News
Veteran strategist takes helm of coalition to pass ENDA
McTighe says executive order would make issue a partisan one
Matt McTighe is campaign manager for Americans for Workplace Opportunity. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key).
For Matt McTighe, the strategy for passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is similar to the one he oversaw guiding the legalization of same-sex marriage in Maine: Having LGBT people tell their stories about the harms they face under current law.
“The big things are just the need for personal interactions, really trying to educate people using our own personal stories,” McTighe said.
The gay 34-year-old veteran political strategist, who in addition to leading the 2012 ballot campaign that brought marriage equality to Maine had a hand in efforts as a Gill Action Fund operative in defeating anti-gay marriage efforts in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, has been contracted through the fall to head the $2 million LGBT campaign known as “Americans for Workplace Opportunity.” The campaign has a singular goal: pass ENDA.
During an interview with the Washington Blade on Tuesday, McTighe said he wanted to bring the recent success the LGBT community has seen on marriage equality to ENDA in the wake of legalization of same-sex marriage at the ballot in three states and in legislatures in two states.
“We can take those same proven tactics and apply them to other issues that haven’t had as much resources behind them or as much as a concerted push behind them in recent years and see if we can get it done,” McTighe said.
Ian Grady, the Equality Maine communications director who worked with McTighe under the Maine marriage campaign, said his former boss’ ability to work with people of different political affiliations makes him “a great choice” to lead the new coalition.
“In Maine, while he led the efforts to secure marriage, he brought together people and groups from across the political spectrum to build the support we needed to win,” Grady said. “He’s a natural choice to lead this new, bi-partisan effort.”
Foremost on McTighe’s mind is ensuring successful, bipartisan passage of ENDA in the Senate, where a vote is expected in the fall. The campaign has identified several key states with undecided senators where it’ll concentrate on building grassroots support: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia.
With U.S. senators at home in their districts during August recess, McTighe said the immediate focus of the campaign includes efforts “to generate a high number of quantity contacts and quality contacts” of individuals and business leaders who have a personal connection to lawmakers and are able to talk with them about ENDA.
“And so far, that outreach has been going really well, we have a growing list of supportive companies, a growing list of faith leaders who are coming on board and some really high-profile prominent advocates on both sides of the aisle,” McTighe said.
Also on the agenda while Congress is on hiatus is updating the research and polling on ENDA, which McTighe says has remained stagnant for some time.
“The last real massive comprehensive poll on this was done in early 2011,” McTighe said. “So, we need updated research, we need updated numbers. Our guess is that support has only increased in recent years because we’ve seen support increase on marriage and growing acceptance of LGBT Americans across the country.”
Amid anticipated plans for town halls for lawmakers and their constituents, McTighe said he encourages ENDA supporters to question their representatives in Congress about ENDA “as long as they do it in a respectful way that gives them space.”
“It’s never helpful for them to do it in an accusatory way that’s going to put it on the defensive and frame it as, ‘Why aren’t you supporting this thing already?'” McTighe said. “Because the case is for some of these legislators, yeah, we wish all of them were supportive, but some of them just really haven’t had the exposure to the education.”
Three of the undecided senators on ENDA are Democrats: Sens. Bill Nelson (Fla.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.). Nelson has been quoted in the Tampa Bay Times about having concerns over the transgender protections in ENDA, including whether private business insurance policies would have to pay for gender reassignment surgery.
While expressing faith that Nelson would cast a vote in favor of ENDA based on the lawmaker’s record, McTighe said the way to bring the Florida senator on board is through additional education and lobbying from transgender constituents.
“I think the things that Sen. Nelson has said and certainly his past voting record shows that he’s open-minded, fair-minded who, I think, gets that these are his constituents, too, and anybody needs to be protected,” McTighe said.
McTighe said he’s “optimistic” that ENDA would find 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, but added “it’s not going to be easy” getting there and he wouldn’t predict the number of votes that would be ultimately won on the Senate floor.
