The Legacy of Barney
After more than three decades, the man dubbed "the smartest" in Congress and the first to come out voluntarily, won't be returning to office, but he leaves behind a very long shadow.
BY E.J. Graff
November 12 2012 4:00 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2012/11/12/legacy-barney (http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2012/11/12/legacy-barney)
Why has the Employment Non-Discrimination Act taken so long? The public supports our right to work so overwhelmingly.
We didn't have the votes for any strong gay rights legislation until the beginning of this century. In the 1990s we could stop bad stuff, but we didn't quite have the votes for good stuff. Think about it: Passing pro-gay stuff, supportive of our rights, requires there to be a Democratic House, Senate, president. We had that in 1993 and 1994. At that point it was still bad. "Don't ask, don't tell" passed. Then you had the Republicans running everything. The next time the Democrats had the House, Senate, and president [after the Democratic Party had come around to supporting LGBT causes] was 2009 and 2010.
At that point the problem with ENDA was, [repealing] "don't ask, don't tell" came ahead of it. We did [pass] a transgender-inclusive hate-crimes bill [the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act], and we did "don't ask, don't tell." I was pushing ENDA as well. We had three items and there was only room for two.
Part of the problem with ENDA is that health care took so long. It goes through the same committee in the House as a piece of health care legislation. The next time the Democrats have the House, the Senate, and the presidency, I am confident we will get a transgender-inclusive ENDA, and if the [Supreme] Court has not carried out the equal protection thing on [the Defense of Marriage Act], we will get rid of DOMA too. But I think that won't be necessary, I think the court will take care of it.