US Senator Edward Markey called the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court a “direct attack” on the LGBTQ community in a news conference held at the Adams Courthouse in Boston on National Coming Out Day (Oct. 11), the day before Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearings are beginning.
Reports MassLive:
The senator, who faces Republican attorney Kevin O’Connor on Election Day, said Massachusetts has been at the forefront of the same-sex marriage movement and other LGBTQ issues, “and we have never looked back.”
“That leadership, and the rights of millions in the LGBTQ community, now has threats,” Markey said in a news conference, held on National Coming Out Day at the John Adams Courthouse in Boston.
Markey argued the Trump administration has purposely setback LGBTQ policy and claimed that Barrett’s nomination is a “direct attack” to community members. Markey noted that Trump has rolled back several protections of LGBTQ Americans and “taken steps to legalize discrimination,” through nearly “three-dozen anti-LGBTQ policies” and several legal briefs filed in opposition of LGBTQ rights.
“For Donald Trump, LGBT stands for ‘lets go back in time,’” Markey said. “A time when you couldn’t marry who you love. Couldn’t serve in the military. And if you were trans, you were a marginalized person.” …
Markey argued Barrett “personifies open hostility to the LGBTQ community and its rights,” citing $4,200 she received in honoraria from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that opposes same-sex marriage. Barrett also signed a letter in 2015 highlighting marriage as “total commitment of a man and woman to each other,” and defended the dissenting judges in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case, which effectively guaranteed same-sex marriage rights, Markey said.
Just last week, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito knocked the Obergefell v Hodges decision, NPR reported.
Alongside Markey, State Sen. Julian Cyr called on LGBTQ people and advocates to “talk about who we are, and through that, that is how we are going to persevere.”
“By telling our stories, by coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and a whole myriad of identities in that rainbow … we are changing the world,” Cyr said. “And that started by acting up and by refusing to accept a series of unacceptable policies ignoring who we are as people. And it continued by organized and figuring out how we argue for, and win, in courthouses like this, our rights guaranteed by the constitution.”
The senator calls on Congress to expand the Supreme Court in the wake of what he described as “corrupt partisanship,” with Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate pushing forward with Barrett’s nomination just a few weeks before Election Day.
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