National
Will the real Mitt Romney please stand up?
GOP frontrunner supports ‘equal rights in employment’
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has previously endorsed ENDA (Blade file photo by MIchael Key)
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s recently stated support for “equal rights in employment” for gays is raising questions about whether he supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — as well as the extent to which he would back other LGBT rights issues.
The current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination said he backs employment protections last week during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan as he noted gay appointments made during his time as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.
Asked which gay rights he favors, Romney replied, “Well, equal rights in employment, equal rights in — for instance, as the governor, I had members of my team that were gay, I appointed a couple of judges, who, apparently, I find later, were gay.”
Romney didn’t say whether he thinks these protections should be instituted through legislation or some other manner.
A Romney campaign spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to the Washington Blade’s request for comment on whether the remarks mean that the the candidate supports ENDA, pending legislation that would bar job discrimination in most situations for LGBT Americans in the public and private workforce.
Romney’s support for employment rights — through ENDA or otherwise — is unusual for Republican presidential candidates early on during the primary season. Candidates usually veer hard right to win support among social conservatives who participate in Republican primaries. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, for example, have said they would reinstitute “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” if elected.
Still, support for ENDA from Romney would be consistent with a previously articulated position he held in 1994 when he was running against the late Sen. Edward Kennedy for his seat representing Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.
In a letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, Romney recalled earlier conversations he’s had with the group and said he would be a co-sponsor of ENDA and would seek to expand the provisions in the legislation.
Additionally, Romney pledged to “make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern” and said Kennedy, who was known as a champion of LGBT rights in the Senate, would be unable to make that promise to the LGBT community.
“We have discussed a number of important issues such as the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which I have agreed to co-sponsor, and if possible broaden to include housing and credit, and the bill to create a federal panel to find ways to reduce gay and lesbian youth suicide, which I also support,” Romney wrote.
It should be noted that the version of ENDA that was pending before Congress at the time offered protections based only on sexual orientation and didn’t include language protecting transgender people in employment.
Romney also said the then-recently enacted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law was the compromise that was a step in the right direction and “the first in a number of steps” that will ultimately lead to open service in the U.S. military.
According to a 1994 article from Bay Windows, Romney also articulated support for ENDA during a public meeting of the Massachusetts Log Cabin Club with his then-Republican opponent, John Lakian. The meeting between Republican candidates and the gay group was hailed as a milestone for LGBT rights in Massachusetts.
“I will fight against discrimination of any kind throughout our system,” Romney was quoted as saying. “I don’t know exactly where you legislate and where you don’t legislate or how you make that work and where you don’t. But I am not limiting my support of equal rights for all people just to [U.S. Rep.] Barney Frank’s legislation in the area of employment. I would be happy to continue the fight in other areas such as credit and housing.”
Romney reportedly touted that Bain & Company, a Boston-based management consulting firm whose board he chaired, had explicit directions regarding equal employment opportunity in hiring and promotions.
But Kara Suffredini, executive director of MassEquality, said the support that Romney expressed for ENDA in 1994 doesn’t square with his later actions as governor and predicted he wouldn’t keep his promise to support the legislation.
“That’s all the same stuff that he said when he ran for governor in 2002, and then once he was governor, I mean, do a Google search, and you’ll find out how quickly he positioned himself as anti-LGBT in order to benefit his own political career,” she said.
Suffredini predicted that Romney would be “pretty bad” for the LGBT community as a whole as president because of the inconsistency with which he addressed LGBT issues as governor.
“I would say based on his record as governor here that the only thing consistent about Romney’s relationship with the LGBT community is how inconsistent he is,” Suffredini said.
Suffredini said during his campaign as governor, Romney pledged to sign a civil rights bill for the LGBT community. However upon taking office, she said he took several anti-gay actions, such as abolishing a governor’s commission on LGBT youth, which the legislature later reinstated; rescinding an executive order prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation; and discouraging the Massachusetts Department of Public Health from releasing data on public health disparities.
Romney also struck a markedly different tone on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Monday during the Republican presidential debate compared to what he expressed in his 1994 letter to Log Cabin.
“I believe it should have been kept in place until conflict was over,” Romney said, invoking an argument that opponents of repeal employed when legislation that would end the military’s gay ban was pending before Congress.
Romney’s position on ENDA could become a more prominent issue as he advances through the Republican primaries.
