The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: enda
Obama Signs Order Banning LGBT Discrimination By Federal Contractors

Obama Signs Order Banning LGBT Discrimination By Federal Contractors

By Marianne LeVine, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday barring federal contractors from discriminating against gay employees and prohibiting discrimination against federal workers who identify as transgender.

“In too many states and in too many workplaces, simply being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender can still be a fireable offense,” Obama said. “I firmly believe it’s time to address this injustice for every American.”

Obama’s two-part directive will amend an existing executive order that was issued by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 preventing federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The new order will add sexual orientation and gender identity to this list.

The directive also amends another existing executive order, issued by President Nixon in 1969, by adding gender identity to a list of categories protected against federal workplace discrimination. President Bill Clinton added sexual orientation to this list in 1998.

Last Friday, senior administration officials said that the executive order would affect 24,000 companies.

Obama also called for pressure on members of Congress to implement federal legislation barring workplace discrimination against all gay and transgender employees.

“Congress has spent four decades, 40 years, considering legislation that would help solve the problem,” he said. “And yet they still haven’t gotten it done.”

The president received praise from members of Congress and human rights groups for the new orders.

“Today’s executive order signing is another big step toward equality for the LGBT community,” said Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), a supporter of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would bar all workplace discrimination against LGBT employees.

“Now, all federal workers will be judged on whether or not they do their job and not on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” she said in a statement.

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBT civil rights group, described the orders as “unprecedented and historic” and asked that the House vote on ENDA, which passed the Senate with bipartisan support last November.

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

This Week In Crazy: Harry Reid Is A Mass Murderer, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: Harry Reid Is A Mass Murderer, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. TheBlaze

Over the past several months, the White House has attempted to spark a national conversation about the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. This is probably not what they had in mind.

It may not stun you to learn that TheBlaze — the right-wing media network owned by rape-joke enthusiast Glenn Beck — is not thrilled with the White House initiative. But even by Beck’s standards, this segment is rather jaw-dropping:

I cannot stress this enough: If one of your employees comes to you with a fresh idea to make rape funny, please say no.

Thankfully, the biggest victim here was good taste (and whichever interns had to spend their Tuesdays making arrow-shaped signs reading “RAPE!”)

4. Pat Robertson

Televangelist Pat Robertson returns to the list at number four, for offering a unique bit of relationship advice to his viewers.

After receiving a letter from a woman who was annoyed by the way her husband always reminds her “I did that for you” when he pitches in with household chores, Robertson explained that this attitude is just part of the “male psyche.”

“Do you want to have a loving, warm, sensuous, exciting marriage or do you want to have a partnership, a business relationship with your spouse?” Robertson asked. He then went on to lay out his version of the ideal marriage: One in which the husband trades chores for sex.

“With each dish he’s saying ‘I love you,’ and if you understood that you’d say, ‘Darling you’re wonderful, I got a treat for you…wait till we get behind closed doors and you’ll see the treat I have for you,'” Robertson counseled.

Sadly, in Robertson’s world, married Jews don’t get to have much sex. After all, they’re too busy polishing their diamonds to pitch in around the house.

3. Gordon Klingenschmitt

Screenshot/Youtube

Screenshot/Youtube

Colorado legislature candidate and demon expert Gordon Klingenschmitt is still an outspoken opponent of anti-discrimination laws — and he’s still not making a ton of sense.

Perhaps sensing that his last attack against transgender Americans — a warning that Nancy Pelosi wants to make women share their bathrooms “with a man who may or may not be sitting down when he goes pee” — inspired more giggling than fear, Klingenschmitt took a different tack in a weekend email to his supporters.

“‘Transgenders’ want your children,” he wrote, in response to a recent court ruling in Maine. “Liberals demand public access to rape your girls, at least visually in public bathrooms, or to expose themselves to your girls at school, without parental consent or protection of any kind.”

It should go without saying that the ruling does not give liberals the right to rape your kids. But then, Klingenschmitt has never been known for his legal acumen.

Klingenschmitt went on to offer a solution to the totally-not-made-up crisis. “Maine parents should immediately remove their children from public schools, and teach them at home.”

Sounds like a perfect solution for paranoid parents — at least until the militant gays show up during recess to have sex in the house.
2. Rush Limbaugh

Unlike many of his right-wing colleagues, Rush Limbaugh sees the recent mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara as a cause for urgent action.

