Tuesday, November 06, 2007
unconscionable
The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote tomorrow on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. While this may sound like great news, there's more to the story.
Earlier this year, HR 2015 was introduced. Also called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, this version of ENDA also included protections based on gender identity and expression. Believing this version would never pass (think of the male bank tellers in dresses and waitresses with beards! the horror! the horror!), Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), our longest-serving open 'mo, introduced HR 3685, which is the same bill with the tranny protections stripped.
HR 3685 is a bad bill. We should not compromise on basic human rights. The Human Rights Campaign, which likes to bill itself as the nation's leading LGBT rights organization, just endorsed the tranny-free bill. Shame on them. You should never give them money or time again. You should remove those stupid equal sign decals from your car (they look silly anyway). You should support only the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from now on, which has taken the correct, principled stand to support only a fully-inclusive ENDA.
Look, we're all in this together and we can never throw any members of our community under the bus so that others in our community can ride that bus. Lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans owe the freedoms we've won over the past 40 years to those transgender freedom fighters who stood up and fought back against injustice when the rest of the community wouldn't. We owe our trans brothers and sisters an inclusive ENDA, and both Arizona and our community will be stronger for it. We must demonstrate to the agents of injustice that we will stand united for freedom for all of us, not just the least threatening.
The incremental approach has not worked in other states like New York, where I lived when they passed their Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in 2001. To the best of my knowledge, they still have not extended the same protections to transgender New Yorkers more than 6 years later.
There's talk that Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI, the House's only out lesbian member and all around-awesome legislator) will propose an amendment that will restore the gender identity protections. Congressman Grijalva has stated he will support the amendment and oppose the final bill if the amendment fails. This is the kind of strong leadership I look for.
And as a side note, both Congressman Grijalva and Congresswoman Giffords were co-sponsors of the original, inclusive ENDA, and neither has signed onto the sham replacement bill being voted on tomorrow. Good on both of them.
Earlier this year, HR 2015 was introduced. Also called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, this version of ENDA also included protections based on gender identity and expression. Believing this version would never pass (think of the male bank tellers in dresses and waitresses with beards! the horror! the horror!), Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), our longest-serving open 'mo, introduced HR 3685, which is the same bill with the tranny protections stripped.
HR 3685 is a bad bill. We should not compromise on basic human rights. The Human Rights Campaign, which likes to bill itself as the nation's leading LGBT rights organization, just endorsed the tranny-free bill. Shame on them. You should never give them money or time again. You should remove those stupid equal sign decals from your car (they look silly anyway). You should support only the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from now on, which has taken the correct, principled stand to support only a fully-inclusive ENDA.
Look, we're all in this together and we can never throw any members of our community under the bus so that others in our community can ride that bus. Lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans owe the freedoms we've won over the past 40 years to those transgender freedom fighters who stood up and fought back against injustice when the rest of the community wouldn't. We owe our trans brothers and sisters an inclusive ENDA, and both Arizona and our community will be stronger for it. We must demonstrate to the agents of injustice that we will stand united for freedom for all of us, not just the least threatening.
The incremental approach has not worked in other states like New York, where I lived when they passed their Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in 2001. To the best of my knowledge, they still have not extended the same protections to transgender New Yorkers more than 6 years later.
There's talk that Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI, the House's only out lesbian member and all around-awesome legislator) will propose an amendment that will restore the gender identity protections. Congressman Grijalva has stated he will support the amendment and oppose the final bill if the amendment fails. This is the kind of strong leadership I look for.
And as a side note, both Congressman Grijalva and Congresswoman Giffords were co-sponsors of the original, inclusive ENDA, and neither has signed onto the sham replacement bill being voted on tomorrow. Good on both of them.
Labels: civil rights, ENDA, House of Representatives, LGBT
