The US Senate approved ENDA today—that’s the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which will make it illegal to fire someone based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity. ENDA will totally do that—it will even make it illegal to fire someone for being straight—if ENDA can get through the House, which ENDA can’t. But ENDA’s passage in the Senate today makes it 1. highly likely to be approved by the Senate in the future and 2. much likelier to get through a future Democratic-controlled House. And the vote wasn’t even close. MSNBC:
Ten Republicans joined 52 Democrats and two Independents in voting “yes,” signaling how far the gay rights movement has come in recent years. Many see support for ENDA as a stepping stone on the way to support for marriage equality, which only three Republican senators currently endorse.
Um…
The Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings on marriage equality last summer. They kinda declared same-sex marriage constitutional—they ordered the feds to recognize same-sex marriages that had been legally performed in marriage equality states—but they kicked the issue of whether to allow same-sex couples to marry back to the states, where we continue to rack up victories. So while Republican support for marriage equality in the US Senate is nice, and while it’s important, and while it helps to build a national consensus that brings use closer to marriage equality in all 50 states, Republican support for marriage equality in the US Senate is not a necessary “stepping stone” toward achieving marriage equality in all 50 states. It’s better to have GOP US senators on our side, of course, but the Supreme Court essentially de-federalized the issue of marriage equality. Winning the support of state senators and state reps is far more important than winning the support of US senators and US reps. Congress has no control over the fate of marriage equality in the 35 states where it remains illegal. But, hey, ten Republican senators voted for ENDA—including Orin Fucking Hatch. That’s real progress.
But Michelangelo Signorile raises a red flag:
ENDA has a problem: a disturbing religious exemption that has been included in the bill in one form or another ever since it was first introduced in 1994—light years ago in terms of the speed of LGBT progress—and by gay advocates themselves, to appease conservative, religious Democrats and Republicans. In that regard, they haven’t updated ENDA for 2013. And really, the exemption should never have been in this civil rights legislation in first place, as The New York Times pointed out in an editorial this week:
The exemption would extend beyond churches and other houses of worship to any religiously affiliated institution, like hospitals and universities, and would allow those institutions to discriminate against people in jobs with no religious function, like billing clerks, cafeteria workers and medical personnel. The exemption—which was inserted to appease some opponents who say the act threatens religious freedom—is a departure from the approach of earlier civil rights laws.
So a Catholic school teacher who’s done a great job for years could still be fired under ENDA if the school’s principal discovers that she is a lesbian. That’s abhorrent. I’m not sure that many LGBT people know that, in 2013, our advocates in Washington, D.C., are still going along with that. To many in 1994, it seemed like an ugly compromise that had to be made in order to get any rights of any kind (though there were voices warning about the religious exemption even then). But in 2013, with Illinois getting on track to become the 15th state with marriage equality just yesterday, ENDA’s religious exemption is clearly from the Stone Age and isn’t something we should settle for anymore.