MetroWeekly is reporting that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and several other LGBT groups were evacuated from their downtown offices today, after the Los Angeles Police Department got a bomb threat call regarding a “national gay rights organization” and passed it along to MPD.

HRC President Joe Solmonese, returning to the building, said this was the second time that the headquarters, at 17th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW, had been evacuated since he began as president in March 2005. The other evacuation occurred during the August 2011 earthquake, ”When we thought it really was a bomb,” said Solmonese, due to leave HRC in June.

A few blocks away, at the building that houses the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, at 1325 Massachusetts Ave. NW, as well as several other non-LGBT entities, staff waited outside as police began searching that address at about 1 p.m.

Vincent Villano, a staffer at the National Center for Transgender Equality tells us: “We don’t know all the details yet. But reasonable people don’t oppose LGBT equality anymore. It’s not unreasonable to expect unreasonable people to react unreasonably.”

As of right now, the groups have been cleared to go back to their offices, though Villano adds that many staffers have headed home for the day.