Will MassEquality Support Scott Brown Next Election?

Tagged with: Defense of Marriage Act      Don't Ask Don't Tell      Employment Non-Discrimination Act      Gay community      LGBT      MassEquality      Scott Brown      Uniting American Families Act

Kara Suffredini, the executive director of MassEquality in Boston, is wondering- will her group endorse Senator Scott Brown in 2012? Scott Brown did vote to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but as Suffredini points out, that is not enough. She wrote “I have been asked repeatedly whether Brown’s vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would earn him MassEquality’s support in 2012. And whether, by extension, we would advise our nearly 4,200 members in the New Bedford area to do the same.”

Suffredini points out that, while Brown’s support for the repeal of DADT (though he backed off of it until almost the last minute) is admirable, there is a lot more to be done. She writes:

Rates of HIV infection are high in our community (New Bedford ranks 11 on the list of the state’s 20 communities with the highest rate of HIV infection diagnoses), while funding to fight this pandemic is stagnating at current levels and decreasing. It’s legal to fire someone because of their sexual orientation in 29 states, and because of their gender identity in 38 states, including Massachusetts.

Same-sex couples can marry in only five states and the District of Columbia, but no marriage is yet honored by the federal government. Healthy People 2020, the federal government’s ambitious 10-year agenda for improving the nation’s health, identifies significant health care disparities between the LGBT community and the general population ranging from higher rates of substance abuse and obesity to lower rates of health care access. And it’s now unmistakably part of the public consciousness that anti-LGBT bullying is leading some LGBT youth, and those perceived to be, to end their lives.

She also points out that Brown could support the passage of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Uniting American Families Act, the Student Non-Discrimination Act, the Safe Schools Improvement Act, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, and the Respect for Marriage Act (which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act)

Brown is playing it cagey right now. The reality is that the LGBT Community is more interested in support from either party, but those in the Republicans are often the most vocal against the LGBT Community. They have often used LGBT Americans as a platform to gain power, including a push to make same-sex marriage and civil unions illegal in as many states as possible back in 2004. Brown’s support for the repeal of DADT was tepid at best. He said he supported it, but refused to vote for it until the Democrats did a lot of jumping through hoops in order to get it to pass at all. This occurred despite Republican attempts to force the Democrats to abandon it.

Source: http://lezgetreal.com