www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com July 3, 2009

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 3

ENDA is back

Federal anti-bias measure has a chance to pass this time

by Eric Resnick

Washington, D.C.-Two Ohio lawmakers joined their gay and lesbian colleagues Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jared Polis of Colorado bringing the Employment NonDiscrimination Act back to the House of Representatives.

Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy of Columbus and Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland are among the original 126 co-sponsors. The bill was introduced June 24.

Federal employment laws currently prevent job discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, age and disability. ENDA would extend this to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, covering all LGBT people.

The bill, also called H.R. 3017, has been

referred to the Committee on Education and Labor. California Rep. George Miller chairs that committee, and is also an original cosponsor.

The first bill seeking to protect gays and lesbians from employment non-discrimination was introduced 35 years ago.

A version that didn't include transgender people passed the House in November 2007, then died in the Senate.

The omission of gender identity from measure caused a huge rift in the LGBT community, and leaders, including Frank, vowed never to do it again.

With Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, this bill is expected to make it to President Barack Obama's desk and be signed into law.

However, it contains an element that wasn't in previous versions-the definition

of marriage found in the federal "defense of marriage act."

Frank's office responded to requests for materials, but did not address questions related to this by press time.

Gay New York law professor Art Leonard published an analysis of the bill, explaining, "the bottom line is that this definition of marriage is put into ENDA to avoid the arguments, which opponents of the bill are likely to make, that ENDA would require employers to offer domestic partnership benefits or to recognize same-sex marriages, and presumably Barney Frank and other cosponsors want to avoid having to engage that issue in this bill, so they slipped in the cross-reference to DOMA and leave the benefits battle to be fought another day."

"If ENDA were to pass without the language incorporating the DOMA definition

of marriage," Leonard wrote, "it would be open to that Massachusetts employee to file suit under ENDA, and/or to file suit under the Massachusetts Law Against Discrimination, to see benefits equity for himself and his spouse."

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force director Rea Carey called ENDA's introduction "a critical milestone for our community and our country."

"Passage of this critical legislation would help ensure that people are allowed to participate on a level-playing field in the work place," Carey said.

"ENDA reflects our country's core values of fairness and equality. It is immoral to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people the ability to earn a livelihood and provide for their families. People should not have to fear losing their job simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

Census will count married same-sex couples next year

by Lisa Leff

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Washington, D.C.-Married samesex couples will be counted as such in the 2010 census, reversing an earlier decision made under the Bush administration, census officials said on June 19.

Steve Jost, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said officials already were identifying the technical changes needed to ensure the reliability of the information, to be released in 2012, but remained committed to providing an accurate tally of same-sex spouses.

"They will be counted, and they ought to report the way they see themselves," Jost said. "In the normal process of reports coming out after the census of 2010, I think the country will have a good data set on which to discuss this phenomenon that is evolving in this country."

Same-sex couples could not get married anywhere in the United States during the 2000 decennial count. But last summer, after two states sanctioned gay and lesbian unions, the bureau said those legal marriages would go uncounted because the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevented the federal

government from recognizing them.

Since President Barack Obama took office, his administration has been under pressure from gay civil rights activists to take a fresh look at the issue. The White House announced that its interpretation of DOMA did not prohibit gathering the information.

Same-sex marriage has been legalized in six states-Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Vermont-although the first weddings have not yet commenced in three of them. Six other nations, including Canada, also have full marriage.

"The president and the administration are committed to a fair and accurate count of all Americans," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs şaid. "We're in the midst of determining the best way to ensure that gay and lesbian couples are accurately counted."

Enumerating married gay couples will not require any immediate changes in the census forms, which include boxes for the genders of people living in a household and their self-reported relationships as "husband," "wife" or "unmarried, partner," according to Jost.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,

Delaware is 21st state to pass lesbian-gay bias law

by Anthony Glassman

Dover, Delaware-State lawmakers sent a sexual orientation nondiscrimination bill to the governor on June 25, passing it through both houses of the legislature in only an hour.

The House passed the measure at 8:30 pm, shortly after the Senate passed an identical bill. In previous legislative sessions, the Senate killed the bill. Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, one of the bill's champions, said that Gov. Jack Markell had expressed support for the

measure

When Markell signs it, Delaware will become the 21st state with such a law. But, unlike seven similar state laws passed since 2002, Delaware's does not include gender identity.

The bill adds sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in laws covering housing, employment, public contracting, insurance and public accommodations.

It is the sixth time a gay civil rights law has passed the House, only to be defeated each time in the Senate, if it even made it to a vote there.

Amendments were attempted to prevent schools from teaching positive

messages about homosexuality, give sweeping religious exemptions from the law and specify that the bill would not require same-sex marriage.

The Senate defeated each one 12-6, finally passing the bill 14-5.

After the bill cleared the Senate, the House stayed in session until it voted on the measure.

The House also defeated its own versions of the three amendments, along with another anti-marriage amendment to the bill.

When the bill is signed into law, Delaware will become the 21st stateplus the District of Columbia—to protect on the basis of sexual orientation. Fourteen of those, including D.C., also protect on gender identity.

With Delaware, 54% percent of the U.S. population lives in a state, county or city with sexual orientation protections, and 39% in one that covers gender identity. Ohio lacks such a law, but a fifth of its people live in a city with a sexual orientation equal rights ordinance and 13% in one with a gender identity measure.

called the policy change a significant step.

"The census, I like to say, is on its face about numbers. But what the census is really about is telling the story of our country," said Carey, whose group has been among those lobbying the White House. "Many people, including people in the administration, are realizing just how important it is to make sure that [lesbian and gay] Americans are not rendered invisible."

Gary Gates, a demographer based at the University of California, Los Angeles who has been working with the bureau on the issue, said producing a reliable count of same-sex married couples is a doable, but complicated task.

One issue is that some same-sex couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships already .identified themselves as husbands or wives, both in the 2000 census and in the annual American Community Survey that the bureau produces each year. So the bureau needs to figure out a way either to separate those couples from legally married couples in the next census, or to create a new designation to capture both groups.

"Thirty percent of same-sex couples in the year 2000 used the term 'husband' or 'wife,' and none of them were married," Gates said. "Granted, now we think maybe there are 35,000 who are legally married, but they are finding ten times as many using that term."

Currently, if two people of the same gender in one household check "husband," the data is rejected by the tabulation software for the American Community Survey and not included in the published information.

"By manually unmarrying those of us who are married, it tags our children as children of single parents even though they happen not to be," Carey said. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a single parent, but it undercuts the integrity of the data.”

Jost said the bureau has not yet determined whether counting same-sex married couples will require reprogramming that software.

“We regard this as a very important issue and we also understand the sensitivity. This is about folks' identity," he said. "We are experienced in dealing with changing social phenomena and how to measure and report that, and we want to get it right."

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