The Senate vote has such prominence in McTighe’s strategy that he said he wouldn’t openly speculate about the strategy for passing ENDA in the House, saying it’s “premature” to talk about ideas like a discharge petition or the Senate inserting ENDA into a larger bill that the House would later pass.
“The biggest thing is that we know for sure that we’re not going to get anywhere until we actually have a successful bipartisan vote that actually comes to the floor and can overcome a filibuster in the Senate,” McTighe said. “To me, it’s pointless to speculate about what’s going to happen in the House, or what’s going to happen on the executive order in the administration until we really give it our all to get a full Senate vote.”
Still, McTighe said his work during the short-term on the Senate vote is meant to build support for success in the lower chamber of Congress.
“Even though I’m only contracted to oversee this effort through the Senate vote this fall, everything I’m doing and all the plans, field and research groundwork I’m putting into place is predicated on the notion that the coalition will need to keep the fight going in the House,” McTighe said.
McTighe said he sees a path forward in the House following a bipartisan vote on the Senate floor if other GOP lawmakers joins Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in supporting the bill.
“We think we’ve got a really good shot of getting anywhere between two to five more,” McTighe said. “If we can do that, and show that this isn’t a partisan issue, I think a lot of Republicans in the House are going to look at this and probably put some pressure on leadership that this is an issue that so many Americans support, this is an issue in every state you’ll see, in every poll you’ll see support growing, and the polls are only going in one direction.”
McTighe says executive order would ‘inject level of partisanship’ into debate
The campaign is focused on the Senate without looking for additional help beyond what the administration is currently offering. McTighe said he’s happy with the level of support from the administration and Obama’s position on the legislation is clear.
“I think the president has been great in expressing his support for this legislation and expressing his support for the pathway of trying to actually get a bill passed because the administration recognizes and has a long track record of supporting workplace protections,” McTighe said.
Notably, McTighe expressed a lack of interest in Obama issuing an executive order that would prohibit LGBT workplace discrimination among federal contractors, saying that kind of unilateral administrative action “injects a level of partisanship into whatever that debate is.”
“We want to embrace the legislative process here instead and actually work with the Senate, and work eventually with the House to get this passed because an executive order would only cover approximately 20 percent of the American workforce or less through federal contractors, whereas passing a full ENDA, which we’re only going to get to with a bipartisan majority, is going to cover everybody,” McTighe said. “The minute an executive order is invoked, now you’re going to make it a lot harder for people from whatever party the current administration is not in, so in this case Republicans coming on board, it makes it harder for them because now this is much more of a partisan issue.”
The Americans for Workplace Opportunity coalition includes more than 90 groups seeking to pass ENDA headed by a steering committee of eight prominent groups — LGBT-affiliated and otherwise — seeking to pass the legislation. The steering committee consists of American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, American Unity Fund, Human Rights Campaign, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and the Service Employees International Union.
McTighe said these groups working under a single umbrella to pass ENDA is more effective than each of them working individually because a bigger pool of resources will be combined toward a larger goal.
“We know there’s a focus and we know that we’ve got significant resources that are going to be better spent and more effectively utilized because they’re going to all flow through one entity, and in this case it’s going to be overseen by me as campaign manager, and I can treat it as I would any other campaign, focusing on a deadline and a specific goal,” McTighe said.
Getting access to the steering committee, McTighe said, required organizational strength as well as shared belief that the tactics employed to win marriage equality are the right ones to pass ENDA.
“This is a very specific campaign where funding is being allocated for very specific purposes, so we’re working with the organizations that do that, that actually do that level of research-driven targeted field [work] with a tailored message and message-testing like what we’ve seen done with all the marriage states,” McTighe said.
Still, the steering committee lacks some groups known for their work on ENDA, including GetEQUAL, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, Log Cabin Republicans and Freedom to Work. Freedom to Work’s absence is particularly striking because that group is focused specifically on winning LGBT workplace protections.
McTighe emphasized that each of these organizations is part of the larger 90-group coalition to pass ENDA and emphasized that inclusion on the steering committee “really depends on the tactics” that these organizations pursue.
