Human Rights Campaign Endorses Sen. Ed Markey for Re-Election

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, recently endorsed Ed Markey for re-election to the United States Senate.

“I am honored to receive the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign,” said Senator Markey. “Now more than ever, when hard-won protections for LGBTQ+ people are under attack, we must be bold and steadfast in our fight for fairness and equality. Starting with the Equality Act, we must work to ensure that all members of our LGBTQ+ community are treated with humanity, dignity, and equality under the law. The road to equality is too often long, but our resolve will not be defeated. I am proud to stand for equality alongside the inspiring, dedicated, and tireless team at the Human Rights Campaign, because LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”

Senator Ed Markey is a longtime champion for LGBTQ+ rights, leading the way for marriage equality as one of only 67 members of the House of Representatives to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Senator Markey has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ service members, opposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” voting in favor of successful legislation to repeal the ban on openly gay service members, and denouncing President Trump’s transgender military ban. 

“Despite support from 70% of the American public, Mitch McConnell has stood in the way of progress for LGBTQ people and refused to even allow a vote on the Equality Act,” said Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “Today’s endorsements mark the next step of HRC’s efforts to elect a pro-equality U.S. Senate and end McConnell’s tenure as majority leader.”

Ed Markey is an original cosponsor of the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ+ people. In 2018, he introduced the Gay and Trans Panic Defense Prohibition Act which would ban gay- and trans- panic defenses in federal courts. In 2019, Senator Markey introduced the GLOBE Act, which establishes a framework for the United States to promote LGBTQ+ rights around the globe. 

In the 2018 midterm elections, HRC helped register more than 32,000 voters and recruited more than 4,200 volunteers, who worked over 8,500 shifts and clocked more than 30,000 volunteer hours. In the critical final four days of the campaign, HRC staff and volunteers in get-out-the-vote efforts alone knocked on more than 80,000 doors, and held 36,400 conversations with voters at their doors and by phone on behalf of our endorsed candidates. 

HRC’s unprecedented grassroots mobilization worked to recruit volunteers, mobilize constituents, register voters and grow the organization’s grassroots army in an all-out effort to pull the emergency brake on the hateful anti-LGBTQ agenda of the Trump-Pence administration and elect a Congress that would hold them accountable.

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