The Single Largest Expansion Of LGBT Workplace Protections
Posted by Michelle Moquin on July 9th, 2014
Good morning!
Hump Day….time for a little good news for the LGBT community.
From Think Progress.
A Win For Workplace Fairness
President Obama Just Announced The Single Largest Expansion Of LGBT Workplace Protections In Our Country’s History
As many as 9 out of 10 voters believe federal law already protects LGBT workers from discrimination. But it doesn’t. And while the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was passed by the Senate this year, it has stalled in the House; Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has made it clear that there is “no way” ENDA will pass this year.
Enter the latest chapter of the Obama Administration’s “year of action.” The White House announced today that President Obama will issue an executive order requiring that all companies who contract with the federal government must not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Think Progress reporter Zack Ford has the details:
The order, expected to be finalized in the coming weeks, is an extension oforders previously issued by past presidents — most recently Johnson — similarly banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin among all contractors and subcontractors who do over $10,000 in business with the government in any one year.
The protections will reach over one million LGBT workers across the country, making it the single largest expansion of LGBT workplace protections in our country’s history. There continue to be 29 states that offer no employment protections on the basis of sexual orientation and 32 with no protections based on gender identity, but many LGBT workers in those states will now have workplace protections for the first time ever. As many as 43 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and 90 percent of transgender people have experienced some form of harassment or discrimination in the workplace.
As with Obama’s executive order raising the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10, this order will cover an enormous number of people but still relies on Congress to pass a law making sure that millions more LGBT Americans have the freedom to work.
Recently, some LGBT advocates have been giving second thoughts to the current ENDA bill in Congress, based on a religious liberty exemption that could have the potential interpreted too broadly. Here’s Zack Ford again:
The LGBT movement has also become increasingly divided over whether ENDA in its current form is worth pursuing. After two decades of failed consideration in Congress, the bill has been weakened by an exemption that would grant religious organizations unprecedented privilege to continue discriminating against LGBT people. A number of state groups and legal organizations have recently dropped their support for ENDA because they believe that the exemption goes too far and codifies into law the idea that LGBT identities are incompatible with faith. The executive order is thus an important step even if ENDA eventually passes.
BOTTOM LINE: Americans of any sexual orientation and gender identity should have the freedom to work and the right to equal treatment in the workplace. President Obama’s latest executive action is the biggest expansion of those rights in American history. There is more left to be done when it comes to giving all Americans equal protection, and Congress should follow the President’s lead by passing a federal law that ends unfair and discriminatory workplace practices that hurt LGBT workers and their families.
*****
Readers: Our president makes history again. Thank you president Obama.
Al: Thank you. Apology accepted. And of course you may stay and comment here as often as you like.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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July 9th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Michelle, Thank you, It almost seems like you made that too easy for me. I was raised and know better than to behave like that. I will show you more respect in the future Commander.
As for the rest of you fine ladies, was a time when I would have flipped and tried to retrieve each and everyone of those panties tossed along with phone numbers. Guess I’m getting old. Me I don’t see it, but MM girls have a way to flatter a man and to make him think he died at went to heaven. Thanks for compliments ladies.
LUV,
Al
July 9th, 2014 at 6:18 pm
All that Obama has accomplished may be destroyed by S.T.A.R.K.’s Hobby Lobby ruling.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:19 pm
You are very welcome Al. There are not many like you.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:31 pm
Just another first for an American president who came into office to represent all its people. But his legacy will be dogged by most white americans because they can’t stand to have a black man succeed were the other 43 failed.
But not this white woman. Congratulations Obama for another outstanding first for the people.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:32 pm
Al you are a beautiful man. I am so happy to see your posts. Thanks for coming back.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:35 pm
We all have a sense of right and wrong. Obama is giving false hope in what will eventually lead to the downfall of this great country of ours. The answer is getting back to the nuclear family and instilling in our kids values centered around a moral compass – not unilaterally making laws to justify things that we all know are not genuinelly and instinctively right or good.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:37 pm
You are truly a fool Obama! Same gender sex is a very perverted immoral behavior on every level,but you will not or do not have the moral backbone to address that.You are incapable of leading with integrity!!!
