ENDA enjoys broad public support – a May 2006 Gallup poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/23140/Americans-Odds-Over-Gay-Rights.aspx) shows 89% of Americans are in favor of equal job opportunities for gays and lesbians, and already over 90% of Fortune 500 companies (http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/6989.htm) include sexual orientation in their equal employment policies.  Even the Chamber of Commerce, who consistently opposes new federal regulation on business, has said they will remain neutral on ENDA.

Despite this broad support, this week the White House issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/110-1/hr3685sap-r.pdf) saying that “if the bill were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend he veto the bill.”   Why, you ask?  First, the White House claims that ENDA would substantially burden the free exercise of religion; and secondly that ENDA “is virtually certain to encourage burdensome litigation beyond the cases that the bill is intended to reach.”   Likewise, the Family Research Council, an ardent opponent of ENDA, claims:

• ENDA violates employers' and employees' Constitutional freedoms of religion, speech and association. The proposed legislation would prohibit employers from taking their most deeply held beliefs into account when making hiring, management, and promotion decisions. This would pose an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into people's lives.

• It grants special rights to homosexuals while ignoring those of employers. The federal government should not force private businesses to abandon their moral principles. (http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IF07I02)

These arguments are not new, unfortunately.  Take a look at the arguments below from the Senate floor during debate of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and national origin.  Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

·        "Will constitute a drastic intrusion into private business and will be unjust and coercive to employers and employees alike. This title will arbitrarily interfere with what would be otherwise the informed, considered, and sincere judgment of an employer as to how best to build and maintain the most competent, efficient, and harmonious working force possible." 110 CONG. R EC. 5, 5810 (1964)(statement of Sen. Stennis).

·        "The employer will no longer be responsible for conducting his own business. He will instead be shackled to the bureaucratic whims of an all-powerful and constantly present Federal Government that continually looks with suspicion upon every act of management involving personnel or procedure. The employer, already burdened with limitless Government forms and regulations will have to assume even more administrative burdens . . . In brief it would be a monstrous, unworkable, impractical, and unbearable burden on a major segment of the business and industry of the Nation." 110 CONG. R EC. 5, 5813 (1964)(statement of Sen. Stennis).

·        "Any time that you allow the government to come in and tell the people how they must conduct their private affairs, you are getting to the same state that exists in the Soviet Union at the present time. 110 CONG. REC. 6, 7758 (1964)(statement of Sen. Holland).·        "[U]der Title VII of the bill, the FEPC section, the employer would not have the right to choose the man he wanted, the one who was exceptional and well qualified, if some bureaucrat said, 'The other man applied 1 minute ahead of him; therefore, you must take him first." 110 CONG. REC. 6, 7766 (1964)(statement of Sen. Thurmond).

·        "I hope that the Members of the Senate will realize in time that the passage of this bill in its present form would indeed provoke a serious crisis in our country whenever any real effort should be made to enforce it." 110 CONG. REC . 6, 7746 (1964)(statement of Sen. Holland)