A conveniently timed coming-out from Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, to coincide with action on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. As Politico reports, the Senate is set to take up the legislation for a key vote this evening, but the bill -- which has been introduced in every session of Congress in recent memory -- faces dim prospects in the House of Representatives.
Via the Washington Post:
Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) announced in an op-ed in a Maine newspaper on Monday that he is gay.Michaud, who is running for governor in 2014, said he decided to come out publicly after his opponents launched a "whisper campaign" about his sexuality.
“They want people to question whether I am gay,” Michaud writes in the Bangor Daily News. “Allow me to save them the trouble with a simple, honest answer: ‘Yes, I am. But why should it matter?’ ”
Michaud becomes the seventh openly gay member of the House of Representatives and the eighth in either chamber of Congress. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) became the first openly gay senator when she won a seat in the 2012 election.