“I look at it as a pie; this is one slice of the pie,” McTighe said. “There’s a much bigger movement, and this is true of every movement and every campaign. There are going to be groups that are supportive, some of them are going to be part of the coalition some might be on a board, some might be on a separate advisory board.”
Asked whether he was happy with Freedom to Work’s contributions to the effort to pass ENDA, McTighe replied, “I haven’t had a lot of firsthand experience working with Freedom to Work, but everything that I’ve seen, I know they’re really dedicated to this issue, and I look forward to working with them as part of the broader coalition that we’re all going to be working in.”
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said he hasn’t met McTighe, but looks forward to collaborating as part of the effort to pass ENDA.
“I’ve never met Mr. McTighe, but I’ve heard really wonderful things about him from our contacts at the Gill Foundation, in Maine, and elsewhere in our movement,” Almeida said. “I’m looking forward to learning more about AWO’s efforts, especially since Freedom to Work has a full docket of lobbying, litigation, field organizing, Republican outreach, Spanish-language Latino outreach, collaboration with faith and business leaders, and social media efforts that we will roll out in September.”
The presence of another group on the steering committee, the ACLU, is also noteworthy because that group is the chief organization that’s seeking to narrow a religious exemption to enable a greater number of meritorious cases for LGBT workplace discrimination. McTighe denied the group’s inclusion means the campaign would share this goal, nor did the issue come up during negotiations in bringing the ACLU on board.
“The opportunities to amend it — whether it was in the committee process, or previous years, or in the early drafting stages — some of these organizations had positions were they were really trying to advocate for narrow exemptions or different wording or additional language, but in the case of coming together in the steering committee, we’re united in trying to get a bill passed that’s already passed the committee and that’s the version that’s out there right now,” McTighe said.
But the main message that McTighe had for supporters of ENDA was that people need to make clear the federal employment non-discrimination protections don’t exist to grow the number of voices calling for its passage.
“You need to get those same people who are shocked and even outraged when they hear protections don’t currently exist … trying to contribute in a productive way whether it’s supporting the organization — supporting Americans for Workplace Opportunity in this case — also just talking to the legislators, telling them them in an open-minded way why they care about it,” McTighe said.
Ukraine
Ukrainian MPs advance new Civil Code without protections for same-sex couples
Advocacy groups say proposal would ‘contradict European standards’
Ukrainian lawmakers have advanced a proposed new Civil Code that does not contain legal protections for same-sex couples.
The Kyiv Independent reported the proposal passed on its first reading on April 28 by a 254-2 vote margin.
The newspaper notes more than two dozen advocacy groups in a statement said some of the proposed Civil Code’s provisions “contradict European standards” and “violate Ukraine’s commitments under its EU accession process.”
“The most worrying provisions are those that make it impossible for a court to recognize the existence of a family relationship between people of the same sex,” the statement reads. “This overturns the already established case law on this issue, and closes the only legal avenue that allows partners to somehow protect their rights in individual cases.”
“Moreover, the draft completely ignores the obligations that Ukraine should have already fulfilled as part of its accession to the EU, as it lacks provisions that would allow people of the same sex to register their relationships,” it adds.
“The provisions also stipulate that all marriages concluded by people who have changed their gender automatically become invalid,” the statement further notes. “This is not just stagnation in the field of human rights or lack of progress on the path to European integration, but an actual setback in the legal sphere.”
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ advocacy group, in an April 28 Facebook post said the new Civil Code “is a step back on upholding the rights of women and the LGBT+ community in Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
The Ukrainian Supreme Court on Feb. 25 recognized Zoryan Kis and Tymur Levchuk — a gay couple who has lived together since 2013 and married in the U.S. in 2021 — as a family. Ukraine the day before marked four years since Russia began its war against the country.
New York
Gay ICE detainee freed after 150 days in detention
Cayman Islands native taken into custody before green card interview
Following nearly half a year in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Allan Marrero has been released and is back home with his husband in New York.
