Until the Senate passes the Defense Department’s budget bill with DADT’s compromised repeal attached, the House isn’t going to move on ENDA, says Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Well isn’t this a familiar situation.
While ENDA is a “personal priority” for Pelosi, she’s also focused on doing “one thing at a time,” she tells the Washington Blade. Which for now means getting the DADT repeal through the Senate and on the president’s desk. And until then, there’s not going to be a vote in the House on ENDA.
I can already hear the on-lookers screaming, “WHY NOT PELOSI?! JUST DO IT!” Except the reality of this situation — the House, voluntarily or not, being stalled by the Senate’s lack of movement — isn’t new. The House has managed to at least introduce ENDA in the past, which Rep. Barney Frank did again this year. It even passed the bill, albeit sans gender identity protections, once before, only to see the Senate stall and let the effort peter out. So let’s be clear that the House waiting for the Senate to move on LGBT legislation isn’t a new phenomenon, and it’ll likely repeat itself again in the future.
What Pelosi’s statement represents now, however, is what we were fearing with DADT: That by the time either the House or Senate gets around to it, Democrats could lose a whole slew of seats to Republicans, killing the chances of passing such legislation after November, putting it in the “now or never” category.
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Andrew
We have until November 4th 2010 and then you can kiss ENDA good-bye for at least the next decade.
jamison
@Andrew: that better not be the case or i will personally go to washington and stir up a shitstorm GetEqualx10
Fitz
DADT Repeal and ENDA still cannot pass the US Senate.
They couldn’t pass anything at the beginning of this session of Congress and they can’t now. All the lobbying and protest and Gay Inc. “influence” hasn’t changed a single vote in the US Senate. To do that you have to replace Senators. We haven’t even tried to do that. We lose.
After November, it will be the 90s all over again.
missanthrope
I agree with Fitz, this isn’t about the trans inclusion or content of the bill itself, it’s will and how many “hits” the Democrats are willing to take for their gay constituients. It turns out they’re willing to spend ZERO political capital one us.
DADT is polling very positively with the general public and it’s not an issue with anyone who would be willing to vote democratic. The people who are dead set against DADT would never vote D in their life.
Yet it’s “too controversial” to be pushed through via executive order or Congress and we end up with this 10-month review committee bullshit. If the Democrats were really willing to pass LGBT rights, DADT would’ve been passed through months ago.
It’s like what Johnny Rotten asked at the last Sex Pistols concert: “Have you’ve ever felt like you’ve been cheated?”
Well, have you?
I have.
Jorge
ENDA has Republican co-sponsors in the Senate. It can’t be filibustered.
head
they will never pass ENDA before DADT is repealed. DADT would violate the terms of ENDA, giving expelled service members strong legal footing for lawsuits … they can’t have that.
DR
….and by the time it moves, there will be a bunch of new Republicans in Congress, thereby ensuring ENDA stalls, trans-inclusive or not. Once again, the Dems show their true colors; they don’t want to spend political capital on us, but expect we’ll run out and support them in November.
RageAgainstTheMachines
We need to get angrier. GetEQUALITY didn’t protest enough. They really need to irritate Pelosi so that she is afraid of us. Fear will make her support us.
We need a “Coalition of the Angry.” Nobody is going to helpus until they are afraid to be in the same room with us. Stand up and let America know you’re mad as Hell and you’re not going to take anymore.
Lincoln Rose
*sigh* Looks like us trans folks are gonna have to start building our own businesses and stop begging people to think of us as human enough to want to hire us.
jeffree
@missanthrope: Exactly!
With mid-terms looming, the Dems are running scared, although lucky for them the Reps are being torn in three directions: Moderates, Conservaphiles, and TeaPartéeLoonies.
With the Palinites beating out some relatively more electable candidates, the Reps may sacrifice some elections at the altar of unreasonableness.
Pelosi has been recently clear that DADT repeal comes before ENDA passage.
DOMA repeal waits in the wings, collecting dust..
I am not patient by nature, but in spite of the glacial pace of reforms to date, we still need to hold the Dems’ feet to the fire:::::: and most important Get Out The Vote in primaries.
I’ve spent more time than I’d admit to getting students at my univ. to register to vote and then ACTUALLY vote. The response has been luke-warm at best.
We know that younger voters are more likely to support LG rights [and I’m embarrassed that the polls keep over-looking the Bi & Trans folks] but until the under 30ish crowd starts voting, we face some real motivated older voters with sack-fulls of cash and 10,000 arguements that LGBTS should just
be denied rights to keep jobs, adopt, marry, serve in the military & be reunified with our foreign-born partners here in the USA.
;*-{
that’s me crying a little
S
“Waiting for DADT repeal” is a smokescreen.
It is abundantly clear that Ms. Pelosi’s “personal priority” regarding ENDA is to see that it never gets to the House floor for a vote. Her primary motivation is to preserve the Democratic majority and therefore will not support any action which she perceives may make D members more vulnerable this fall.
Rick Brannon
US Senate: Where Legislation Goes To Die.
Jason_Activist
GetEQUAL needs to ramp it up a bit. More ANGER. More IRRITATION.
Pelosi and the President didn’t take them seriously. One heckler is a joke, we need hundreds to make the difference. We should be blocking traffic in all the major cites and when people get outraged we can just say “BLAME THE PRESIDENT! HE’S IN OUR WAY, SO WE ARE IN YOUR WAY.”
We need millions squeaky wheels if we ever want to get greased. History says so. Now, get in the game.
missanthrope
@ Head,
I’m not sure that it works that way for the military and discrimination laws. They officially discriminate against women all of the time through barring them from combat roles and submarines, discrimination laws don’t apply to them as it does prviate companies or even the regular civilian government.
Bill Perdue
@RageAgainstTheMachines: @Jason_Activist: = AndrewW