who joined Outright in the early days were in these categories, and that’s why we added the Q to the end of GLBT to represent our organization’s inclusiveness.

The LP Climate we Grew Into

In the last 9 years or so, the LP has been getting more members from the right, people who are disappointed with the republicans or the so called “republican revolution.” This has tended to move the party in a more conservative direction with a push to “clean up” the party’s public image and platform by getting rid of downplaying the issues of drugs, guns, and sex. We recognized this trend early and put into our Mission Statement a clause calling for us to monitor the LP for changes that might alienate the GLBTQ community. Since the 2000 LP Nominating Convention, we have acted as a GLBTQ caucus with good results.

Recent Changes

Believing that all politics is local, from the beginning we set up a procedure to charter local chapters. We thought that our requirements were low, but we have since liberalized them even more. One person can now start a chapter and begin the work toward full chartered status. We’ve also recently instituted a new system of Representation that replaces the old At-Large posts on the Executive Committee (ExCom). A State Coordinator/Representative not only represents his or her state to the national organization but coordinates activities within that state as well, such as starting new chapters and helping existing chapters when needed. Just in case someone reading this should want to become their state’s Coordinator and Representative, the state C/R does not need to travel for that position but should be available by phone and e-mail to help members in that state. And, even national Executive Committee meetings are now held electronically (via phone and internet conferencing).

Our Niche

The founders of Outright started this organization to fill a specific niche in gay and libertarian landscape. We were not founded to be a Think-Tank, a Debating Society, a Writers Guild, a Lobbying group, nor a libertarian Purist Society. There are other gay and libertarian groups that try to fill those niches. Our niche is to be a libertarian voice in the GLBTQ community, to promote the LP and its Candidates there, to act as a Caucus in the LP for those who love differently, and to support and encourage each other in these works. That is our Mission Statement in a nutshell.

Our national Chair, Rob Power, now in his 2^nd year, has done a wonderful job of revitalizing Outright. The work is ongoing and I’m sure he would not turn down any honest offer of help. Before Rob took the Chair, we thought we were too small to need much organization and was too anxious to get to work to bother with it, and that attitude cost us dearly. But, we are now on the verge of having the basic structure we need in place for our future growth; we just need to do it. As an east Tennessee friend of mine might say, we just have to “Git-er-Done!” what she says when the time for talk is over and the time for action is at hand.

My Dream for the Future

At the risk of sounding like Martin Luther King, I have a dream for the future of Outright. It is a dream that contains a possibility that the GLBTQ community will respect and seek out our views about the political landscape. Some may think we are as crazy as they think the LCR, but respect us none-the-less. It is a dream that includes Outright Libertarians speaking out and being heard in every state capitol and every major and mid-market city in the nation. And when the votes are counted at election time, districts with a high count of GLBTQ people will show heavy Libertarian vote totals and see many of those Libertarians being elected to office. I would also like to see our Annual Meetings eventually become a Convention where our members can gather in person to learn from each other, encourage each other, discuss the issues of the day, showcase the year’s successes, and to decide the future direction of Outright.

We must start from where we are and work toward that dream, setting attainable interim goals. And, I believe that the next goal should be to flesh out our list of State Coordinator/Representatives. We need volunteers to agree to sit on the national Executive Committee, help other members start local chapters, and become active in the cause of liberty in their state. Then, the national organization needs to develop the resources needed to aid the State Rep’s and local chapters in their work. I understand that these are broad statements, but the idea behind it is to leave a lot of room for differences in implementation and experimentation.

We need to try, even if we can’t do everything we would like to do. Like the advertisements for the lottery say, “you can’t win if you don’t play.” The only chance for achieving our dreams is to strive toward them and see if we can cause them to come true. We may not know for many years if what we are doing will make a difference. But we must go on, because our cause is good and it is the right thing to do.

But What Can One Person Do?

Building this organization into a successful presence in the GLBTQ community, an effective caucus in the LP, and being good at encouraging and supporting each other in our shared work, is possible!

One person can make a difference! You can make a difference! “Git-er-Done!”