Romney remains the front-runner in the Republican presidential field among potential participants in the early primaries. According to recent polls from Public Policy Polling, Romney leads by six points in Iowa, 23 in New Hampshire, nine in South Carolina and 15 in Nevada.
Further, Romney could be the Republican presidential candidate who has the strongest chance against President Obama in 2012. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll published last week, Romney leads Obama in a head-to-head contest by a margin of 49-46.
R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the National Log Cabin Republicans, said his organization would hold Romney to his promises on ENDA should he win the Republican nomination and go on to challenge President Obama in 2012.
“Gov. Romney recently stated on CNN he opposes discrimination and supports equal rights in employment,” Cooper said. “We hope he would stand by his pledge from 17 years ago to prevent discrimination in the workplace and support ENDA.”
While Romney’s position on most LGBT issues may have changed over the years, on one issue he has maintained consistent opposition: same-sex marriage.
During his interview on CNN last week, Romney reiterated his previously stated opposition to same-sex marriage.
“What happened was that the gay community changed as to what they wanted,” Romney said during the CNN interview. “When I ran for governor, one of the big issues was marriage, gay marriage. My opponent said she would sign a bill in favor of gay marriage. I said I would not, that I opposed same-sex marriage. At the same time, I would advance the — if you will — the efforts not to discriminate against people who are gay.”
According to Bay WIndows, Romney stated his opposition to same-sex marriage at the Log Cabin forum 17 years ago when he was seeking the Republican nomination in the U.S Senate race.
“I stand with Gov. [Bill] Weld on that,” he was quoted as saying, “and say that in my view it is not appropriate to authorize legally same-sex marriages and I will continue to endorse that view.”
In 2003, After the Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage rights for gay couples, Romney backed various state measures that would have rolled back marriage rights for gay couples in the Bay State. Romney also voiced support for a U.S. constitutional amendment known as the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban same-sex marriages throughout the country.
Additionally, Romney renewed enforcement of a 1913 law preventing out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts to prevent gay couples from coming into the Bay State to wed. The law has since been repealed by the state Legislature.
Suffredini recalled that as governor, Romney “positioned himself as a national leader” during this time when the first state in the nation was attempting to advance marriage rights for gay couples.
“He did everything he could here to prevent marriage equality — even going so far as to resurrect what we call here the 1913 law, basically an anti-miscegnation law, which hadn’t been enforced in decades,” Suffredini said. “He resurrected it specifically in his words to prevent the spread of same-sex marriage to other states, and what it did was it prevented gays and lesbians from other states from coming here and marrying.”
Fred Sainz, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of communications, said Romney’s frequent position changes on LGBT issues make it difficult to predict how friendly to the LGBT community he’d be as president.
“It’s hard to know which Mitt Romney will show up,” Sainz said. “He’s gone back and forth more on issues of equality than a revolving door at a hotel and appears willing to say whatever the audience in front of him will want to hear.”
Still, some remain hopeful that Romney will continue his support for ENDA. Sainz said the decision for Republican candidates on whether or not to support ENDA should be easy.
“It should be a no-brainer for Republican presidential candidates to support legislation that allows all Americans to work and support their families,” Sainz said.
Federal Government
4th Circuit rules gender identity is a protected characteristic
Ruling a response to N.C., W.Va. legal challenges
BY ERIN REED | The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that transgender people are a protected class and that Medicaid bans on trans care are unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the court ruled that discriminating based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is discrimination based on gender identity and sex. The ruling is in response to lower court challenges against state laws and policies in North Carolina and West Virginia that prevent trans people on state plans or Medicaid from obtaining coverage for gender-affirming care; those lower courts found such exclusions unconstitutional.
In issuing the final ruling, the 4th Circuit declared that trans exclusions were “obviously discriminatory” and were “in violation of the equal protection clause” of the Constitution, upholding lower court rulings that barred the discriminatory exclusions.
The 4th Circuit ruling focused on two cases in states within its jurisdiction: North Carolina and West Virginia. In North Carolina, trans state employees who rely on the State Health Plan were unable to use it to obtain gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria diagnoses.
In West Virginia, a similar exclusion applied to those on the state’s Medicaid plan for surgeries related to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Both exclusions were overturned by lower courts, and both states appealed to the 4th Circuit.
Attorneys for the states had argued that the policies were not discriminatory because the exclusions for gender affirming care “apply to everyone, not just transgender people.” The majority of the court, however, struck down such a claim, pointing to several other cases where such arguments break down, such as same-sex marriage bans “applying to straight, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people equally,” even though straight people would be entirely unaffected by such bans.