Marrero spent 150 days in ICE custody, held in multiple detention centers across the U.S. after missing an immigration court hearing while in a rehabilitation program for alcohol addiction — a circumstance widely considered “good cause” for failing to appear.
The Washington Blade first reported on Marrero’s case in March after the Cayman Islands native was detained by ICE officers during what was supposed to be a routine marriage-based green card interview at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City.
Marrero had been married to his husband, Matthew Marrero, for two years at the time of the interview. But almost immediately, the experience turned hostile.
The Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft, a minister at Middle Church in Manhattan who accompanied the couple to provide spiritual support, later described the process as “dehumanizing” and “barbaric.”
During the interview, it became clear the couple was facing an uphill battle. At one point, when asked how they met, Matthew Marrero instinctively looked over at his husband and was “snapped at” and told not to look at him. As the interview continued, the outlook only grew more grim.
Unaware that he had a prior removal order tied to the missed court date while he was in rehab, Allan Marrero was detained on the spot.
Over the following months, Allan Marrero was transferred through multiple detention facilities, including centers in Arizona and Texas, the Everglades Detention Facility — also known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” which has been described as having “unsanitary inadequate conditions” — and ultimately a detention center in Mississippi.
While in custody, Allan Marrero was denied access to prescription medication and, according to advocates, was psychologically pressured by ICE agents to self-deport rather than remain detained while his legal case proceeded.
Although a judge later reopened his case and granted bond after Allan Marrero provided proof that he had been in rehab — a valid medical reason for missing his court date — ICE used procedural mechanisms to keep him detained. A separate judge later issued a ruling denying relief, leaving Allan Marrero in custody.
On the outside, Matthew Marrero said his life felt as though it had been put on pause so ICE could meet enforcement quotas.
“[It feels like] somebody came in and kidnapped someone close to you and took away all of your control and power,” Matthew Marrero told the Blade on March 7. “You shouldn’t be able to have this much control over somebody’s life, especially if they are trying to do the right thing … You’re not going after criminals, you’re not going after the worst of the worst. You’re trying to fill a quota.”
Alexandra Rizio, Allan Marrero’s attorney with Make the Road New York, a progressive grassroots immigrant-led organization, told the Blade that “there seems to be an underlying element of cruelty baked into not only this administration, but everything.”
“It didn’t have to go down that way,” Rizio continued. “If someone goes in for a green card interview and their marriage interview, and they learn that they have a removal order, what the USCIS officer could have done is say, ‘Look, you have a removal order in your name. You need to go hire an attorney right away to get this taken care of. I can’t adjudicate your green card…’ And if you hire a lawyer, you know, you might be able to get it straightened out. Of course, that’s not what happened. And so ICE, which was in the building, were called and they did arrest Allan.”
The Marreros are scheduled to hold a press conference on Tuesday at Middle Church, where Allan Marrero will speak publicly for the first time about his detention.
For additional information on the press conference please visit middlechurch.org.
Commentary
How do you vote a child out of their future?
Students reportedly expelled from Eswatini schools over alleged same-sex relationships
There is something deeply unsettling about a society that turns a child’s future into a public referendum. In Eswatini, there were reports that students were expelled from school over alleged same-sex relationships, and that parents were invited to vote on whether those children should remain, forcing us to confront a difficult question on when did education stop being a right and become a favor granted by collective approval? Because this is a non-neutral vote.
A vote reflects power, prejudice and personal beliefs, which are often linked to tradition, culture, politics and religion. It is shaped by fear, by stigma, by long-standing narratives about morality and belonging. To ask parents, many of whom may already hold hostile views about LGBTIQ+ people, to decide the fate of children is not consultation. It is deferring the responsibility and repercussion. It is placing the lives of young people in the hands of those most likely to deny them protection.
And where is the law in all of this?
