Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Morning Sweep

The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is set for a hearing in the U.S. House of Representative's Housing, Employment, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on Sept. 5.

In a great column in The Nation, Timothy Patrick McCarthy dissects the Larry Craig incident and determines that we should be more concerned about the hate rather than the hypocrisy when it comes to Republican attitudes on gay people.

Jerry Lewis is very sorry about being an old bigot.

John McCain gets a verbal smack-down by a high school student who tried to get the slowly sinking presidential candidate to rationalize his opposition to various pro-gay bills.

Transgender activist Monica Helms writes about her experience at a recent Las Vegas meeting of the Democratic National Committee, where it was made clear that transgender issues would be part of the 2008 DNC platform.

Iowa's governor says he supports Iowa's DOMA, which was recently struck down by a district judge. He did, however, say that he would allow the judicial process to work the issue out.

1 comment:

Bill Perdue said...

EDNA IS good news. Even a weak EDNA will be immediately useful in larger companies, but take awhile to filter down to smaller ones. Even if it has loopholes exempting christian totalitarian bigots, they can be challenged in court: "If superstitious groups can't discriminate against national minorities or women, how is it just that they discriminate against us?"

The biggest obstacle of course, is that this country is run by the superrich. They own both the businesses to be supervised and the politicians who’ll decide
EDNA’s scope and enforcement parameters.

It's even possible that EDNA, because it'll originate in the Congress of the rich, may be as successful as the DEA is in quashing drugs, or the FBI efforts to stop terrorist attacks, or the FDA is in insuring our health. And I suppose we don’t have to mention mining and bridge inspectors, Veterans Administration doctors or levee maintainers. Or the stunning successes of the US Civil Rights Commissions efforts to stamp out racism and misogyny. Or, well, you get the picture…

Our best use of EDNA is as an organizing tool. We should mount joint campaigns with unions, immigrants, African Americans, women, the aged, etc., to get what we can out of it, demand even more fight to end loopholes. Those efforts by and for ourselves, not Congressional compromise and weakness, will make it a worthwhile law.