The gay agenda :: 2008 in Massachusetts

Think the LGBT community's work on Beacon Hill is over now that the marriage amendment is dead? Think again. This month the legislature begins the second half of its two-year session, and there is a slate of LGBT-related legislation up for consideration. Most notably, House Bill 1722, which would add gender identity and expression language to the state's non-discrimination and hate crimes laws, is expected to come up for a hearing in late January or early February, and the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) and its allies are working this month to ramp up support for the bill. Also on tap are bills to further the cause of marriage equality, including legislation to treat same-sex married couples like their straight peers in the state's MassHealth program and to explicitly recognize same-sex marriage in the state's marriage statutes. The legislature will also consider bills dealing with issues ranging from HIV testing to sex ed. Here's a guide to the LGBT political agenda for 2008.

Trans bill campaign shifts into high gear
This month MTPC's campaign to pass H. 1722 heats up in anticipation of a hearing in late January or February before the legislature's Judiciary Committee. The stakes are high: The committee could vote to send the bill to the full House for a vote, or it could decide to keep it in committee, effectively killing it for the session. This session marks the first time the legislature has considered trans-related legislation, but MTPC co-chair Holly Ryan said she is hopeful that the Judiciary Committee will vote to recommend that the House pass 1722.

"[Of the] judiciary committee members we've talked to so far, we believe we have their support, which is most of them. We believe that the chair will give us a favorable opinion after the hearing, and we hope that will happen," said Ryan. "The fact that there are so many bills up there and they did tell us we were going to get a hearing at the beginning of this session, right there that's a plus."

Ryan said MTPC is working to assemble panels of people to testify before the committee to make the case for the legislation.

"We're putting together the panels, parents of trans people, hate crimes people, Don Gorton [of the Anti-Violence Project] and Emily Pitt [of Fenway Community Health's Violence Recovery Program]. ... Then we have, of course, personal stories. And there's been trainings going on on how to testify and written testimonies coming in," said Ryan.

The personal stories of trans people and their allies will be one of the key tools in MTPC's arsenal, as it was in the marriage movement. On Jan. 5 MTPC will team up with Greater Boston PFLAG to hold a training forum in Quincy for the family and friends of transgender people to learn how to lobby lawmakers and explain how the legislation would directly impact their loved ones' lives. MTPC has held past trainings for supporters of 1722, but this event, which takes place at United First Parish Church, is the first explicitly aimed at family members of trans people.

On Jan. 16 MTPC will head to the State House to mobilize lawmakers in support of the bill. Ryan will facilitate a legislative briefing, giving lawmakers the lowdown on the bill.

The campaign for 1722 also got a boost from the Boston Foundation, which awarded MTPC a $25,000 grant which the organization will use to hire its first paid staff member early this year. Up until now MTPC had functioned as an all-volunteer group, but Ryan said the new staff member will focus principally on advocacy around 1722.

Marriage equality not quite equal yet
The right to marry may be safe for the moment, but lawmakers and advocates are working this session to make sure that the state lives up to its commitment to treat same-sex married couples like their straight peers. One of the key areas where true marriage equality has not been realized is in MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program, which is funded by the federal government and cannot by law recognize same-sex partners as spouses. Last November Lawrence Johnson, a Sharon resident caring for his partner of 37 years, Alexandre Rheume, who has Parkinson's disease, spoke at the State House at an award ceremony honoring family caregivers and explained that because he and Rheume are not recognized as a couple by MassHealth, the agency is seizing all of the couple's joint assets to pay for his Rheume's health care ("Gay Man Honored At Elder Caregivers Event," Nov. 20, 2007).

To help couples like Johnson and Rheume, Rep. Liz Malia (D-Boston) filed the MassHealth Equality Act, H. 4107, which would require MassHealth to treat married same-sex couples as legal spouses and have the state pick up the tab for medical costs not covered by the federal government. So far the bill has met with some success, with the Health Care Financing Committee voting in June to recommend that the House pass the bill. Malia said currently proponents of the bill and the Health Care Financing Committee are working to assess how much the bill is likely to cost the state and meeting with members of Gov. Deval Patrick's administration to build support for the legislation.

"Basically we're looking at a very general level of what the cost would be to the state and potentially the savings," said Malia.

Despite the success at moving the bill out of committee, Malia said the bill's prospects are unclear this session. Advocates must pass the bill by the end of this session, which ends in July, or start over again next session. But Malia said she remains optimistic.

"I'm very hopeful about this. I think this is a strong step forward in terms of equity and in terms of aligning our state with the new law in terms of marriage and understanding the implications," said Malia.

Rep. Byron Rushing has filed another bill to help ensure that the state lives up to the promise of marriage equality, H. 1710, which would put explicit recognition of the right of same-sex couples to marry into the state's marriage laws. While Massachusetts began allowing same-sex couples to marry in response to a November, 2003 ruling from the state's Supreme Judicial Court, the marriage statutes remain unchanged from the pre-Goodridge days.

