A good friend of the GLBT community in Congress, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., has announced that he will not run for reelection. Lantos, who will turn 80 next month, made the announcement Jan. 2. The decision was prompted in part by learning that he has cancer of the esophagus.
Lantos has represented a Bay Area district south of San Francisco since 1981 and currently chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has been a champion of human rights, in part because of the events that shaped his own life.
He was born in Hungary and as a teenager became active in the anti-Nazi movement against the German invaders occupying his country. After the war he was as an anti-Communist activist. He came to the US in 1947 on an academic scholarship and eventually became a professor of economics and international affairs. Lantos proudly calls himself 'an American by choice.'
'It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress,' Lantos said in a statement released by his office. 'I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.'
The Congressman has been in the forefront of protesting mistreatment of gays and lesbians overseas. In 2001 He joined with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and others in writing to the government of Egypt protesting the arrest of men for alleged homosexual behavior. The arrests became known as the 'Queen Boat' incident for the disco on the Nile where they took pace. He also has led bipartisan efforts on AIDS relief in Africa.
Domestically, Lantos is one of the original cosponsors of the recently filed Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations of 2007, which would extend benefits to partners of federal employees.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., called Lantos 'a man of enormous integrity, energy and substance, whose deepest convictions were born in an epic struggle against tyranny, fascism and genocide.' She is the ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee and fled Cuba with her family as a child.