Ritchie Torres: “I am proud to be a gay man in Congress. I stand here as living proof that the long arc of history bends toward LGBTQ…”

“I am proud to be a gay man in Congress. I stand here as living proof that the long arc of history bends toward LGBTQ equality. I am the first Latino and Black LGBTQ Member of Congress, and I proudly serve as vice chair of the Homeland Security Committee. Back in the 1950s, President Eisenhower issued an executive order declaring people like me to be a threat to homeland security. Out of his executive order came the ``lavender scare,'' the systematic purge of gay people from the ranks of Federal employment. So the LGBTQ experience in America is as much about pain as it is about pride. We have seen the lives and livelihoods of untold numbers of people ravaged by homophobia. I wish to speak about one of those people, Walter Jenkins, who served honorably during the Johnson administration, in a time of national turmoil, only to have his brilliant career cut short by homophobia. On October 15, 1964, a columnist named William White wrote a tribute to Mr. Jenkins. It was so poignantly and eloquently written that it bears reading on the House floor, and so read it, I will. {time} 1930 The title is, ``A Graveyard Marked Despair.'' A human tragedy of measureless pathos, a tragedy to tear the heart as few things have ever done in my 50-odd years of rather urgent living is the story of Walter Jenkins.…”