From Bay Windows

If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, this is a very good time to be alive in the state of Massachusetts. Only our most intractable opponents would deny us this moment when our marriages are secure.

But every good turn brings a reminder about how fragile these gains are. And this week, we lose one of our most determined and vocal champions in Congress as Marty Meehan leaves to become chancellor of the University of Lowell.

Most people are probably familiar with Meehan’s unrelenting quest to reverse the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) military policy. This was not a role he sought. Meehan wanted to be on the Appropriations Committee or Ways and Means, but leadership put him on Armed Services and almost immediately, he was struck by the discrimination against gay and lesbian service members. In fact, his first resolution was to attach a repeal of DADT to a military appropriations bill. His colleagues warned him to stay away from this issue; even his father in Lowell wondered why he would tackle this issue in his first term.

And then there was his district with strong conservative roots in Lowell and Lawrence. Neither voters nor his local papers were watching his back. In 1993, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 40 percent of Americans supported allowing gay and lesbian military personnel to serve openly; 52 percent opposed lifting the ban.

But Meehan stayed at it, and forced the General Accounting Office (GAO) to study the cost of tossing out highly-skilled and willing personnel simply because they were gay. The GAO found that in the first 10 years of the policy, DADT cost taxpayers over $190 million in separation and retraining. A University of California Blue Ribbon Commission nearly doubled that, finding the cost closer to $363 million.

Americans have seen the folly of this policy and now overwhelmingly support its repeal: A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released June 27 showed that 79 percent of Americans support repeal of DADT; only 18 percent of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should be banned from serving in the military. In 2006, a poll of military service members found that 73 percent were comfortable with lesbians and gay men. This, at a time when the Army is falling short of its recruiting goals and projects that by the end of this year, it will be short 3500 active duty offices, primarily captains and majors.

That the American public has moved dramatically on this issue, that the military finds itself defending the firing of highly specialized Arab linguists, and that even retired generals have come to call for the repeal of DADT has a lot to do with Marty Meehan’s doggedness on this issue.

But that’s only one piece of his advocacy. Meehan introduced the Gay and Lesbian Youth Suicide Prevention Act in 1994 which focused the Clinton Administration on the nearly epidemic numbers of teen suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.
And then in 1996, in the middle of a high-pitched, emotional debate on the now infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Meehan listened to hyperbole and knew he had to counter the mean-spirited attacks. It was unscripted, it came the day before his own wedding and it caught the House by surprise when he said:

“I can’t imagine that my fiancé and I could make such a momentous decision to wed — and then have the government step in and say, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ I can’t imagine that two people who simply want to exercise a basic human right to marry, a right our society encourages, could be denied.”

Now remember, almost all of our Congressional friends in 1996 were with us for technical reasons — that DOMA was redundant, that no state had gay marriage, that it was scapegoating. But Meehan was one of the very few to actually support equal marriage, years before Goodridge was even filed, let alone become law.

If you ask Marty Meehan what he’s proudest of, he’ll say that while his greatest accomplishment might be the passage of campaign finance reform, he’s proudest of consistently standing up for our civil rights, for equality. It’s the one legacy, he’ll quietly add, that he hopes his two young sons notice one day. And the only day he’ll miss the action is the day Congress finally repeals Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and sends it to the president’s desk.

I, for one, at a time when all of us are acutely aware of the importance of leadership, want to tip a hat and raise a glass to a Congressional leader who has, in fact, helped move the ball up the hill in ways large and small. To Marty Meehan, with thanks.