Other cases cited included literacy tests, a tax on wearing kippot for Jewish people, and interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.
See this portion of the court analysis here:
Of particular note in the majority opinion was a section on Geduldig v. Aiello that seemed laser-targeted toward an eventual U.S. Supreme Court decision on discriminatory policies targeting trans people. Geduldig v. Aiello, a 1974 ruling, determined that pregnancy discrimination is not inherently sex discrimination because it does not “classify on sex,” but rather, on pregnancy status.
Using similar arguments, the states claimed that gender affirming care exclusions did not classify or discriminate based on trans status or sex, but rather, on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and treatments to alleviate that dysphoria.
The majority was unconvinced, ruling, “gender dysphoria is so intimately related to transgender status as to be virtually indistinguishable from it. The excluded treatments aim at addressing incongruity between sex assigned at birth and gender identity, the very heart of transgender status.” In doing so, the majority cited several cases, many from after Geduldig was decided.
Notably, Geduldig was cited in both the 6th and 11th Circuit decisions upholding gender affirming care bans in a handful of states.
The court also pointed to the potentially ridiculous conclusions that strict readings of what counts as proxy discrimination could lead to, such as if legislators attempted to use “XX chromosomes” and “XY chromosomes” to get around sex discrimination policies:
Importantly, the court also rebutted recent arguments that Bostock applies only to “limited Title VII claims involving employers who fired” LGBTQ employees, and not to Title IX, which the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination mandate references. The majority stated that this is not the case, and that there is “nothing in Bostock to suggest the holding was that narrow.”
Ultimately, the court ruled that the exclusions on trans care violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The court also ruled that the West Virginia Medicaid Program violates the Medicaid Act and the anti-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
Additionally, the court upheld the dismissal of anti-trans expert testimony for lacking relevant expertise. West Virginia and North Carolina must end trans care exclusions in line with earlier district court decisions.
The decision will likely have nationwide impacts on court cases in other districts. The case had become a major battleground for trans rights, with dozens of states filing amicus briefs in favor or against the protection of the equal process rights of trans people. Twenty-one Republican states filed an amicus brief in favor of denying trans people anti-discrimination protections in healthcare, and 17 Democratic states joined an amicus brief in support of the healthcare rights of trans individuals.
Many Republican states are defending anti-trans laws that discriminate against trans people by banning or limiting gender-affirming care. These laws could come under threat if the legal rationale used in this decision is adopted by other circuits. In the 4th Circuit’s jurisdiction, West Virginia and North Carolina already have gender-affirming care bans for trans youth in place, and South Carolina may consider a similar bill this week.
The decision could potentially be used as precedent to challenge all of those laws in the near future and to deter South Carolina’s bill from passing into law.
The decision is the latest in a web of legal battles concerning trans people. Earlier this month, the 4th Circuit also reversed a sports ban in West Virginia, ruling that Title IX protects trans student athletes. However, the Supreme Court recently narrowed a victory for trans healthcare from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and allowed Idaho to continue enforcing its ban on gender-affirming care for everyone except the two plaintiffs in the case.
Importantly, that decision was not about the constitutionality of gender-affirming care, but the limits of temporary injunctions in the early stages of a constitutional challenge to discriminatory state laws. It is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately hear cases on this topic in the near future.
Celebrating the victory, Lambda Legal Counsel and Health Care Strategist Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said in a posted statement, “The court’s decision sends a clear message that gender-affirming care is critical medical care for transgender people and that denying it is harmful and unlawful … We hope this decision makes it clear to policy makers across the country that health care decisions belong to patients, their families, and their doctors, not to politicians.”
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Erin Reed is a transgender woman (she/her pronouns) and researcher who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world and helps people become better advocates for their queer family, friends, colleagues, and community. Reed also is a social media consultant and public speaker.
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The preceding article was first published at Erin In The Morning and is republished with permission.
National
GLSEN hosts Respect Awards with Billy Porter, Peppermint
Annual event aims to ‘inspire a lot of people to get active’
GLSEN will host its annual Respect Awards April 29 in New York, with guests including Miss Peppermint and Billy Porter.
Respect Awards director Michael Chavez said that the event will be moving.
“It will inspire a lot of people to get active and take action in their own communities and see how much more work there is to do, especially with all of the harmful things happening,” he said.
