For those of you old enough to remember Sherman and Mister Peabody, those two were in a “middle” cartoon for the Rocky And Bullwinkle Show. They used the Wayback Machine to go an look back at improbable history.
Here’s some improbable history for you: The Office Of Personal Management’s (OPM’s) John Berry, with the echo of the Family Research Council’s (FRC’s) Tony Perkins, predicting the path of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community history’s future path, in the video OPM Director John Berry Outlines Obama Administration’s Gay Agenda:
Many of us are noting how the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has seemed to have fallen off the national discourse of LGBT issues, and in the 111th Congress, with strong Democratic Party majorities, we’re didn’t see any vote on ENDA — and it’s unlikely we’ll see a vote on ENDA in the 111th Congress’s lame duck session.
The Wayback Machine is a strange device, giving us a view into the past, with its impact on the present — and the future.
I’m believing more and more what Representative Jackie Speier stated last June regarding ENDA might even be an optimistic assessment at this point, and her take on DADT being passed into law by the end of this year appears to me to be a very unlikely outcome to come out of our 111th Congress.
Congresswoman Jackie Speier put a damper on hopes for swift House passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, telling the Bay Area Reporter over the weekend that she doesn’t see the LGBT workplace protections becoming law anytime soon.
Addressing the crowd of gay and straight political and community leaders at Sunday’s Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club Pride breakfast, Speier said, “Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi is doing all she can to ensure a majority for next year so we can pass ENDA.”
Asked later in a brief interview if that meant the House would not vote on ENDA this year, Speier told the B.A.R., “The rest of the year is in question.”
“There’s no question ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will be history this year,” she said. “ENDA, we will have that law for sure within the next five years.”
Who knew that John Berry and Tony Perkins would be on the same page on expectations for the Obama Administration. That said, it appears to me that we’re not on the page to actually make the goals of that LGBT legislative agenda turn into actual laws.
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Related:
* HRC Backstory (September 17, 2009): OPM Head Berry Says Prioritize ENDA; Take Action at passENDAnow.org
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