“We’ve got to see the signs, and then when we see the signs, we have to be willing to act on the signs that we’re seeing. The telltale signs that we might be dealing with somebody unbalanced, capable of mass murder and violence,” Limbaugh said Wednesday. “And we must take steps, as a society and as a culture, to stop this.”

Don’t give Limbaugh too much credit, though. As it turns out, he only sees the telltale signs of a mass murderer in one man: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

“I think somebody needs to put Harry Reid in a safe and secure place,” Limbaugh said. “This obsession that he has with the Koch brothers very much scares me…this man hates and resents the Koch brothers every bit as much as Elliot Rodger hated women.”

Of course, if Reid’s criticism of Charles and David Koch makes him the same as Elliot Rodger, then Limbaugh’s own rhetoric on President Obama makes him roughly equivalent to Genghis Khan.

Although Limbaugh wants to see Reid locked away, he’ll never attempt to disarm him. After all, guns don’t kill people — liberalism does.

1. “Joe” The “Plumber”

Samuel Wurzelbacher

Photo: ronnie44052/Flickr

Shockingly, Limbaugh didn’t have the worst reaction to the UCSB shooting. That honor goes to former right-wing celebrity Samuel Wurzelbacher — better known as “Joe the Plumber” (although that’s neither his name nor his occupation).

In an open letter published on BarbWire Tuesday, Wurzelbacher offered the following condolence to grieving father Richard Martinez, whose 20-year-old son was killed in the attack: “As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.”

“There are no critical words for a grieving father. He can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like – it’s okay by me. You can’t take a step in his shoes – at least I can’t,” Wurzelbacher writes.

“But the words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming ‘the proliferation of guns’, lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left,” he continues.

“We still have the Right to Bear Arms and I intend to continue to speak out for that right, and against those who would restrict it,” Wurzelbacher adds, “even in the face of this horrible incident by this sad and insane individual. I almost said ‘Obama Voter’ but I’m waiting for it to be official.”

Stay classy, “Joe!”

Of course, Wurzelbacher won’t be giving up his guns any time soon — after all, he may need them to film ads for his next failed campaign… or who knows what else. “Guns are mostly for hunting down politicians who would actively seek to take your freedoms and liberty away from you,” he said ominously in a blog post. “Google ‘Hitler, Mao, Kim Jung [sic] Il, Castro, Stalin’ just for starters.”

But look on the bright side: While he did invoke Hitler, at least he didn’t hold forth on the Holocaust this time.

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

Get This Week In Crazy delivered to your inbox every Friday, by signing up for our daily email newsletter.

GOP Congressional Hopeful: ENDA Is Equivalent To ‘Segregation Laws’

GOP Congressional Hopeful: ENDA Is Equivalent To ‘Segregation Laws’

Cresent Hardy, a congressional candidate in Nevada, is the latest Republican to try to appeal to voters beyond the GOP’s increasingly narrow base. And like most of his counterparts who braved the uncharted waters before him, Hardy failed — miserably.

Speaking to a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on Tuesday, Hardy evoked the struggles of the civil rights movement. “When we create classes, we create that same separation that we’re trying to unfold somehow,” Hardy said. “By continuing to create these laws that are what I call segregation laws, it puts one class of a person over another. We are creating classes of people through these laws.”

Ironically, ENDA would make it illegal to discriminate against employees because of their sexual orientation, effectively ending the de facto segregation that exists in the U.S. workplace.

The bill has passed the Senate, but Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has refused to bring the bill to a vote in the House.

Polls show support for ENDA is so widespread that a majority of voters in every single congressional district in the country support laws that bar workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Furthermore, for many lawmakers and voters, the fight for equal rights for the LGBT community is the defining civil rights issue of the time. In fact, as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) points out, ENDA is based on landmark civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s. HRC writes on its website: “ENDA simply affords to all Americans basic employment protection from discrimination based on irrational prejudice. The bill is closely modeled on existing civil rights laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

And to completely debunk Hardy’s theory that ENDA would somehow serve as a “segregation” law, HRC writes: “ENDA extends fair employment practices — not special rights — to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.”

Hardy faces a primary challenge from Tea Party favorite Niger Innis, who is convinced he has significant support among voters in the district to beat Democratic incumbent Steven Horsford. “I know I’m going to have some appeal here and also in North Las Vegas. I believe I’m the only candidate in this race who can put together a true coalition to beat Steven Horsford,” Innis told theReno Gazette Journal last week.

It likely won’t matter who challenges Rep. Horsford in the election: The Rothenberg Political Reportcurrently describes the district as “safe Democrat.”

AFP Photo/Scott Olson