GLAAD Launches Initiative to Track Anti-Gay Commentators

Zack Budryk
March 19, 2012

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The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has announced the Commentator Accountability Project, which will monitor anti-LGBT activists’ rhetoric.

The project tracks over 30 commentators and activists, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.

“”These anti-LGBT voices are being booked in local and national news as ‘experts’ on the lives of LGBT people, however many reporters, bookers and producers do not realize that these aren’t experts, but people who have dedicated their careers to making life more difficult for LGBT people,” GLAAD communications director Rich Ferraro told Politico. “Being anti-LGBT should not be a qualification for speaking about LGBT people and issues.”

Talk radio host Kevin McCullough, who is among the commentators on the list, has already accused the initiative of “shutting voices down”.

“GLAAD’s aim is not to silence Kevin McCullough,” Ferraro has responded. ”[I]t’s to hold him accountable for what he’s already said.”

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Zack Budryk, a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, has been writing since age 10 working towards a career of advocacy-based investigative journalism.