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- Parte de Records of the Office of the Public Liaison (Clinton Administration), Elizabeth (Julian) Potter's files
Extracted text
OCR Page 1 of 75THE FEDERAL GAY RIGHTS BILL: FROM BELLA TO ENDA
Chai R. Feldblum
On May 14, 1974, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, an outspoken feminist Congresswoman
from New York, introduced a sweeping and comprehensive anti-discrimination bill that aimed to
change the face of federal civil rights law. The bill prohibited private employers, some private
businesses, state governments, and educational facilities from discriminating on the basis of sex,
marital status, or sexual orientation. The only public notation of the bill was a brief sentence at
the back of the Congressional Record, in the list of public bills and resolutions introduced that
day. Apart from some coverage in the gay press, nobody in America noticed.¹
Twenty years later, on June 23, 1994, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA),
a significantly more modest bill prohibiting private employers from discriminating on the basis
of sexual orientation, was introduced on the same day in both the United States Senate and
House of Representatives.² The introduction came replete with a major news conference
attended by Democratic and Republican members of Congress and the leading luminaries of the
civil rights movement. This time, America noticed. Over 180 mainstream news outlets carried
stories covering introduction of the bill or later activities surrounding the bill.³ Two years later,
in September 1996, the United States Senate voted on ENDA and failed to pass it by just one
vote.⁴ And in January 1999, for the first time ever, endorsement of a gay civil rights bill was part
of the President's State of the Union Message.⁵
The effort to pass a federal gay civil rights bill has come a long way in the past twenty-
five years. The saga is rich with stories about the gay rights movement and with lessons for the
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