The Kingdom of Eswatini is not operating in a vacuum. It has a constitution that guarantees the promotion and protection of fundamental rights, including equality before the law, equal protection of the laws, and the right to dignity. The constitution further goes on to protect the rights of the child, including that a child shall not be subjected to abuse, torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
The Children’s Protection and Welfare Act of 2012 extends the constitution and international human rights instruments, standards and protocols on the protection, welfare, care and maintenance of children in Eswatini. The Children’s Protection and Welfare Act of 2012 promotes nondiscrimination of any child in Eswatini and says that every child must have psychosocial and mental well-being and be protected from any form of harm. The acts of this very instance place the six students prone to harm and violence. The expulsion goes against one of the mandates of this act, which stipulates that access to education is fundamental to development, therefore, taking students out of school and denying them education contradicts the law.
Eswatini is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. These are not just commitments made to make our governments look good and appeasing. They are obligations. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is clear regarding all actions concerning children. The best interests of the child MUST be a primary consideration and NOT secondary one. According to the CRC, as indicated in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.” It is not something to be weighed against public discomfort and popularity.
The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child reinforces this, grounding rights in non-discrimination (Article 3), privacy (Article 10) and protection from all forms of torture (Article 16). Access to education (Article 11) within these frameworks is not conditional but is a foundational right. It is not something that can be taken away because a child is perceived as falling outside social norms and threatening the moral fabric of society. It is a foundational right and determines one’s ability to participate in civic actions with dignity.
So again, where is the law when children are being expelled?
It is tempting to say the law is silent but that would be too generous. The law is not silent rather, it is being ignored and bypassed in favor of systems of decision-making that make those in power comfortable. When schools and their leadership defer to parental votes rather than legal standards, they are not acting neutrally. Expelling a child from school because of allegations is not a decision to be taken lightly. It disrupts education and limits future opportunities and for children already navigating identity and social pressure, this kind of exclusion can have profound psychological effects. It isolates them. It marks them for potential harm. Imagine being a child whose future is discussed in a room where people debate your worth. That is exposure. That is harm. There is a tendency to justify these actions in the language of culture, tradition, religion and protecting social cohesion. But culture is not static and the practice of Ubuntu values is not an excuse to violate rights. If anything, the principle of Ubuntu demands the opposite of what is happening here.
Ubuntu is not about conformity. It is about recognition and is the understanding that our humanity is bound up in one another. That we are diminished when others are excluded. That care, dignity, respect and compassion are not optional extras but central to how we exist together. Where, then, is Ubuntu in a school where some children are deemed unworthy of access to education?
Why are those entrusted with protecting children are failing to do so?
There is a very loud contradiction at play. On one hand, there is a claim to shared values and to the importance of community. On the other hand, there is a willingness to isolate and exclude those who do not fit within the narrow definition of what is acceptable. You cannot have both. A community that thrives on exclusion is neither cohesive nor safe.
It is worth asking why these decisions are being made in this way. Why not follow the established legal processes? Why not ensure that any disciplinary action within schools aligns with national and international obligations? Why introduce a vote at all? The answer is uncomfortable and lies in legitimacy and accountability. A vote creates the appearance of a collective agreement. But again, I reiterate, it distributes responsibility across many hands, making it hard to hold anyone accountable. It allows the school leadership to say “lesi sincumo sebantfu”(“This is what the community decided, not me”) rather than confronting their own role in human rights violations. If the law is clear and rights, responsibilities and obligations are established, then the question is not what the community feels. The question is why those entrusted with protecting children are failing to do so.
There is also a deeper issue here about whose rights are seen as negotiable. When we talk about children, we often speak of care, of understanding, of protection and safeguarding them because they are the future. But that language becomes selective when it intersects with sexuality, particularly when it involves LGBTIQ+ identities. Suddenly, care, understanding, protection, and safeguarding give way to punishment.
Easy decisions are not always just ones.
If the kingdom is serious about its commitments under its constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, then those commitments must be visible in practice, not just in policy documents. Rather, they must guide decision-making in schools and in communities. That means recognizing that a child’s right to education cannot be overridden by a show of hands. It means ensuring that schools remain spaces of inclusion rather than sites of moral policing. It means holding leaders and institutions accountable when they fail to protect those in their care.
Bradley Fortuin is a consultant at the Southern Africa Litigation Center and a human rights activist.
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