A Gay Rights Power Player Who Wields a Mighty Phone

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/fashion/brian-ellner-a-gay-rights-power-player-with-many-contacts.html

IF you are Brian Ellner, a tall, handsome, unrelentingly persistent New Yorker with an e-Rolodex that expands at every dinner party, you can always get through to someone impossible to reach.

Julianne Moore,anyone?
Last July, her film “The Kids Are All Right,” about a longtime lesbian couple, had just been released. She would be perfect, Mr. Ellner thought, to make a video supporting the gay-marriage initiative in New York State. Mr. Ellner had recently been hired by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group based in Washington, to help get the bill passed in Albany.

So he happens to be chatting with an educational philanthropist. (His e-Rolodex includes boldface names from Wall Street, fashion, gay rights groups, educational activists, major law firms and major league sports.) The philanthropist mentions he knows the mother of Bart Freundlich, Ms. Moore’s husband.

The affable but intense Mr. Ellner, 41, is not shy about asking for introductions.

“I would have done it anyway,” Ms. Moore said, “but the fact that he got my mother-in-law to e-mail me and say, ‘Would you do this for them?’ didn’t hurt.”