"What it does is to put into our general laws what is now the agreed-upon interpretation of our supreme court," said Rushing.

Going into the second half of the session Rushing said he has not heard from the Judiciary Committee about when they plan to hold a hearing on the legislation, but he expects the bill to come up by this spring. Rushing said he hopes the strong support for marriage equality in the legislature will help the bill win passage.

"I think most people in the legislature would like to do this, so I think we have a good chance of having this happen [this] year. But you never know," said Rushing.

Other legislation on the marriage front includes Rep. Robert Spellane's (D-Worcester) bill, H. 1728, which would abolish the 1913 law that prevents out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their home state prohibits their marriage, which effectively blocks same-sex couples from most states from marrying in Massachusetts. No hearing has yet been scheduled for this bill.

Looming questions on HIV policy
A pair of bills around health policy could radically alter the state's approach to HIV testing, but it is unclear how much progress they will make this session. In September, the Committee on Public Health heard testimony on H. 2209, a bill that would remove the written consent requirement for HIV testing in Massachusetts. The bill is supported by the Massachusetts Medical Society, which has argued that it will remove a barrier to getting more people tested and help make HIV testing a more routine part of medical care. AIDS Action Committee (AAC) and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders oppose the bill, and they argued at the September hearing that the written consent requirement safeguards people from being tested without their knowledge and makes sure that they are informed of their legal rights around HIV testing.

Denise McWilliams, AAC's director of public policy and legal affairs, said she does not expect H.2209 to make much headway this year.

"My sense is there's been no movement on that at all, and I actually don't expect to see that voted out favorably. ... There hasn't seemed to have been a concerted effort to make it pass, and I believe that the opposition from the community has been well-stated and persuasively stated," said McWilliams.

Another bill, sponsored by AAC, would set new regulations on how the state collects, stores and uses personal health information, including HIV testing information. Last year the state switched over to a new system of collecting public health information about HIV testing, and under the new system providers must give the state the names of their patients who test positive. AIDS Action argues that the safeguards included in their bill will make sure that information is secure and that it is only used for narrow public health purposes.

McWilliams said AAC is currently working to set up a meeting with officials from the Department of Public Health to discuss the legislation and tweak it to make sure that it creates a workable system for regulating the use of personal health information.

"There's some jurisdictional issues, for example, that get triggered when the Department of Public Health is put in the position of overseeing some agencies that may not be in the same secretariat," said McWilliams. "So there are some technical issues that have to be resolved here."

Despite the changes, McWilliams said she is hopeful the bill will receive a favorable vote in committee and pass into law this year. She said the news in November of a security breach in the state's Prescription Advantage program, in which a hacker stole personal information from as many as 150,000 seniors according to press reports, shows that the state needs to rethink the way it stores personal data in the digital age.

"It's clearly time for the state to take a look at how we hold onto that information," said McWilliams.

Chris Aiello, a researcher for the Committee on Public Health, said the committee has not yet taken any action on either H. 2209 or H. 2276 since the hearing.

Safety in the schools
The Committee on Education heard testimony last May on a trio of bills that could impact how schools deal with LGBT issues. One of those bills, Senate Bill 288, would mandate that schools include health education as part of their curriculum. Anti-gay activists have argued that the bill is designed to force schools to address sex, and specifically homosexuality, with their students, but proponents of the bill say that it will not interfere with parents' rights to opt their children out of sex education. The Department of Education's official frameworks for health education in Massachusetts include discussions of sexual orientation and HIV prevention.

A second bill, S. 275, would require school districts to set an anti-bullying policy. While the bill does not explicitly mention sexual orientation, proponents of the legislation, including the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth, Greater Boston PFLAG, and the Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY), have argued that it will provide protection to LGBT victims of bullying ("Wing Nuts Turn Out For Anti-Bullying Hearing," May 1, 2007).

The third bill, sponsored by the anti-gay group MassResistance, would require schools to get written permission from parents to discuss anything having to do with LGBT issues or sexuality in the classroom. Not surprisingly, the bill, S. 321, has met strong opposition from LGBT advocates.

The committee has not taken action on the bills since the hearing, but S. 288 and S. 275 have some powerful backers on the committee. Two of the lead sponsors of the health class bill, Sen. Ed Augustus (D-Worcester) and Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge), sit on the committee, and at the annual meeting for Greater Boston PFLAG last September committee co-chair Sen. Robert Antonioni (D-Leominster) announced his own support and urged the LGBT community to lobby committee members in favor of the bill. Antonioni is also one of the lead sponsors of the anti-bullying bill.

As for MassResistance's bill, the outlook is thankfully much bleaker. At the PFLAG meeting Antonioni told attendees, "I think you'll find that I and my co-chair, a very bright woman from Somerset, the southeastern part of the state, [Rep.] Pat Haddad, in the House, do not support that change, so I don't think it's very likely that bill's going to be going anywhere."