A local Massachusetts Republican politician said he found it hard to believe when one of his colleagues launched a homophobic smear campaign against him and tried to get him to vote.
Jeffrey Sossa-Paquette is an openly gay Trump-supporting member of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee currently running for the 2nd Congressional District.
But when Debbie Martell, the wife of the Republican State Committee, caught wind of the fact that he and her husband, Julian, were fathers of not one but two adopted children, she almost threw up.
The Boston Globe has obtained emails which show Martell telling many people that she is “sickened” that a member of their own party is gay.
In the emails, Martell says she hopes, “God willing”, that someone – anyone! – will support Sossa-Paquette in his candidacy for Congress and save them from his life of sin.
“After all, I’ve heard he’s a married gay man,” she reportedly wrote. “It makes me sick that he adopted his children.”
Massachusetts Republican Debbie Martell has launched homophobic attacks on me and my family.
Sectarianism has NO PLACE in the Republican Party.
Require Debbie to resign immediately? Https: //t.co/8iyaQN86VC
– Jeffrey Sossa-Paquette (@JeffreyCongress) June 3, 2021
“As a true Republican, I have to stand up and do my part to say this is unacceptable,” Sossa-Paquette told local media.
But when he asked State Party President Jim Lyons for help, he said Lyons would not intervene.
“He told me that he was not going to get involved in interparty politics,” explains Sossa-Paquette. “And did I say inter-party politics?” You are the president of MassGOP. Aren’t you supposed to be running the party? “
So Sossa-Paquette went to vice president / anti-COVID anti-masker Tom Mountain, who says he called Martell and asked him to resign.
“What she did was wrong,” Mountain says. “It was immoral. We have no place in the party for such things. And I won’t take it. “
But so far, Martell has yet to resign. And a spokesperson for Lyon said he was “not interested” in talking about the case. It therefore seems that Sossa-Paquette is alone.
“It does not represent the Republican Party that I have defended for the last 20 years of my life,” he says. “I will not tolerate any fanaticism coming from my own party or the Democratic Party.”
It may not be the Republican Party that Sossa-Paquette knew, but it is certainly the one that the vast majority of LGBTQ people have known in recent decades.
Sossa-Paquette has since launched an online petition demanding Martell’s immediate resignation and calling on Lyon to do more against the hatred and homophobia plaguing the Republican Party.
Somehow we don’t think this will happen.
Graham Gremore is editor and editor at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.
