Gay Versus Gay

This election season is a looking very gay on Cape Cod. The 4th Barnstable district, which includes the towns of Eastham, Chatham, Harwich, Orleans, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown, will have a historic decision to make on November 7th. The voters of these towns will choose between two openly gay candidates to representative them in State House.

This is the first time in Massachusetts history that two openly gay candidates from the two major parties are running for the same seat. This district, which includes the gay haven of Provincetown, has not elected a Democrat in over 100 years. That might change this fall.

The Democrat running is Sarah Peake. She is currently a selectman in Provincetown. Two years ago she ran against the current anti-gay Republican state representative, Shirley Gomes. Gomes is retiring this year.

The Republican running is Aaron Maloy. He won the Republican primary by just 11 votes. He is a 24 year old Cape Cod native from Orleans. The sad part is that even though Maloy is openly gay, he is against gay marriage.

Bay Windows wrote an interesting article on Maloy a few weeks ago. In the article he "recalls being called a “fag” and doused with salad dressing by a fellow student. He hints that his experiences spurred him into gay activism during his teen years, but declines to elaborate for fear of alienating his conservative supporters."

As for marriage, Maloy say it “is an institution between a man and a woman and I think that it’s part of the heterosexual culture. I don’t buy the whole separate but equal thing”.

It gets even worse when he is asked about how banning equal marriage rights would affect him. Maloy answers, “It is probably going to hurt me”.

It is too bad that even though voters will be choosing between two openly gay candidates, only one of those candidates supports gay rights. Nevertheless, it is still amazing that there will be two openly gay candidates running against each other in the general election.

No matter who wins they will go on to join the other openly gay members of the Massachusetts legislature. Currently, there are four out gay legislators: Senator Jarrett Barrios, Representative Liz Malia, Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, and Representative Carl Sciortino. There are a couple more that do not hide that they are gay, but they are not exactly out to the public. In a legislature of 200 we know that there must be quite a few more gay representatives. I believe there are a few that are totally in the closet, maybe even to themselves.

Whatever the outcome of the race in the 4th Barnstable district, we will soon have five openly gay state representatives on Beacon Hill. I will be on Cape Cod in these next six weeks to make sure that the next openly gay state representative is one that supports gay rights!