Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Here We Go Again With The ENDA Executive Order

It's back for the 2K13, the predominately white gay grousing over President Obama not moving on their demands to sign an ENDA executive order.

The ENDA executive order they have been pushing for since 2010 has been a recurring theme in GLBT politics.  It's also bogus.   Far from eliminating discrimination for the entire LGBT community 'with the stroke of a pen', it only protects TBLG people employed by federal contractors.

It only benefits the gays who are employed by federal contractors and I'm extremely skeptical about the benefits to the rest of the community not covered by the executive order.. 

The Employment and Nondiscrimination Act is the legislative solution for the problem of LGBT employment discrimination.  It would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in both public and private employment and benefit the ENTIRE TBLG community.

An executive order won't.  

Granted, even Stevie Wonder can see that ENDA isn't passing out of a Republican controlled House.  But one of the reasons it's a Republican controlled House is because some of you GL peeps sat on your asses on November 2, 2010 instead of taking them to the polls during that midterm.

At the same time, because you were mad at President Obama for not dropping what he was doing to clean up the mess Junior left him and immediately cater to what you wanted him to do, you loudly and stupidly called for the GL community to sit out that election to 'punish the Democrats'.

And who ended up getting punished?  Damned sure wasn't the Democratic Party, it was all the GLBT peeps who aren't in your tax bracket who got punished.   It was every person in the US who depends on having the Dems in power to fight for them inside I-495 to keep their human rights from being trampled on by the neo-fascist Republicans.

But now that we have this lemon Congress, how do we make lemonade out of the situation?   And no, the ENDA executive order ain't it because it isn't broad enough to cover the sectors of the BTLG community that desperately need the anti-discrimination coverage.

Time to focus people on the long game and remember your Dallas Principles. 

Circle November 4 on your 2014 calendar, bust your butts to ensure the Dems hold or expand their Senate majority and take control of the House back.   We can raise our appletini glasses together to celebrate the return of the speaker's gavel to Nancy Pelosi's hands from the clutches of the GOP Cryin' Man and then get busy executing the full court press in 2015 to pass an inclusive ENDA..

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