With congressional Democrats’ introduction last week of the Equality Act, ENDA (the Employee Non-Discrimination Act) is officially dead. The previous bill, which targeted employment discrimination, had a long, sad history—just when it seemed to have enough bipartisan support to pass, a number of influential activists organizations announced their opposition because the measure didn’t include gender identity along with sexual orientation. Later, when gender identity was added, it was too much for the bill’s GOP (and centrist Democratic) supporters, at that time. The strategy of step by step, first one, than the other, was never viewed as acceptable by some activists.
In any event, during the first two years of the Obama administration, when Democrats enjoyed filibuster-proof majorities in Congresss, ENDA was kept bottled up in committee; only after the GOP retook the House in midterm elections did Democrats moved to bring the bill back to life.
The Equality Act seeks to amend the iconic Civil Rights Act 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity, in employment, housing, education, jury service(!) and public accommodations, with no religious exemptions for businesses such as wedding caterers and photographers to pass on gigs involving gay marriages. It has zero chance of passing Congress, dominated by the GOP. That’s not the point; Democrats will use it to rally LGBT and progressive support in coming elections.
Yet some LGBT activists are not united in support; some fear that opening the Civil Rights Act to amendments could be dangerous, allowing Republicans to introduce their own amendments to weaken, for instance, race- and gender-based preferential treatment and the use of disparate impact analysis to find discrimination where none was intended. It’s unclear that there is evidence Republicans would try to do that (the attacks upon them by liberal media would be merciless), but that’s the stated concern.
So don’t expect the Equality Act to become law anytime soon, or perhaps ever. But keep a lookout for fundraising letters from its supporters coming to your mailbox shortly.
6 Comments for “Equality Act Is New Cause”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
It has zero chance of passing Congress, dominated by the GOP.
True. Nonetheless, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to existing federal non-discrimination laws is the right thing to do, and pushing for that result is also the right thing for gays and lesbians to do. I’ll grant you that it will take a while to achieve the goal, but we went through that with marriage equality (roughly 30 years), with DADT repeal (roughly a decade) and with just about every other issue on our quest toward “equal means equal”. If we waited for the GOP to come around on those issues before we started pushing, we’d still be nowhere. I don’t think that this is any different — push we must, and push we will. In the end, we’ll get it done. My guess is that we will see sexual orientation and gender identity added to federal non-discrimination laws within a decade.
… with no religious exemptions for businesses such as wedding caterers and photographers to pass on gigs involving gay marriages …
Why should there be special religious exemptions for “gay marriages”? Are religious objections to “gay marriages” worthy of government protection, while religious objections inter-racial marriages, inter-faith marriages, inter-denominational marriages, and remarriages after divorce unworthy of government protection? Apparently so. But why and on what grounds?
Until conservative Christians and their Republican-aligned “libertarian” handmaidens start explaining why and on what grounds, complaints that non-discrimination laws don’t provide “religious exemptions” for “gay marriages” are all a bunch of nether-region generated wind, as far as I am concerned, and smell accordingly.
posted by Mark Peterson on
No surprise that Stephen opposes the act given his apparent opposition to all public accommodations laws for gays and lesbians But I wonder what accounts for the highlighting of the act’s proposed ban on discrimination in jury service, which gets a mocking exclamation point in the post.
The issue came up in the SmithKline case in the 9th Circuit, where a drug company improperly kept someone off the jury because he was gay. The 9th Circuit said this is discrimination under Batson, but it’s the only circuit to have done so. Does Stephen believe that parties should be be able to exclude jurors on basis of sexual orientation? It’s hard to imagine any conceivable justification for that.
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
As I understand it, a bill was introduced in the early 1970s to add sexual orientation to the federal civil rights laws.
I think it was supported by a handful of liberal politicians, but – in the tenor of the times – interest in the bill was limited and so, by the late 1980s or early 1990s, it was decided by the Human Rights Campaign to focus on a much more narrower civilian, employment bill.
Frankly, it was still a tough sell, because the well-financed, “culture wars” sought to block any effort to deal with anti-gay discrimination, because, apparently, that was what God was telling them to do.
ENDA probably would have passed in 1996, but a “moderate” Republican changed his vote at the last minute.
I can appreciate the need to be practical and pragmatic about what the bill protects. Most people who understand the process would agree.
The problem is that (a) the folks eager to tell the transgender community to “wait their turn” didn’t seem to have any clear idea or commitment as to adding gender identity protection in the future. Also, (b) it is not really clear that “sexual orientation only” bill would get passed the culture war critics, who seem to have no interest in any gay rights bill.
posted by Jorge on
This is unusual for me to say, but I oppose making gay rights an add-on to the iconic black civil rights law.
First of all, it stinks of intrusion into private affairs.
I say this in light of BSA’s recent decision to remove the ban on adult gay employers and leaders (a prediction I was wrong about). Is this law really necessary?
Every single protected class currently in the act is one with an extensive history of discrimination, and severe enough to fall into the category of a war crime. The remaining apharteid-like conditions were vestiges of institutional crimes against humanity. The Civil Rights Act was necessary, especially in the case of race, to send a strong message that something occurring here and now needs to be reversed on a massive scale.
There is no comparison to be made for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights by any but the most hemophiliac bleeding-hearts. GLBT rights should stand on its own terms. We should have the opportunity to not only reverse but eliminate the subversive history of discrimination before we resort to the law to allege a history in need of a solution. This law is unnecessary, unwise, and yes, unproductive.
posted by tom jefferson 3rd on
The Civil Rights Act is not just for “the blacks” It deals with discrimination based on race, color, ethnic ancestry religion or sex.
Where it shows up in the federal code (or what popular name it is given) may be less important then the actual text of the law.
posted by tom jefferson 3rd on
Well, I rarely get much mail from the Human Rights Campaign or the Log Cabin Republicans. If you dont want them sending you stuff….
I would hate to say that the HRC or the LCR have been useless. I think that they can do good work.
However, I think that the leadership in both groups have made mistakes and (sometimes) come off as self- promoters who often cant get much done, but organize fancy fund raisers.