Gay Rights Include More Than Just Marriage!

What comes to mind when you think of Gay Rights?  One of the major things that probably comes to mind for most would be gay marriage.  Gay marriage is definitely a piece of the puzzle but don’t be fooled there are many more pieces. One of which is employment rights.

If you’ve followed my blog for long, you know about the workplace discrimination I faced back in my early days of coming out.   Here are both of those posts:  An ‘Outing’ After Work,  Business and Pleasure Don’t Mix: An ‘Outing’ After Work (Part Two).

Those two posts took place in Lima, Ohio in 2002.  You would think that things like this no longer go on in Ohio.  But I am sad to  inform you they still go on every single day!

Most recently I was employed by someone who started referring  to me as ‘the useless faggot’ behind my back.  She did this for a few months before I called her out on it.

I called her out on it and you know what happened, she fired me!   One would think that I would have a wrongful termination lawsuit or something against this crazy woman, but the state is completely on her side. Why?  Because sexual orientation is not protected from discrimination in Ohio laws.

This is where ENDA comes in.  I’m sure a lot of you have seen this acronym many times, do you know what it means?    The Human Rights Campaign gives a nice description of The Employment Non-Discrimination Act:

What ENDA Does

• Extends federal employment discrimination protections currently provided based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age and disability to sexual orientation and gender identity
• Prohibits public and private employers, employment agencies and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for employment decisions, such as hiring, firing, promotion or compensation
• Provides for the same procedures, and similar, but somewhat more limited, remedies as are permitted under Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act
• Applies to Congress and the federal government, as well as employees of state and local governments

What ENDA Does Not Do

• Cover businesses with fewer than 15 employees
• Apply to religious organizations
• Apply to the uniformed members of the armed forces (the bill doesn’t affect the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy)
• Allow for quotas or preferential treatment based on sexual orientation or gender identity
• Allow a “disparate impact” claim similar to the one available under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Therefore, an employer is not required to justify a neutral practice that may have a statistically disparate impact on individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity
• Allow the imposition of affirmative action for a violation of ENDA
• Allow the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect statistics on sexual orientation or gender identity or compel employers to collect such statistics.
• Apply retroactively

This bill has been introduced in every congress, except the 109th, since 1994.  Here is the history of this bill via Wikipedia:

Click to enlarge:

What can we do to support ENDA?  Here’s a start, visit the HRC’s Pass ENDA Now web page and tell congress to pass this bill NOW!

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