Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away this week, a little more than a year after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In his more than 45 years as a senator, the “liberal lion” stood behind the LGBT community on myriad issues and followed through on his support with his votes, earning a perfect 100 rating from the Human Rights Campaign.
The senator was a longtime supporter of marriage equality and, in 1996, was one of only 14 senators to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. He also opposed the 2004 Federal Marriage Amendment and the 2006 Marriage Protection Amendment, unsuccessful attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit the definition of marriage to one man and one woman.
Kennedy’s name was on the list of cosponsors for every piece of legislation to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the federal hate-crimes law. He also served as a cosponsor of the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act.
Kennedy was also a longtime supporter of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which seeks to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. When the bill, which at the time only banned sexual-orientation discrimination, came up for a vote in 1996, he voted for it, although it ultimately did not pass. Kennedy was a cosponsor of the current version of the legislation introduced earlier this month.
The senator opposed the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers and, in recent weeks, had reportedly been working with his fellow senators to identify a legislator willing to take over the effort to repeal the law in the Senate.
Kennedy also championed HIV/AIDS causes in the Senate, starting when he cosponsored the Ryan White CARE Act. Originally passed in 1990 and reauthorized in 2006 for $2.1 billion, Ryan White is the largest federally funded program for people with HIV/AIDS.
In the past two Senate sessions, Kennedy was a cosponsor of the Early Treatment for HIV Act, which would allow states to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income people living with HIV.
He successfully opposed amendments to allow healthcare workers to test patients for HIV without their consent, criminalize blood donation by HIV-positive individuals, prohibit needle-exchange programs and require HIV-positive healthcare workers to notify patients before performing invasive medical procedures.
A longtime champion of healthcare, Kennedy was instrumental in passing the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes protections for people with HIV/AIDS, and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.
Despite his accomplishments, Kennedy’s reputation was not without tarnish. But perhaps his later years of public service may have (somewhat) atoned for poor choices in his youth.