November 5, 2007

Employment Non-Discrimination Act to be voted on by the House of Representatives without gender identity protections

[The following is the text of the email today from United ENDA, and is being sent verbatim since it succinctly gives the essential information.]

The House leadership just signaled that it intends to bring the non-inclusive ENDA to the Rules Committee today, which would mean a likely vote on the floor tomorrow. (The Rules Committee meeting is scheduled for 5 pm ET today. We have no info yet about when tomorrow a vote may occur.) They've certainly signaled that they intended to take action on the flawed bill before – and we've stopped them in their tracks every step of the way. But, despite hearing loud and clear that the community this bill is supposed to protect does not want this bill or agree with this strategy, it appears to us as if House leadership is intent on moving the bill anyways.

These points are the points at the Task Force and NCTE have been giving to Representatives who have agreed to vote No, and who have agreed to tell leadership they are planning to vote No (in order to convince leadership not to bring the bill to a vote at all). Remember: the more Representatives who tell Leadership now that they will vote No, the less likely it is the Leadership will bring the vote to the floor at all – which is the best case scenario at this point. Leadership does not want to be embarrassed by a vote total that does not reflect its position. Feel free to use these points when speaking with your own Representative about why you have the position you have. They will also be useful when speaking to reporters after a vote happens (if a vote does happen at all).

• Congress should not be considering a bill that the community it affects does not support.
  —It would be unprecedented for Congress to move forward with a civil rights bill that does not have the support of a single organization in the affected community. No LGBT group supports this bill, and more than 350 LGBT and allied organizations have come together to oppose it. Members who vote no stand with the LGBT community.
   
• Federal legislation should reflect the progress at the state level, not impede it.
  —No state legislature has passed a bill that does not include both sexual orientation and gender identity in the past five years. We have already heard that the public debate to strip gender identity from the federal bill has impacted the legislative climate at the state level. Federal legislation is looked to – and should be – a model for the states; this bill is just the opposite. A no vote sends a strong message to the states that moving a non-inclusive bill is the wrong strategy.
   
• Incrementalism CANNOT mean leaving some in the community without any protections at all.
  —While many have claimed that the strategy of moving the weak, non-inclusive bill is similar to previous incremental civil rights advances, those advances never singled out a part of the community to be exempt from protections, but rather tackled areas of discrimination one at time (such as housing, voting, etc.). Anyone who claims that leaving transgender individuals out of ENDA is incremental is saying that they are separate from the rest of the community. A vote against a non-inclusive ENDA shows that the member unequivocally disagrees with this perception.
   
• A bill that does not include gender identity may not fully protect even lesbians and gays.
  —According to every pro-LGBT legal groups' analysis, without inclusion of "gender identity," this bill may not provide adequate protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual employees who do not conform to gender stereotypes. Members should not support a bill that is so deeply flawed.
   
• Civil rights advocates should not compromise on basic principles of fairness.
  —In the hopes of broadening support, leadership has made too many compromises on this bill. It has become too weak and would protect too few people. By moving a weak bill now, especially at a time when there is no possibility of it becoming law, we set a precedent for the next Congress to consider another weak bill. A strong message must be sent that this is unacceptable."

Tell your representative that you want him/her to vote NO to a non-inclusive ENDA. And, if your representative intends to vote NO on the non-inclusive ENDA, say that you want your representative to tell leadership that now, so they will pull the bill.