NeitherThe American Equality Bill must be the way to fix our issues.  ENDA has become a piece of crap, with less punishment for employers for violating sexual orientation/gender identity provisions than discrimination due to both race and religion.  The ENDA bill is absurd because it still doesn’t give us the full protection of the Civil Rights Act.  It was drawn up by cowardice, same with the current DADT legislation.  I have high confidence that DADT will be struck down by the courts in the Log Cabin Republicans’ case, and DOMA struck down via Gill v. OPM.
Cowards, cowards, cowards in the Congress.  Cowards Cowards Cowards in Gay, inc, who with their money spend on themselves quarter of a million dollars a year salaries with almost NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT!!!  DOWN WITH GAY INC!!!!!  The NRA gets results because they don’t do cocktail parties with politicians.

Everybody gets one.The Republican Party has done everything in their power to slow and stall almost everything the new administration has tried to do. Filibuster, sounds like a noise my grandma makes when she does not agree on something and is losing the argument. They have taken a simple idea of fairness, ENDA, and have nitpicked the hell out of it. It is not the same bill and no one wants to keep picking, so it will lay dormant.
DOMA will change thanks to our “Radical” judges, the piles of info from REAL orgs. and the increasingly obvious mentally disturbed opponents.
As for DADT, the ball is rolling. VERY slowly. The money spent on the surveys is a joke. The only input by the LGBT population is by the brave troops that are already fired. There was a meeting with gay service members spouses mentioned but I have not heard anything about the outcome. I don’t think anyone is going anyway. As long as our brave troops can still get fired, no one is going to put them in harm’s way by filling out a survey or attending a meeting.
Being a “hidden” population, we are hard to count and survey. Not everyone is out and the young people that are out are not counted until adulthood. We are a huge group of an unknown value asking for basic rights to live, love and fight for a country we love. We are up against a huge population that has no problem being counted. They are guided by a different set of rules that clash with our LAWS and will lie, cheat, and live on the down low to keep US from being treated like they are.They are going to lose this war because the lies are being exposed and the closet is opening. They will lose because their arguments are unproven and unfounded.
Obama has done more to change our country than any other. He has had his hands full since day one and has done tons to try and clean up the mess he stepped into. The changes are not all about our population but the whole country and our place in the world. While change seems to come slowly today, look at how far we have come in since our birth as a nation. The United States of America is a baby compared to the rest of the world and we have made great changes in a short time. We are far removed from the pilgrims however, we are not as removed from their strict code of conduct as we would like, but that is changing too. We will win. Just give it some time.

ConcurThe reason for ENDA (only covering employment) rather than full Title VII inclusion was to reduce the resistance to it.
It didn’t.
Does anyone believe that a single congressional vote would be lost if Title VII protection was on the table instead of just employment? If anything, we may gain some votes, as there would be fewer claims about “special rights” for Gays.
Many people assume that Gays are already protected, that ENDA must go beyond the Civil Rights Act. I’ve consistently run into this misapprehension in comments by many in newspapers.

Well

who actually believes at this point that ENDA, should it get out of the House, will get by a Republican filibuster in the Senate?

It doesn’t have to get out of the House to be voted on in the Senate.
And the Republicans cannot by themselves filibuster ENDA.  At least not without Collins and Snowe withdrawing their co-sponsorship of the bill and voting against cloture.
There has to be at least one Democrat against ENDA in order for it to be filibustered, if Reid were to bring it up.

Which “one per year”?Seems like a dividing question.  The answer is we must keep working on repealing DADT & DOMA, and enacting ENDA & UAFA, and work to right any other legal wrongs.
It may be that with this administration all we can hope for is 1 watered down action a year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep pressing hard on all of them.

NoAlso, I hate the ‘America is so young compared to the rest of the world’ argument. As a government, as a unified people, yes we are younger than many countries, but even children can tell right from wrong and discrimination is always wrong.
My major problem with the ‘young’ argument is that we really aren’t. It’s not like we had to start from the ground up when the first immigrants got here, discovering fire and the wheel and how to create buildings and bridges that didn’t fall over in a high wind. Not only did we bring all the knowledge from our countries of origin, knowledge of law, religion, economics, mathematics, architecture, government, etc etc, but we also had the help of the people who were here first in learning what grew here, what caused illnesses, what cured illnesses, how to survive the seasons and weather. We had a huge jump start, in a lot of ways, compared to many other countries, like an experienced worker in an entry level position.
Mostly though, there is never a good excuse for discrimination, not time, not youth, not a full plate.
Discrimination is wrong and the priority should always be equality.  

Obama’s Lavendar Lapdogs not welcomeLincoln, you are the perfect example of the self-directed homophobia of our community.  Anyone who kisses Obama’s ass this much and so blatantly lies about what Obama is doing and has done is not dealing with reality.  Please get out of our movement and go line up with the other lemmings behind Obama.  You are not an ally.  When you put a politician above equal rights for human beings, you end up acting against the interests of your own people.  Go away and cheerlead elsewhere.  

The DADT Surveylooks to me like a stalling tactic.  They’re trying to run out the clock until the Democrats lose control of Congress.  Yeah, the questions are ridiculous, and the survey by it’s very nature excludes the gay and lesbian service members who are the most impacted by that.  I also suspect that the military officials conducting the survey are fully aware that it will be exposed to criticism for that – next year.  But by then, what difference will it make?  DADT repeal will be dead anyway.  In fact, criticism itself is a stalling tactic.  If they made a really good survey virtually immune to criticism, it would be taken and used immediately, which would defeat it’s purpose.  Even after they drag out the process of repealing DADT with a joke survey, they want to drag out the process even further with endless hearings proving it was a joke survey.  Heck, that might even force them to do the whole survey over again.
And the Democrats fell for this smoke screen.

ReplyIs that tea in your Regan cup?