July 9th, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Ralph, so where was that sense of “right and wrong,” for the Native American? 12 million were murdered without the slightest hint from those doing it or those allowing it to be done that they had a sense it was or could be wrong. I don’t think LBGT community will want to depend on it.
All we ever hear from those who thrive on telling those they are oppressing to wait until the oppressors get their “nuclear family” together. I think OTWs and especially american blacks would ask you were was that white “nuclear family” for 200 plus years of non stop slavery?
And come to think of it where is it today? OTWs are still not treated equally with whites. The justice system is rife with two kinds of justice, one for whites and the other for OTWs. I guess those in the justice system don’t have a sense of right and wrong or a nuclear family.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:50 pm
Frank#7, take a look in the mirror if you want to see a real fool. First you would have to have morals to display a backbone. What you have is a perverted sense of moral superiority.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:52 pm
Ralph#6, you could be right that Obama is giving false hope because if bigots like you have anything to say in the matter, you will be doing everything in your power to thwart his efforts to bring fairness to the workplace.
July 9th, 2014 at 6:56 pm
Ralph#6, to people like you, the nation is only “great” when your race is the Affirmative Action Beneficiary of legislated preferences. White men like you have benefitted from that position much too long.
Getting back to that kind of nucleus will only serve your interest. We are all americans and deserve to be treated equally in the workplace and everywhere. It is our country too.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:00 pm
Good, they need those protections and they’ve needed them for the last six years.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:01 pm
I hope none of the rumored religious exemptions are part of it, because one of the main sources of on-the-job discrimination comes from the schools and medical facilities run by the religious cults.
Now we need to craft an new version of ENDA, a much better version, or even better, a robust Civil Rights Amendment for ourselves, people of color, women and immigrant and imported workers.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:01 pm
also why not sign a thing declaring same sex marriage for all states to prevent backwards progress making it all fair for one and all.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:02 pm
I will believe it when I see it done, sign, sealed, & delivered!
July 9th, 2014 at 7:04 pm
No other White House would have done this. My husband is aways declaring one or two of the other 43 as this great this or that.
I can’t think of a one that has put on the line what this man has. Tiny penis white men like my husband ( and I mean tiny) are so envious they can’t help themselves.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:05 pm
Sarah#14, With respect, such an order is not within the power of this or any President.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:06 pm
Don’t know how everyone missed this, but President Obama is doing exactly what FDR did, when he signed Executive Order 8802, on June 25, 1941, ending racial discrimination in the defense industry on the eve of WWII.
It was a first step in addressing endemic, institutionalized racism in this country, and the President no doubt intends his Executive Order ending discrimination against LBGT people in Federal contracting, to have the same effect.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:08 pm
I’ve always wanted Obama to treat the regressives more like FDR did!
July 9th, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Ralph#6, Ooooh, he’s so damn evil! Giving rights to people, some nerve.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Six years late, Mr. President and we could have had that legislative victory you wanted if you’d pushed on Congress the first couple of years you were in office.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:10 pm
Does that mean that the military will have to stop discriminating against transgendered service members now? Hope so.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:11 pm
The life-span of this particular executive order is at least two years, I think. And that makes me very happy!
Even just two years of having workplace Christianists have to:
* bite their own forked tongue,
* put those damn religious tracts back in your glove-box,
* leave the workplace and don’t come back (let me get the door for you there, bigot),
* live in fear of breaking some amorphous or inequally-applied “policy” just for innocently being who you are at your own desk.
* finally buy a damn pair of headphones whenever you tune in to your lunch-hour radio revival
Nanner-nanner-boo-boo! Oh noes! Boo-Hoo, Boo-Hoo.
HaHa HaHa HaHa! Hah!
