Click Here To Email 36 U.S. Representatives Unconfirmed on ENDA




Posted: 19 Oct 2009 07:46 AM PDT



The House is poised to take a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) soon. While the real fight is going to be in the Senate, it is worthwhile to pause for a moment and take note of where we are in the House. Crunch time is coming, and it won’t work to call the day before the vote.



There are, according to my calculations, 212 likely yes votes in the House. That is 5 shy of the 217 needed to win a majority of votes. (Normally it’s 218, but there are two vacant seats, California’s District 10 and Florida’s District 19, and I don’t believe these vacancies will be filled prior to the ENDA vote in the House. Feel free to correct me if you have better info.)



Two weeks ago, there was a vote to strip hate crimes from the Defense Authorization Act in the House. It lost, but I and many others took the opportunity to note which Representatives showed their true colors. For those legislators who voted to strip us out, and were previously unconfirmed on ENDA, I moved to the “probable no” column. We need to focus our limited time and energy (though I hope some will step forward on ENDA). That leaves 36 U.S. Representatives who are unconfirmed on ENDA. Their emails (and phone numbers) are after the jump. Please contact those near you and ask for their support on ENDA.

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Chai Feldblum Nominated to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

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The White House announced Monday that it will nominate Chai Feldblum, LGBT rights scholar and advocate, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Chai is a Georgetown Law Professor, former law clerk to former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, a primary mover behind passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a longtime advocate for people with disabilities. She is also the partner of Bilerico contributor Nan Hunter.

Chai is the first openly gay or lesbian person appointed to the EEOC, which issues regulations implementing anti-discrimination laws (including ENDA when it passes!) and which authorizes test case litigation under anti-discrimination laws. If confirmed, she will serve a five year term.

Bilerico readers who remember the early Clinton years may remember the Senate confirmation battle over Roberta Achtenberg, nominated to be Assistant Secretary of HUD. She was confirmed, but not before Jesse Helms referred to her as that "damn lesbian." Achtenberg was the former executive director of the Lesbian Rights Project/National Center for Lesbian Rights. So she wasn't just a lesbian, she was an activist.

Jesse Helms is long gone, but the Alliance Defense Fund already has set its sights on Feldblum.

Continue reading "Chai Feldblum nominated to EEOC"...

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On Loyalty Oaths or Ebony and Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony

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The following has been clipped from The Bilerico Project Report dated 14 September 2009.

_________________

I'm sure you've all heard by now that Rep. Jerry Nadler plans on introducing a bill to repeal DOMA in the House, and that Barney Frank isn't co-sponsoring because he's worried that the "certainty principle" will be a poison pill that will kill the bill and that it will be a distraction from other legislation like ENDA.

Personally, it seems like a rather academic debate right now considering that the bill won't be voted on until at least after the 2010 midterms and that it won't pass the Senate in Obama's first term, if it does pass within the next decade. Sorry, I just don't feel the optimism here.

But there are also plenty of reasons to think that Frank either should or should not cosponsor the bill. There is a strategic debate there, and we're having it because the person at the center of that strategic debate is Barney Frank, one of the gay movement's smartest, most powerful, and staunchest actors. If it were anyone else, he'd probably be shouted down as an "uncle Tom" or a "traitor." If anyone would have paid attention in the first place.

More extreme (in rhetoric and emotion, not politics) members of the LGBT population have already gotten fed up with Frank. Aravosis is now referring to the Congressman as "formerly gay," because apparently having a different opinion on a strategic discussion means that you're no longer allowed to suck dick. Joe Sudby, who generally shows more restraint, said:

But, sometimes, we really need our allies to be our allies, not just the smartest people around.

His comment is fairly representative of what a lot of people are actually saying when they call someone an "uncle Tom" for not agreeing with them that marriage is the most important issue ever, for example. They don't want people to think on their own or help out as they can - they want loyalty.

But loyalty isn't defined as loyalty to the community or loyalty to a certain goal. It's defined as "You're a good, loyal, real gay person if you agree with me." For some reason, it's not a definition people on the left use, but the center-left/big-city liberal section of the community that's always just assumed it had the God-given right to define the strategies, goals, and composition of the LGBT movement.

Continue reading "On loyalty oaths"...

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Are We Ready? Arguments Against ENDA

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The following has been clipped from The Bilerico Project Report dated 14 September 2009

ENDA is coming, and we must get ready for the coming onslaught of illogical arguments. Anything involving religion in politics, even peripherally, is sure to frighten some that the government is infringing their right to practice their religion. Fortunately, ENDA does not prohibit any religious beliefs or expressions protected by the First Amendment. However, that will not stop the argument from being made. Today we will take at look at religious arguments against ENDA.

Religious opponents of ENDA are using the "reverse-discrimination" argument. The suggestion here is that ENDA will force churches and religious schools who have religious objections to hire lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.

