In a 64-32 bipartisan vote, the U.S. Senate passed the landmark Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
The bill provides workplace protections to LGBT employees, outlawing discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Currently, 29 states have no laws that provide protections to LGBT workers.
However, the historic bill is not currently scheduled in the House, a spokesperson for House Speaker John Boehner said earlier in the week. Boehner has argued that the bill could be costly to small businesses and lead to “frivolous legislation.”
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person elected to Senate, and other ENDA supporters have a straightforward request of Boehner: “Just bring it up for a vote” and let the House decide on the bill’s fate.
"On the procedural side, I'd say what we said during the shutdown: Just bring it up for a vote," Baldwin said in an interview with MSNBC. "Because I feel that the House, if given the opportunity to vote up or down against discrimination in employment, against the LGBT community, that we'd win that vote. We'd win that day. And so that's what I'd say to Speaker Boehner: Just give it an up-or-down vote."
An earlier version of the bill, which only included sexual orientation protections, was initially introduced in the Senate in 1996, where it failed by a single vote. The House passed a version of ENDA in 2007, though it didn’t include protections for transgender individuals.
Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, who voted against ENDA, will speak at an upcoming anti-gay fundraiser. Rubio is scheduled as the keynote speaker for Florida Family Policy Council’s Nov. 16 8th Annual Policy Awards Dinner. Run by anti-gay activist John Stemberger, the organization promotes anti-LGBT and pro-life policies. The FFPC is one of the largest anti-gay groups in the country.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniele has approved the wording of an approved constitutional amendment to repeal the state’s gay-marriage ban.
This paves the way for the amendment’s author, the Arkansas Initiative for Marriage Equality, to collect the signatures needed to put the measure on the 2016 ballot. The proposed amendment would define marriage as a union between two people, regardless of sex and repeal the state’s gay marriage ban.
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2013.