Despite the President’s promise to stand up for gay rights and oppose discrimination with written legislature back during his campaign in 2008, LGBT America hasn’t really seen any movement that’ll com to anything The prospect of ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) passing through Congress at this point is pretty bleak, considering only 2 Republican senators are co-sponsoring the bill.
After ginormous ExxonMobil rejected adding LGBT protection to its no-discrimination policy, people got even more restless. As of now, one shortcut available to Obama is to add on sexual orientation to an already-instituted federal executive order that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
However, he didn’t mention that option in his speech (above) and the White House has released a statement that there are no plans to sign this “hypothetical executive order” from the President. So where we’re at right now is basically 16 million gay Americans who are outraged that all of a sudden LGBT discrimination laws are “hypothetical.”
Heather Cronk, director of GetEQUAL, told MSNBC: “We’re looking for the president to pick up his pen, make sure that he’s not just talking, but moving us toward action, sign an executive order that would cover about 22% of the American workforce, get us about a quarter of the way there, and then show leadership for Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.”
Above, a video of Obama recommitting his determination to pass ENDA at the White House Pride Month Reception on Thursday, but reminding the public that these things move slowly: “As we saw earlier this year with the gun safety debate, sometimes this stuff takes time, and it’s frustrating. You take two steps forward and sometimes there’s a step back… it doesn’t come as quickly as we like, but progress comes.”
