The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is dead in the proverbial legislative waters.
For the last several decades, ENDA has been one of the foremost bills for the homosexual lobby, introduced many times in various forms. Few of the bills have gone anywhere, but last year, the Senate passed ENDA legislation with bipartisan support.
The bill, which would prevent most employers in the U.S. with more than 15 employees from not hiring someone based on their “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” was opposed by religious leaders and social conservatives, and was never given a vote in the House. As a result, as reported this week by The Washington Blade, the gay lobby expects ENDA to be dead in the water for the rest of this Congress and the foreseeable legislative future.
Gay lobby groups that dropped their support for the Senate's bill because of its religious exemption are also being blamed for the defeat. As the Blade reports:
Any attempt to move the Senate-passed version of ENDA would likely be complicated by opposition from groups that have dropped support from the bill because of its religious exemption, such as the National LGBTQ Task Force and the ACLU. The language in the Senate-passed version of ENDA would allow religious-affiliated organizations to discriminate against LGBT workers in non-ministerial positions, unlike protections for other groups under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Jerame Davis, executive director of the LGBT labor group Pride at Work, said the Senate would need to pass a version of ENDA with a narrower religious exemption as part of the defense authorization bill for his organization to support the measure.
“It’s not clear what language would be used in such a scenario,” Davis said. “Pride at Work would support language that is fully inclusive of both sexual orientation and gender identity and expression and that also contains no religious exemptions beyond what is already included in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”
When it passed through the Senate last year, many ENDA supporters promptly looked for ways to get either a straight vote in the House or attach ENDA as an amendment to a larger bill. But despite pressure from billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer and his network of allies, House Republicans refused to consider the bill, thus protecting employers nationwide from the kinds of lawsuits and fines seen in states that have passed similar so-called “non-discrimination” laws.