At the event, they will recognize the Student Advocate of the Year, Sophia T. Annually, GLSEN recognizes a student from around the country who is impacting their community.
“Sophia is doing incredible work advocating for inclusive sex education that is LGBTQ+ affirming, working with Johns Hopkins University to implement curriculum.” Chavez said.
Chavez calls the students that attend the Respect Awards the “biggest celebrities” of the evening.
“It is really important for the adults, both the allies and the queer folks, to hear directly from these queer youth about what it’s like to be in school today as a queer person,” he said.
GLSEN is a queer youth advocacy organization that has been working for more than 30 years to protect LGBTQ youth.
“GLSEN is all hands on deck right now, because our kids are under direct attack and have been for years now,” said actor Wilson Cruz.
Cruz is the chair of GLSEN’s National Board, which works to fundraise and strategize for the organization.
“I think we are fundamental to the education of LGBTQ students in school,” he said. “We advocate for more comprehensive support at the local, national, and federal levels so our students are supported.”
Chavez is one of the students that was impacted by this work. He led his school’s GSA organization and worked with GLSEN throughout his youth.
Cruz said Chavez is doing what he hopes today’s GLSEN students do in the future, which is pay the work forward.
“There’s nothing more powerful than people who have experienced the work that GLSEN does and then coming back and allowing us to expand on that work with each generation that comes forward,” he said.
Florida
Homeless transgender woman murdered in Miami Beach
Andrea Doria Dos Passos attacked while she slept
Gregory Fitzgerald Gibert, 53, who was out on probation, is charged with the second-degree murder of 37-year-old Andrea Doria Dos Passos, a transgender Latina woman who was found deceased in front of the Miami Ballet company facility by a security guard this past week.
According to a Miami Beach Police spokesperson the security guard thought Dos Passos was sleeping in the entranceway around 6:45 a.m. on April 23 and when he went to wake her he discovered the blood and her injuries and alerted 911.
She was deceased from massive trauma to her face and head. According to Miami Beach police when video surveillance footage was reviewed, it showed Dos Passos lying down in the entranceway apparently asleep. WFOR reported: In the early morning hours, a man arrived, looked around, and spotted her. Police said the man was dressed in a black shirt, red shorts, and red shoes.
At one point, he walked away, picked up a metal pipe from the ground, and then returned. After looking around, he sat on a bench near Dos Passos. After a while, he got up and repeatedly hit her in the head and face while she was sleeping, according to police.
“The male is then seen standing over her, striking her, and then manipulating her body. The male then walks away and places the pipe inside a nearby trash can (the pipe was found and recovered in the same trash can),” according to the arrest report.
Police noted that in addition to trauma on her face and head, two wooden sticks were lodged in her nostrils and there was a puncture wound in her chest.
Victor Van Gilst, Dos Passos’s stepfather confirmed she was trans and experiencing homelessness.
“She had no chance to defend herself whatsoever. I don’t know if this was a hate crime since she was transgender or if she had some sort of interaction with this person because he might have been homeless as well. The detective could not say if she was attacked because she was transgender,” said Van Gilst.
“She has been struggling with mental health issues for a long time, going back to when she was in her early 20s. We did everything we could to help her. My wife is devastated. For her, this is like a nightmare that turned into reality. Andrea moved around a lot and even lived in California for a while. She was sadly homeless. I feel the system let her down. She was a good person,” he added.
The Miami Police Department arrested Gibert, collected his clothing, noting the red shorts were the same type in the video and had blood on them. Blood was also found on his shoes, according to police. He was taken into custody and charged.
“The suspect has an extensive criminal record and reportedly was recently released from custody on probation for prior criminal charges. Police apprehended the suspect in the city of Miami and the investigation is currently ongoing. This case is further evidence that individuals need to be held accountable for prior violent crimes for the protection of the public. We offer our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the victim,” Miami Beach Mayor Steve Meiner said in a statement.
Joe Saunders, senior political director with LGBTQ rights group Equality Florida, told the Miami Herald that “whenever a transgender person is murdered, especially when it is with such brutality, the question should be asked about whether or not this was a hate-motivated crime.”
University students have a right to protest
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Christian Siriano to serve as grand marshal of Annapolis Pride Parade
Kenyan court bars homophobic protests
Pride season has begun
Md. governor signs Freedom to Read Act
Successful open relationships take effort
HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
