Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced today that he would sign into law legislation ensuring that transgender people have the same rights to public accommodations as everyone else in the Bay State.
In a Boston Globe interview today, Baker said “We’ve certainly listened to a variety of points of view from many sides and have said, from the beginning, that we don’t want people to be discriminated against. If the House bill were to pass in its current form, yeah, I would sign it.”
With an overwhelming majority—33-4—the Massachusetts Senate passed a long-awaited bill on May 12 and, reports the Globe, the House is “set to pass the bill” tomorrow, June 1.
“Baker’s declaration marks a shift in his position,” the Globe goes on the state. “For months, he’s taken pains to avoid articulating a clear stance on the bill, while emphasizing he opposes discrimination against anyone. State House insiders have parsed his words trying to divine meaning in iterations of his talking points on the issue. … And Baker has taken heat — including being publicly booed at a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender networking event — for declining to take a position on the bill.”
The networking event was Boston Spirit’s annual LGBT Executive Networking Night, held in April, where the governor took the podium to give the keynote address before a crowd of over 1,000 LGBT and allied business leaders.
The Globe goes on to report:
Transgender protections were at issue during his unsuccessful 2010 bid for governor. Baker campaign literature characterized a transgender civil rights bill as the “bathroom bill” (seen by some as a derisive phrase) and said he would veto the legislation.
Baker later supported a different version of that bill, one that did not include public accomodation protections. That legislation became law in 2011.
Asked Tuesday if his new stance is flip-flopping, Baker said he is not, arguing that “the legislation that was passed in 2011 was a lot different than the legislation that was before the body in 2010. And the legislation that I’m taking about, the House version, is different than that as well.”
Baker, a Republican who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, said he did not regret the 2010 stance. “It was a very different, very different bill,” he said.
He couched the change in a different way: “I would characterize it more as a clarification than an evolution, I guess.”
