How Many Times Have I Heard This…

But the problem is we did same-sex marriage and for some unfathomable reason people seem to think we can’t do both of these bills in the same session. As a number of members said to me, we can’t do two gay bills in one session.
--Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery County)

In Maryland, the legislature has a gender inclusive anti-discrimination bill that is in committee and today is the last day that a bill can be submitted to the legislature.

Déjà Vu all over again
The Daily Kos
By rserven
March 24, 2012

SB 212, Maryland's Gender Identity NonDiscrimination Act is stalled in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Monday is the deadline for approval of all bills which need consideration by both houses of the legislature…and there are no plans for a vote.

For the sixth year in a row the measure will die a slow, miserable death.

The bill was aimed at banning discrimination against transpeople in employment, housing and public accommodations.

When we were trying to pass our gender inclusive anti-discrimination bill we heard the same thing each year, that the marriage bill had priority over our bill. When the CT Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was illegal we were told by the marriage equality organization that next year (2009) was going to be our year to pass our gender inclusive anti-discrimination bill. In 2009 when we filed our bill, we learned that there was a bill to codify the Supreme Court ruling, our bill got pushed to the back burning and for the first time since we introduced the bill in 2007, our bill never made it out of committee. With the passing of the marriage law, the marriage equality organization closed their doors because their donations dried up.

We see this happening all around the country; we are told, "don’t worry once we pass marriage equality we will come back for you" and in the majority of the states they haven’t. We also saw this on the national level when gender identity was pulled from ENDA (Employee Non-Discrimination Act) in 2007.