The Progess Report

OCTOBER 23, 2007

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Jeremy Richmond Contact Us | Tell-a-Friend | Archives | Permalink

CIVIL RIGHTS

Ending Discrimination One Inch At A Time

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or fail to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation. While the vast majority -- nearly 90 percent -- of Fortune 500 companies prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, there are surprisingly no federal prohibitions against such discriminatory behavior. On Wednesday, the House is expected to vote on this legislation, ensuring for the first time ever that gay and lesbian employees are afforded this critical federal protection. The ENDA legislation originally included all members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community, but lawmakers removed gender identity from the bill because it did not have the requisite support in the House to pass. "We do not have the votes to pass the bill with transgender" protections, said Frank. The relevant choice now facing progressives "is not between a limited ENDA and a comprehensive ENDA. It's a choice between a limited ENDA and no ENDA." Dale Carpenter of the Independent Gay Forum writes in support of passing a limited bill: "It's hard to see how [ENDA] serves any principle at all if it can't be enacted." Indeed, while passing legislation that prohibits only discrimination based on sexual orientation may not be the perfect strategy, it will likely hasten -- and be a critical predicate for -- legislation that protects the entire LGBT community over time. Urge your senators to support ENDA here.

TRANSGENDER EXCLUSION: Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is expected to offer an amendment to include gender identity protection in the bill on the House floor. Gaining the needed votes to pass this amendment will be difficult, but the vote in itself will be an important step in the congressional education process. ENDA's omission of gender identity protection has splintered the LGBT community's support for the bill. Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese issued a message in which he described the last two weeks as the "most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching of my life." But ultimately, he argued, "our community can work with the people who want to help us, or we can walk out on them." The question becomes: "Should gays wait for civil rights until transgendered people can be included?" Winnie Stachelberg of the Center for American Progress argues the LGBT community should accept a limited ENDA because it will "build political momentum for more advances later, including eventual coverage for gender identity." She notes, for example, that Rhode Island passed sexual orientation discrimination laws first and followed them with gender identity protections later when there was more public knowledge and support.

THE LONG ARC OF PROGRESS: While the current limited ENDA legislation leaves much to be desired, it should not obscure the remarkable progress that is in the process of occurring. "Passage of ENDA is possible only because gay people have organized politically to educate Americans about homosexuality and to elect sympathetic representatives." Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY) first introduced a nondiscrimination bill that included employment protection based on sexual orientation in 1974. At that time, ENDA was "an exotic cause." Nearly two decades later, in 1996, it looked like a version of ENDA that did not include gender protections was set to pass Congress, but instead, it suffered "a nail-biter 49-50 defeat" in the Senate. More than a decade later, "the votes are finally there." Should ENDA finally pass, it would follow recent successful votes in the House and Senate to add hate crimes protections based on gender, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression. The gains are tremendous, particularly considering that "only a little over a year ago, the U.S. Congress was casting votes on whether to write LGBT discrimination into the Constitution in the form of a 'marriage protection' amendment."

WHITE HOUSE INVOLVED IN CRAFTING ENDA BILL: To get widespread support for ENDA, lawmakers compromised by exempting "small businesses, religious organizations and the uniformed members of the armed forces" from the bill. Even still, many in the LGBT community fear Bush will issue a veto of the legislation. But in a hopeful sign that the White House is prepared to accept the ENDA legislation, WorldNetDaily -- a publication that serves as a mouthpiece for the far right -- reports that a White House official recently told "pro-family leaders attending a private administration briefing that White House staffers were involved in the negotiations to craft expanded religious exemption language for the new ENDA bill." John Aravosis, a political consultant who blogs on gay rights issues, writes that news of White House involvement "means that the White House either isn't sure whether it will veto ENDA...or it means that the White House isn't sure that they can stop ENDA."