It’s such a bad idea to scrap a bill that’s been around forever and has had so much work put into it to instead support a fantasy-land bill that just doesn’t exist and would be nearly impossible to get through. You want to turn off the Congressional Black Caucus, who are one of our best allies in the House, to us? Fine, but don’t expect to get anything passed.

Sure, it’s half assed. The first Civil Rights bills for African Americans were too. And for women. And they were built upon to get to the state they are at today. The last time job discrimination laws were strengthened was in 2009 with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And they could still use some tweaking as there’s still plenty of job discrimination against women and racial minorities.

Are we in this for the long-haul or are we just going to demand perfect protections and not do the work necessary to get there? ENDA is a first step and a very important first step. There’s a reason FOTF and CWA and other homophobic groups are going to tie up the phone lines at the capitol opposing this bill: they know its passage spells the beginning of the end for them.

In the meantime, we’re caught up in whining that it’s not enough to justify our time. Not like DOMA… oh, wait, Congress won’t even introduce a bill to repeal DOMA unless we prove that we can get a bill like ENDA through. I wouldn’t expect them to put themselves on the line for something unpopular like DOMA repeal if this is the reaction they can expect from this community for something popular like ENDA.

And about transgender exclusion, since someone asked: that’s completely different. Excluding people from the bill is a divide and conquer tactic, plain and simple. Trans folks were there since the beginning of the movement, and we move forward together. Transgender people need those protections, and some would argue that they need them more than us. Sure, a few states have gone back for the T-folk, but a few haven’t either.

But I’m looking at this bill from the same perspective as HRC and the National Center for Transgender Equality: we’re going to drum up so much support for an inclusive ENDA that no one’s even going to think of splitting it up this time around. The votes are there and there will be people in the community working to get them.

OK, that’s a long comment for a thread that most people won’t ever see… :)

Here is the text of the bill as proposed last year in the House. This year’s bill will be introduced next week, but it’s modeled after last year’s bill.

You are raising a strawman argument. Where in the law does it compel anyone to employ you against their will? Please be specific.

Perhaps we can add a section to ENDA that would prohibit employees from discriminationg against employers because of sexual orientation. If I can force an employer to employ me, maybe an employer should be able to force me to work for her.

all of your points are conceded, but you’ve not answered my main question: why is this any more “making the perfect the enemy of the good” than not supporting a trans-inclusive ENDA?

mgh,

Perhaps you don’t recall that this site was not universally opposed to ENDA even in its flawed non-trans-inclusive position.

We pointed out that California, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Washington DC all passed sexual orientation protections before gender identity, which was added later.

I don’t think we are going to get 2/3 of the Congress and the states to vote for an Equal Rights Amendment today. So we are stuck with various types of legislation that we can get through. One builds on the other.

I think that Indiana Equality may be right on one level to say this isn’t enough, but I would say, “YES, I WANT THIS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. NOW WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO RECTIFY ALL THE OTHER FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION THAT I HAVE TO FACE IN THE COUNTRY!!!”

of course IE will be happy to see this legislation pass — but can’t we shoot for higher?

Here is just one example of the problem we face with changing the Civil Rights Act. Right now, if we pursue such a change, we will run into a buzzsaw from many (but not all) African-American leaders who already chaffe at the idea that LGBT rights are civil rights. They are already angry about that, saying that we are “highjacking” their civil rights legacy.

The idea of changing the Civil Rights Act is dead today, dead next year, and for quite some time to come. Even if we begin now to prepare the groundwork and the agitation, such legislation is years, possibly a decade away.

Do we really want to give ENDA a pass for protections now, versus the hope that maybe we can get broader civil rights protections ten years from now?

And if we know we would have to wait many years in order to get broader civil rights protections, why not do both? IE’s statement sets up the false choice that this is somehow either/or. It’s not. Get ENDA now and simultaneously begin the hard work of getting Congress geared up for broader civil rights protections as soon as that becomes viable.

Yes, ENDA is half-assed, as one commenter put it. So is repealing DOMA, DADT, and passing hate crimes legislation. All of these things individually are half-assed, and none by themselves will bring us to full equality.

But right now, it’s all we have. What IE is doing is making the perfect the enemy of the good. If we were to follow IE’s logic, maybe we should drop the fight against DOMA, DADT and Hate Crimes legislation and put all of our chips into the Civil Rights Act. Does anyone really believe that this makes any sense given where we are today?

There is a real and legitimate fear that if the civil rights act is opened for amendment that a lot of bad stuff will be added in.

They would rather add a new, SO/GI/GE only law that duplicates existing law than risk real damage to the existing laws. That’s a very common legislative tactic, and I think it’s legitimate.

still, I don’t think it’s that much different to say that the bill is any more “deeply flawed” when it leaves out a part of the LGBT community than when it eliminates the most important swaths of civil rights applicability.

first, it’s not accurate to say that trans individuals are “most in need” — in fact, there are more federal protections for trans individuals because of the way that sex discrimination laws have been interpreted to provide protection in many instances for trans individuals (see, e.g., the ACLU’s Library of Congress case).

and second, employment is just a smidgen of the scope of civil rights laws. this does nothing for credit, housing, public accomodations, or any other of the myriad aspects of life that civil rights laws apply to.

you may be more happy with this type of flaw than the other type of flaw, but I don’t think you have a leg to stand on to say that one type of “drawing a line in the sand” is any more principled than the other.