- Rep. Eric Massa
First term Democratic representative Eric Massa announced his resignation from Congress last week citing a recurrence of cancer.
Yesterday he accused White House chief-of-staff Ram Emanuel of forcing him out of office as retribution for voting against health care reform, according to the New York Times.
He said he was forced from office because of sexual harassment of a male aide. Massa is opposite-sex married. The incident is being investigated by the House ethics committee.
A White House spokesman dismissed the claim.
While this sounds like the case of Calif. State senator Roy Ashburn last week, an outed gay man who has stood firmly against LGBT rights, here’s what I found Massa has said about equal rights:
I know from personal experience in the military that the current policy, Don’t ask, don’t tell, doesn’t work. I fully support civil unions and equal legal rights for all Americans. Although civil unions do not provide all of the answers for the issues facing same sex couples, I believe they are a good start, and I support them.
I do not support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage; that is a wedge issue and a political ploy designed to distract voters from the massive failures of the Bush administration and Congress; it would also be the first amendment in our country’s history to explicitly restrict rights.
He would rather the world thinks he has cancer than be gay?
Um … yes. Here’s a little more on his background. He was Republican and switched to the Democratic Party because he opposed the war in Iraq. He was elected from an Upstate New York district that is heavily Republican (about 45,000 more voters registered Republican than Democratic) and replaced a Republican in a narrow victory. Although married and closeted, he did not oppose LGBT rights and was only outed by the harassment charges that were before the ethics committee.
“Opposite-sex married.” I like it and henceforth it will be part of my vocabulary!
Hey, if Colbert can coin new terms that get into the dictionary, so can I. Even where it’s just plain legal to get married and been around awhile, it’s always married and same-sex married. If I have to get same-sex married, then as far as I’m concerned, everyone else can get opposite-sex married, just so everything’s clear. Just think of it as Dallas Voice truthiness.