In addition, the argument is that by forbidding religious extremists from rousting LGBT workers from their jobs, they are being prohibited from practicing their religion. Furthermore, these opponents say that ENDA will call for the firing of any employees who disapprove of homosexuality and prohibit any religious symbols in the workplace, such as the Bible, because the religion they symbolize condemns homosexuality. These arguments are incorrect. They can be rebutted effectively. But they are tricky, because the line between religious freedom and religious intolerance has always been a slippery one.

Continue reading "Are We Ready? Arguments Against ENDA"...

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The Rights of Gay Employees

The following has been clipped from the Saturday 12 September 2009 issue.
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It is remarkable how little progress gay people have made in securing the basic protection against discrimination on the job. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire workers for being gay. But momentum is building in Congress for the first federal law banning such discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Federal law has lagged behind the reality of American life. There are now openly gay members of Congress from between-the-coasts states like Colorado and Wisconsin. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group, 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies have policies protecting gay employees from discrimination.

But gay rights advocates have for years faced opposition to a federal civil rights law from the religious right, and from parts of the business community, who  argue  that  it  would lead to a flood of litigation.

Bipartisan bills have been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, modeled on existing civil rights laws that cover race, religion and sex. Unlike some past bills, these include gender identity, protecting transgender people from discrimination.

The bills were written to meet some of the concerns of opponents. The law would not apply to religious organizations, or to businesses with fewer than 15 employees. It would not allow for quotas or “disparate impact” lawsuits, which generally use statistical disparities to prove discrimination.

There is reason for cautious optimism. In 2007, the House passed a nondiscrimination law that did not cover transgender people. The current Congress is more Democratic, and even in the past two years, gay rights have made significant strides. As states and localities have passed antidiscrimination laws, it has been clear that they do not disrupt the workplace, and they have not resulted in an enormous number of lawsuits.

Supporters in the House think they have the votes. The biggest hurdle is likely to be winning the support of 60 senators, the de facto number now required for most legislation because of filibuster rules.

People who believe in workplace fairness should lobby senators to get on board. It is unacceptable that in a nation committed to equality people can still be fired in more than half the states for being gay. Congressional leaders should make passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act a top priority.

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Congress returns - much at stake for gays

OF INTEREST . . .

The following has been clipped from the Daily Headlines of

365gay.com published 08 September 2009.

OF NOTE . . . . . . .

Hate crimes, AIDS, DOMA, Don't Ask may all be taken up.
Read More...

OF COURSE . . . .

http://mail.logoonline.com/a/hBKprfhBPJVZ9B7S$md-rGOIzrF/gay8-2

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ENDA and gender identity protections

The following has been clipped from The Bilerico Project Report posted 04 September 2009
 __________________________________________________________________

ENDA and gender identity protections

Editors' Note: Guest blogger Tobias Barrington Wolff is Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, the Jesse Climenko Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard, a civil rights lawyer, and the former LGBT policy advisor to presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The re-introduction of ENDA promises to bring with it a renewed discussion about the importance of federal statutory protections for gender identity and expression. In the past, much of that discussion has focused on our trans brothers and sisters. And indeed anti-trans discrimination ought to be enough by itself -- more than enough -- to justify including gender identity and expression within ENDA.

But there is a danger of drawing artificial divisions within our community when we assume that protection against discrimination based upon gender identity or expression is exclusively about trans people. That has never been the case. Those protections are designed to safeguard all of us against being punished because we somehow fail to conform to another persons's expectations about gender.

In the hope of arming people with information to help them make that important case, I'd like to point out a decision that was handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit [PDF] the other week, Prowel v. Wise Business Forms, http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/Prowel%20v.%20Wise%20Business%20Forms.pdf concerning the harassment and discrimination suffered by a man named Brian Prowel. Prowel was fired from the factory where he had worked for 13 years. He is, as he describes himself, an effeminate gay man. Throughout much of his time at the factory, he was subjected to horrible mistreatment.

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/09/enda_and_gender_identity_protections.php#more

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Read the Post ! Do the Math ! Do What You Got To Do ! Just Do It !

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The following has been cllipped from The Bilerico Project posting of 31 August 2009

OF INTEREST . . .

Stop Here and Email 18 Crucial Senators on ENDA


We're almost there, kids. We have 95% of the gas we need to get there in the House, but only 80% of what we need in the Senate. Face it, you're going to have to get out and push at some point.

To help you, here the scoop on what's happening in the Senate, followed by email links and telephone numbers after the jump. Print this out and paste it on your wall. Play "ENDA: The Home Edition" by ticking off the Senators as they come on board. You'll get a prize if you collect all 60!

OF NOTE . . . . . . .

Okay, gang, here's what's going on. We need 60 votes to win against a likely Republican filibuster. There are 48 Senators with confirmed yes votes on S.1584. The game is a treasure hunt to find another twelve votes so it can pass. Can you find all twelve?

OF COURSE . . . .

Continue reading "Click Here To Email 18 Crucial Senators on ENDA"...


http://www.bilerico.com/2009/08/click_here_to_email_18_crucial_senators_on_enda.php#more

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