This afternoon I had the opportunity to ask Republican senatorial candidate Gabriel Gomez his views on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA; S 815), which is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate in July.
Mr. Gomez, who is vying with Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA05) for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts recently vacated by John Kerry, was in Worcester today for a brief meeting with the press and voters.
ENDA would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people against discrimination in the workplace. Federal law already prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, religion, age, gender and disability. Rep. Markey is a co-sponsor of ENDA and a longtime, active supporter of equal rights for LGBT people.
Massachusetts already has LGBT anti-discrimination laws on the books that are more comprehensive than ENDA, so supporting ENDA should be a straightforward choice for a senator representing Massachusetts. However, Mr. Gomez’s campaign page remains vague about his views on LGBT issues beyond marriage equality, so I was happy to have the opportunity to ask him the question directly.
As he has done previously when presented with a question about LGBT civil equality, Mr. Gomez began by stating his opposition to discrimination of any kind. He then went on to talk about a friend and capable cadet discharged from the Naval Academy for being gay, something Mr. Gomez clearly found regrettable. In conclusion, he stated that “I don’t think there should be any kind of discrimination anywhere under any kind of means, whether it’s race, gender, religion or political belief”.
The general impression I was left with is that Mr. Gomez does indeed abhor discrimination. However, he still leaves me reading the tea leaves as to whether he would translate his personal views into decisive legislative action. Not only did he refrain from speaking to the ENDA bill specifically, but he never used any of the vocabulary key to it: sexual orientation, gender identity, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.
In short, I found his answer to be positive in tone but frustratingly vague.
Here is the transcript of my question and his response:
Question: Another bill that we’re expecting a vote on in July is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. It would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers against workplace discrimination. I’m wondering what your feelings on that bill, if it’s something that you would support.
Gomez: First I’ll just step back for a second and say that I don’t believe in any kind of discrimination. I think that if two people are in love, they should be able to get married.
Some people have already heard this before, but when I was at the Naval Academy, fifty days before I graduated one of my best friends — he was a classmate of mine — had the third-highest leadership position. He was ranked third in our class. We had 1,031 in our class, so he was basically better than everybody in our class, 99.7 percent of us.
He got called into the commandant’s office and was asked if he was gay. He honored the honor code that you can’t lie, steal or cheat or tolerate those who do, and he said “yes”. He was kicked out two days later, didn’t get his diploma, didn’t get his commission, had to pay back part of his education.
I would have been proud to have served with this young man. He was a good friend of mine, and is still a very friend — a big supporter right now. Anywhere, anywhere, anyhow, anyplace.
He had proven himself more capable than any of us, quite frankly, at that time, and I don’t think there should be any kind of discrimination anywhere under any kind of means, whether it’s race, gender, religion or political belief.
Full disclosure: I am an Ed Markey supporter. However, since I believe that civil equality for LGBT people should be a non-partisan issue, I am delighted to give recognition to any candidate who supports it, regardless of party. Because of this I try to listen with an open mind to all candidates and report their views fairly. I’m sure BMG readers will not hesitate to let me know if they think I’m off the mark by calling Mr. Gomez’s comments “frustratingly vague”.
Cross-posted at Pam’s House Blend.
Does he support ENDA? He never even tried to answer it. He made a generic statement against discrimination. All well and good, but not very helpful. The GOP is full of people who “abhor” discrimination or rampant financial abuses, but can’t quite find their way to supporting legislation against these things.
Your interpretation is precisely correct.
Until Mr. Gomez states, on the record, that he supports ENDA, he is not supporting it. You did not ask him whether he thinks discrimination based on gender preference is good or bad, you asked him whether he supports ENDA — and he waffled.
He doesn’t support ENDA.
A few questions (only tangentially related to your post):
1) Are you hooked in with the Markey campaign in Worcester? If not we need your help. Contact me off-line if you’d like. I’m at KateDonaghe AT aol DOT com
2) Hoe do you make your post into two parts? I could do it on the soapblox platform, but it has never been clear to me how to do it now?
Hi Kate, if you insert the code (remove the internal spaces I’ve added to make the code visible) on the html page, any text below it will appear “below the fold” on the front page.
The code disappeared despite my adding spaces. If you type the following but replace the square brackets with the symbols over your comma and period, you’ll have the “more” code [!–more–]
I noticed that you didn’t answer my first question. I’ll be in Worcester tonight for a fundraiser. I think that I will head to the Worcester HQ for Ed Markey afterwards. It would be great to meet, even if you don’t want to get involved. I am as always at 508-404-8531. Kate
you can count on me to contact the campaign. If nothing else before then, I’ll likely do some gotv calls on the 25th. I’m not free tonight but hopefully our paths will cross as some point!
in addition to doing it manually as laurel suggests, you should also see a button called “more” in the toolbar above the text box which you can click to add the HTML automatically. Note that if you use laurel’s technique, you must be using the “HTML editor” rather than the “Visual editor,” otherwise it won’t work. You can toggle between the two editors by using the tabs on the upper right-hand corner of the text box.
A timely article from Rainbow Times reports that Gomez also didn’t answer their ENDA question.
Mr. Gomez does not support government action to promote the common good or protect people against evil. In fact, as a modern-era Republican, one can assume that he wants as little government action as possible (with the likely exception of helping corporations and the wealthy. Or perhaps legislating their own religious-based moral views on the rest of us.)
Because that’s his party’s position, if he does not explicitly state his support specific legislation and regulation to help consumers or discrimination victims or the middle class or the poor, one should assume he will join with his party and not support such government action.
His personal opinion on issues like this would matter to me if he were for discrimination, because that would disqualify him from my support. Given the necessary baseline of not personally discriminating/being a racist/etc., I’m interested in how he will vote. He didn’t answer. That speaks volumes.
and Steve Lynch at least offered reasons for opposing a bill. He just ignores the question entirely.