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U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) has been dodging questions about his stance on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA, S811). ENDA would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
But at a private company function in Massachusetts this week another of Senator Brown’s non-answers on ENDA revealed something valuable: his apparent support for including transgender people in the Massachusetts state anti-discrimination law.
During a question and answer session an employee who identified as a veteran, a Republican and transgender initiated the following exchange. This exchange was independently recounted to me by more than one person who heard it first-hand.
Employee: What is your position on an inclusive ENDA policy to provide support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees?
Scott Brown: Well we’ve already done it here in Massachusetts. I believe in states rights.
Employee: Actually, not for transgender. That’s still on the table.
Scott Brown: The states should take care of it, I believe in states rights.
Clearly Sen. Brown thought that Massachusetts already had a fully inclusive anti-discrimination law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression. The employee was of course correct about Massachusetts state law not yet prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression.
But Sen. Brown’s mistake is perhaps an honest one since the Transgender Rights Bill (H.502/S.764) was under consideration by the Massachusetts legislature in 2010 when he was still in the state senate. He wouldn’t be the first person to assume that a Democratically-controlled legislature would have passed that bill by now.
Sen. Brown’s phrasing “we’ve already done it” indicates ownership of what he thought had already been accomplished. Now that he knows that what he thought had been accomplished on his watch in the Massachusetts legislature actually remains undone, Senator Brown should contact his former colleagues in the Massachusetts State House to see how he can facilitate the passage of the Transgender Rights Bill.
He owes it to himself and to his constituents to see this through. Otherwise, his words “the states should take care of it” come off as nothing more than a convenient way for him to pass the buck.
Cross-posted at Blue Mass Group.
7 Comments
As a MA resident, watching Sen. Brown try to tack back to the center as fast as he can is dryly amusing. Methinks somebody’s internal polling on Prof. Warren’s candidacy is giving him serious adgita.
I’m always surprised that no one ever asks the obvious question of the “the states should do it” crowd: What if the states don’t, in spite of federal constitutional guarantees?
“I believe in states’ rights” is code for “I believe that rednecks should be allowed to discriminate against groups they don’t like, even enslaving them.”
Too bad the founding fathers didn’t take the time to add transgendered nondiscrimination to the Constitution. Then pols wouldn’t be able to skirt around the “states rights” excuse.
Seems the senator has forgotten the propensity of states to enact unconstitutional laws which are at odds with constitutional protections. It was and is called segregation. Senator Brown is wrong. States have no problem violating constitutional protections, like reconstruction amendments designed to protect people from slavery and involuntary servitude to a master corporation or government…
I’ve had enough of state’s right. Time to put restrictions of the legal entity called, corporation as Jefferson and Madison desired for all the legitimate reasons, we see today that existed back then? “The undue influence of monied interests on the political process.” (?)
Well, in a sense all LGBT rights are in the 14th Amendments guarantee of equal protection of the law. In other words if straight people have a right to marry those they’re oriented to fall in love with, then it’s a violation of the 14th amendment if LGB folk are denied that right. Similarly if cisgender people may express their gender identity with no consequences to housing, employment or other rights but transgender people when they do are in danger of discrimination in those areas with no protection of the law, then again it’s a violation of the 14th amendment.
Don’t be obtuse. The constitution is not holy writ, and the founding fathers intended for positive liberty to extend only to themselves, and negative liberty to protect the masses from each other but not from predation by the elite. The right/elite sure gets creative when they want to keep their place at the top of the heap.
The conservative/elite/right doesn’t like social programs because, they say, that the founding fathers don’t explicitly give power to create them, but they will allow the extension or aggregation of powers to extend their prejudices. Where does the constitution say that it’s okay to withhold rights or privileges based on differences?
In the declaration of Independence we find:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Hypocrites.
Cory Robins book The Reactionary Mind he writes
“By virtue of membership in a polity, Burke allowed, men had a great many rights– to the fruits of their labor, their inheritance, education, and more. But the one right he refused to concede to all men was that “share of power, authority, and direction” they might think they ought to have “in the management of the state.”
Burke claimed “the levellers” only change and pervert the natural order of things. Both Burke and John Adams were deathly afraid of insubordination by their wives, children, workers and slaves if rights were extended to them.
“Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality and the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates
the actual disagreement … Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to their freedom but it’s extension, for in that extension he sees a loss of his own freedom.”