July 9th, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Michelle, the irony is that a lot of those folks that benefit from that order, will NOT vote in 2014.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:13 pm
Margaret#21, Obama had just a few days of the Super majority required to get anything passed in Congress these days. A mere few days, not “two years”.
http://538refugees.wordpress.c…
July 9th, 2014 at 7:16 pm
Alexander#24 the tragedy is that a lot of those who will benefit who will vote will vote republican, like the log cabin republicans.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:17 pm
Alexander#24, Sadly I am afraid that you are right, but I will continue to hope that you are wrong. We laugh here about the mess the gop is in, but Dems are not a whole lot better. I personally get sick of all the bashing of other Dems, just because so and so did not do everything that “I” wanted him or her to do.
I wish that the President had not had to issue an E.O. instead of having a law, as it will not last much longer than he is in office if a rethug gets elected next.
I know that to us it would seem impossible, but I never say never, I never imagined that bush would be President, but he was twice!!
Yes I know he was appointed by the Court and stole the election the second time, but still he was President.
Voting is the most important thing we can all do and I get so tired of those who say it does not matter, there is no difference between parties, etc.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:19 pm
*braces for Billo explosion* He’s gonna need a LOT of Depends to get over this.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:20 pm
This is a big deal, and a wonderful action by Pres. Obama to whom I’d like to say, “thank you”.
One detail:
“It is currently legal to fire people because of their sexual orientation in 29 states, and in 33 states it is legal to fire people for their gender identity.”
Actually, this is only half true. Enough high courts have uniformly ruled that discrimination based on “change of sex” [sic] is still discrimination based on sex and therefore covered by the CRA, that the EEOC now allows complaints / requests for investigation based on the same.
And, expanding that slightly (but apparently on less-proven legal footing) is a recent case involving a gay man, positing that in effect he is “transgender lite”, that is, he doesn’t fit his employers stereotypical expectation of a “man” and so is also covered.
Again, thank you Mr. Pres. This will make the daily lives of some vulnerable people a bit easier and proclaims that discrimination is wrong.
Question: Is there a religious exemption in the EO? If not, I’m curious what will happen with all those “Faith Based Initiatives” contracts including privatized / contracted social services such as Catholic Charities run shelters, etc…
July 9th, 2014 at 7:21 pm
OMG! A Democratic President is helping people! IMPEACH!!!
July 9th, 2014 at 7:21 pm
Imagine requiring employers to treat everyone as you would want to be treated yourself. This is really going to upset a lot of Christians!
July 9th, 2014 at 7:22 pm
Well that proves Obama is in fact the Antichrist. When do the Impeachment hearings start? Maybe in the future, Republicans can begin Impeachment hearings the day any Democrat is sworn in as President.
July 9th, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Pigs are intelligent creatures… the batcrap rightwing? Maybe not so much…
July 9th, 2014 at 7:24 pm
Crazy Christians Heads going Pop? Another good day in ‘Merica
July 9th, 2014 at 7:25 pm
Hey, remember that constitution there Cons?
Oh wait, if you did remember it there would be no need for this executive order.
The party of unconstitutionality. The GOP
July 10th, 2014 at 5:00 am
To those of you who have been writing me with your sob stories about Chad DeSoto http://www.kuam.com/story/25983263/2014/07/10/was-chad-desotos-rampage-caused-by-a-bitter-breakup
I have this to say. I hope the piece of shit rots in jail. This says it all about the selfish asshole who murdered and maimed innocent people because he was going through angst because his girlfriend, Acasio, broke up with him.
———–
Acasio explicitly stated in a telephone interview that DeSoto had told her “you will forgive me for what I’m going to do tonight. You will find out tomorrow.”
————
I’m sorry I don’t share your sympathy for this self-centered piece of shit. All my sympathies are reserved for the relatives of those three dead people and the victims he injured in his idiotic rampage.
July 10th, 2014 at 5:42 am
Hafa adai. Thanks Peter.
Five words people – Wear Your Fucking Seat Belt. http://www.guampdn.com/article/20140710/NEWS01/140710029/Police-arrest-driver-fatal-crash-