Despite the fact that the current version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is virtually worthless because it would not only allow but write into law that all religious organizations, businesses, schools, and even hospitals could discriminate against LGBT Americans legally. Republicans Marco Rubio and John McCain this week both issued histrionic statements this week against the beleaguered bill stating that it would lead to “reverse discrimination” and hurt small businesses.
Said McCain:
“Whether it imposes quotas, whether it has reverse discrimination, whether it has the kinds of provisions that really preserve equal rights for all citizens or, like for example, busing. Busing was done in the name of equality. Busing was a failure. Quotas were a failure. A lot of people thought they were solutions. They weren’t. They bred problems.
I think the young people know we do not need reverse discrimination, they don’t believe in quotas and they don’t believe in some of the programs we saw in the name of racial equality implemented in the past which turned out to be counterproductive,” he said. “Ask people in Boston if busing turned out to be a good idea.”
Marco Rubio on the other hand went the “small business” route claiming that ENDA could lead to “frivilous lawsuits”
“[Senator Rubio] believes people’s qualifications, performance and honesty are the most important qualities by which they should be judged in the workplace. If you’re a good worker, that’s all that should matter,” spokeswoman Brooke Sammon said. “This legislation goes far beyond protecting workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation, and he is currently studying what kinds of burdens it could impose on small businesses, frivolous lawsuits that could result, and ensuring that religious freedoms under the First Amendment are protected.”
So in a nutshell here’s what we have. We have a bill that will prohibit LGBT discrimination but will give a free pass to those who do it the most and the GOP still won’t vote for it and probably won;t pass the House anyway and HRC and other LGBT organizations are wasting millions of dollars to try to get it passed.
Does this make sense to anyone?