Last week, while LGBT activists were speaking with the staff of Pennsylvania Senator Toomey to lobby for marriage equality, his staff repeatedly said that Sen. Toomey has been a supporter of LGBT rights for 25 years.
No, Senator you are not. Those of us fighting for equality and our allies are the ones who decide who supports us. Your vote against marriage equality this week has you standing in the doorway of LGBT rights. Senator, you’re no supporter. You’re more like former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, who stood in the way of segregation, voting and civil rights, women’s right to choose, and LGBT Rights. Senator, as you leave the Senate, if you didn’t realize what your legacy will be, let me help you and future historians.
Senator, a supporter of the LGBT community does not vote against the thousands of LGBT family rights associated with marriage. Someone who does that does not get to say they support our community. But that is what you did this week.
Even after the Mormon Church put out a press release stating they were in full support to codify marriage equality, even after Sen. Susan Collins and other Republican senators amended the bill to protect “religious freedoms,” you still used religious freedom as a reason to vote against LGBT family rights. Blocking LGBT equality with an inaccurate debate point is the blindness of homophobia.
Here’s how CBS legal experts described the religious freedom amendment: “To assuage their concerns, the amendment ensures nonprofit religious organizations will not be required to provide services, facilities or goods for the celebration of a same-sex marriage, and protects religious liberty and conscience protections available under the Constitution and federal law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It also makes clear the bill does not authorize the federal government to recognize polygamous marriage and safeguards any benefit or status — such as tax-exemptions, grants, contracts or educational funding — of an entity so long as it does not arise from a marriage.”
That amendment means all religious reasons. Senator, you don’t even think of us as an “entity” as mentioned in the legislation. You didn’t consider our humanity, children, or families and how your vote will personally affect them.
Having lobbied for the Equality Act since its first draft by Congresswoman Bella Abzug in Congress in 1976, I’ve chatted with many in Congress and in the Senate. There is only one other that was as closed minded or blind to LGBT rights that they would take it to an unimaginable extreme, and that was my chat with Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
Early in the 1990’s, my good friend Congressman Tom Foglietta set up a meeting for me with Sen. Helms. No matter what logical reason you brought to the floor, he was blind to equality of any kind. Tom later told me that meeting was simply to show me how difficult those kinds of bigots are. Helms’ bigotry continued, and he did not forget that meeting Tom had set up.
In 1996 President Clinton appointed Tom as United States Ambassador to Italy. It was a position that he had dreamed of, but one thing standing in his way was confirmation by the United State Senate. The chairman of the committee was, you guessed it, Senator Helms. During Tom’s hearing, Helms actually brought up the work that Tom and I had done on LGBT rights and actually asked Tom to promise in his role of ambassador he would not use his position as the United States Ambassador to Italy be used to further “homosexual” rights.
Tom somehow made it through that committee hearing and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Ambassador. I soon received a call from Tom asking me when I’d be visiting him and staying at the ambassador’s residence in Rome, where we could hold a “small dinner party” to meet a few of the LGBT activists in Italy.
Senator Toomey, your legacy will now show that you just voted against over a thousand rights granted to married LGBT families. Just like Jesse Helms, you’re a man of the past, blinded by your own prejudices and, maybe more so, by the prejudices of people close to you.
Is it hypocritical to vote against a bill with conceived legal issues that you and your staff have invented, issues which your fellow Republicans have told you is not in the legislation? Or is it hypocritical to say you’ve been a supporter of LGBT rights for over 25 years, but then vote away all those rights that it took over 50 years to gain? The answer is your no vote, which would take away the rights of LGBT families, is as homophobic as Jesse Helms. For anyone who wonders what a homophobe is, look no further than those willing to vote away the rights of LGBT families. That is Senator Toomey and his staff that advised him to do so.