ENDA

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act is supposed to come for a vote in the Senate.

Harry Reid Will Bring ENDA Up For Senate Vote
Huffington Post
By Amanda Terkel
Posted: 10/28/2013

WASHINGTON -- The Employment Non-Discrimination Act could come up for a vote in the Senate as early as next week, according to the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

ENDA would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. When the Senate convened Monday afternoon, Reid formally announced his plans to bring up the legislation during the current work period, which ends the week before Thanksgiving. Reid has long been a supporter of ENDA, cosponsoring it as early as 1997.

There are fifty-three senators who have signed up for the bill and the bill supporters are hoping that seven Republican senators will also support the bill to give them a veto proof majority.

Here is my prediction, in the Senate the Republicans will try to strip-out protection for us, and if that fails they will try to keep us out of the bathroom. If the bill does pass the Senate, it is dead in the House unless protection for us is not in the bill. Already Sen Cruz has read in to the Congressional Record the lies that the Pacific Justice Institute said about the Florence Colorado trans-student.

It will be a test of how our gay and lesbians brother and sisters stand by us or if they throw us under the bus again as they did in 2007.

Right now under an EEOC ruling we are protected because of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They ruled in May of last year that discrimination  based on gender identity and expression is a form of sex discrimination. I think the  EEOC ruling will not help or hurt the chances of us being included in the bill. However, if we are left out of the bill I think it will hurt us, I think there could be an argument made that if we are dropped from the bill that Congress did not mean for us to have protection.

All the laws in the world will not end discrimination. There still is age discrimination, sex discrimination and race discrimination. We are still being discriminated against here in Connecticut even through it is against the law, so what good is it to pass anti-discrimination laws?

Well for one thing it shows that our state does not condone discrimination against its citizens. As Martin Luther King Jr. said,

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

It makes companies and landlords and store owners think twice before they discriminate.