The US Senate today passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
(ENDA), legislation banning workplace discrimination against gay and
transgender people, by a hefty 64 t0 32 margin.
The bill only needed to pass by a simple majority after it earlier
obtained the necessary votes to break a Republican filibuster.
All Democrats (and Independents) present voted for the bill, along
with 10 Republicans: Kirk, McCain, Flake, Toomey, Portman, Hatch,
Ayotte, Murkowski, Heller and Collins.
The legislation now moves over to the House, where Republican Speaker John Boehner has promised to kill it.
Boehner claimed the other day
that ENDA is unnecessary, as it duplicated existing protections under
the law. That’s actually not true. First, here’s Boehner’s aide:
“We have always believed this is covered by existing
law,” the aide said, adding that it is “not a new issue or a new
position — it’s a longstanding position, and, frankly, not ‘news’ at
all. This has been his position, on the record, for years, stated
publicly many times.”
It’s legal under federal law to fire (or not hire, or not promote)
someone for being gay or trans. It also legal in 29 states to fire
someone for being gay, and in 33 states to fire someone for being trans.
Though, gays and trans people in those states would be protected if
the city in which they live has outlawed such discrimination.
Another odd aspect of Boehner’s position: He claims that ENDA will
lead to frivolous lawsuits and the loss of American jobs. But if gay
job protections are already part of the law, and this legislation is
duplicative, then we’re already have those frivolous lawsuits and lost
jobs. So where are they?
As Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid noted the other day, Boehner claims to be worried about frivolous lawsuits yet
he spent $2 million of the taxpayers money
on his own frivolous lawsuit against the Defense of Marriage Act, which
was struck down (in part) by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
Because of Boehner’s opposition, the prospects for ENDA in the House
aren’t terribly good. Which raises the question of how big a victory
this really is.
I’m not a terribly big fan of passing legislation in one House that
you know won’t pass in the other. It’s not always a good idea to make
your team take hard votes when the vote won’t matter, because the
legislation is going down. But in this case, things are more interesting
as the “hard vote” has tended to be the vote
against ENDA, not the vote
for it.
As
Senator Reid noted the other day,
both GOP Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, likely presidential
contenders in 2016, chickened out when it came to speaking against ENDA
on the Senate floor. Both men are known for being happy (and yappy) to
go on the Senate floor and talk at length if it means a bit more media
exposure. Yet on ENDA, they were silent (though they ended up voting
against it). Arch-conservatives that they are, Rubio and Cruz fear that
opposing gay rights might hurt their presidential aspirations, and
Rubio is a religious right clone. That’s quite a tacit admission.
For that reason, the ENDA vote was likely a good idea, even if there is little chance of it passing the Republican House.
Clearly ENDA, and gay civil rights issues more generally, are making the Republicans squirm.
What was once feared to be a third-rail for Democrats, has become a real third-rail for Republicans. And who doesn’t get a chuckle out of that.
Make the jump here to read the full article
From one end of the country to the other, the overlapping developments on a single day underscored what a historic year 2013 has been for the U.S. gay-rights movement — "the gayest year in gay history," according to Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, the movement's largest advocacy group.
Yet each of Monday's developments, while heralded by activists, revealed ways in which the gay-rights debate remains complex and challenging for many Americans.
Republicans, for example, are increasingly split on how to address gay-rights issues — some want to expand their party's following, while others want to satisfy the religious conservatives who make up a key part of the GOP base. More than 40 percent of Americans remain opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage. And even some prominent gays remain uncertain whether they should make their sexual orientation known to the world at large.
Mike Michaud, the Democratic congressman from Maine, said he came out to dispel "whisper campaigns" about his sexuality as the three-way race for governor began to take shape. Through his six terms, he'd never before spoken publicly about his sexual orientation, and he broke the news to his mother only hours before releasing his statement.
In Hawaii, where the state House is debating a Senate-passed gay-marriage bill, thousands of citizens have signed up to testify — and the majority of those who've spoken thus far oppose the measure.
And in Washington, even as gay-rights supporters celebrated the Senate's backing of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, conveyed his opposition and left it unclear whether the GOP-controlled House would even vote on the bill, known as ENDA.
Boehner "believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs," said his spokesman, Michael Steel.
Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay issues, said he was on the Senate floor in 1996 when an earlier version of ENDA lost by a single vote.
"Even though we're making rapid progress on marriage equality, and the entire movement seems unstoppable, there are still big pockets of resistance," Socarides added. "It's going to cost a lot of money and require a lot of work to get us to where anti-gay discrimination no longer exists."
Monday's 61-30 vote on ENDA demonstrated that the Senate's Republican minority could not muster the votes needed to block the bill by filibuster. The legislation could win final Senate passage by week's end.
Current federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race and national origin. But it doesn't stop an employer from firing or refusing to hire workers because they are lesbian, gay bisexual or transgender. The bill would bar such discrimination by employers with 15 or more workers.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have approved laws banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 17 of them also prohibit such discrimination based on gender identity.
Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, said the most striking aspect of the ENDA debate was the division surfacing in the Republican Party — with several prominent GOP senators supporting the bill and yet Boehner signaling his opposition even before the Senate vote was held.
"There is no doubt that the American public is changing on this issue very quickly," Sainz said. "That's what makes what Boehner did today such a head-scratcher."
The Senate vote on ENDA was among a series of major victories for the gay-rights movement this year, highlighted by two Supreme Court decisions in June. One ruling cleared the way for ending a ban on same-sex marriages in California; the other struck down a 1996 law passed by Congress that banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Gay marriage is now legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia, and bills are pending this week that would add Hawaii and Illinois to that group.
Read the entire article here