Kennedy Committee Near Vacant During Testimony on His Non-Discrimination Bill. Who Ya Gonna Send?

Three of 23 members of Kennedy's former committee attend the hearing on his civil rights legislation.

Instead of talking about issues that are trumped up and highly unlikely to come before the US Senate (gambling, death penalty), let’s take a look at an issue that actually is before the US Senate right now:  the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  Last week the committee formerly chaired by Ted Kennedy, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, heard testimony on a bill co-sponsored by him.  S1584 bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Various versions of this bill have been introduced almost every year for over a decade.  As Chairman Harkin explained,

…Senator Kennedy worked his entire career to ensure opportunity for all Americans.  And he first introduced this legislation in 1994.  Today, by taking up this important bill, we continue Senator Kennedy’s work…

With Democrats now in the drivers’ seat and with Republican Susan Collins of Maine co-sponsoring the bill, is momentum building for ENDA to become law?  If so, you couldn’t prove it by the enthusiasm of the committee.  Only three of 23 members bothered to show up for the hearings.  

Bay Staters for whom civil rights are an important issue must ask themselves which of the Senate candidates is best equipped to take up the fight.  All four Democratic candidates stand for liberal values in theory.  But being committed to show up, do the work and take the heat is another matter.  Lisa Keen, writing in Bay Windows, points out the irony of  senate testimony that we cannot

remain silent or stoic when our LGBT brothers and sisters are still being mistreated…

 in light of Washington’s dead silence about the referendum to repeal same-sex marriage that just passed in Maine. 

Looking closer to home, in our Massachusetts delegation to the US House, we have Mike Capuano, who in 2000 voted neither yea nor nay, but  “present” on HR 4892, a bill to repeal the federal charter of the Boy Scouts because they discriminate against gays.  We don’t know how he voted on this year’s HR 356, declaring Feb. 8, 2010 to be “Boy Scouts of America Day” because it passed on a voice vote.  But we do know that Capuano endorser Stephen Lynch spoke passionately in favor of it.

While that was happening in Washington, Martha Coakley was preparing to file suit challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, saying

…many of our married residents and their families are being hurt by a discriminatory, unprecedented, and we believe, unconstitutional law.

So who’s more qualified to go to the Senate and continue Kennedy’s fight for civil rights:  Somebody who’s been “present” down in Washington or somebody who’s been fighting on the front lines?