{"id":2901,"date":"2016-02-11T19:13:12","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2016-02-11T19:13:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:13:12","slug":"western-talks-equality-with-merkley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/western-talks-equality-with-merkley\/","title":{"rendered":"Western talks equality with Merkley"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Alvin Wilson \r\nStaff Writer<\/pre>\n
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) visited Western\u2019s Werner University Center on Feb. 5 to discuss his new bill, the Equality Act, with a small audience of students.<\/p>\n
According to Merkley\u2019s website, \u201cThe Equality Act amends existing federal civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, employment, housing, credit, and Federal jury service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merkley\u2019s visit started with a story about the events that eventually led to him writing the Equality Act.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Merkley helped lead the effort to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring that battle, it was really interesting because it was very hostile, very emotional,\u201d said Merkley. \u201cI remember driving into the underground parking at the Capitol and having people kind of tap on my windshield, hold up placards to my windshield, yell and scream at me, tell me what a horrible person I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I felt like a very good person,\u201d he continued. \u201cI felt this was the right thing not just in terms of our constitutional vision of fairness, opportunity and equality, but in terms of fundamental human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that bill didn\u2019t pass because the House of Representatives refused to debate it on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe House of Representatives was led by the other party, the Republican party, which was not willing to do this,\u201d said Merkley. \u201cWe felt that we had the votes in the House of Representatives, but to win the vote it has to be held, and the leadership of the house refused to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
This prompted Merkley to write a new piece of legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided it was time to talk differently about this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was time not to talk about chipping away here or there, it was time to simply say our LGBT community deserves the same fundamental laws against discrimination that are enjoyed by Americans in regard to gender, ethnicity, and race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bill that I wrote is about utilizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Equality Act already has 40 cosponsors, but it hasn\u2019t passed yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that my Republican majority colleagues are going to hold a hearing on the bill,\u201d said Merkley. \u201cSo, what are we doing in the meantime? We are building a stronger coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they are recruiting companies to endorse the bill, and they already have 20 Fortune 500 companies on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like that to be 200 Fortune 500 companies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Merkley said one Republican recently agreed to cosponsor the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark Kirk of Illinois, who had been a partner of mine with the Non-Discrimination Act, endorsed it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, we can now call it a bipartisan bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s next for the Equality Act?<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, the next step right now is building awareness of it, getting citizens to lobby their house and senate members to become cosponsors, and getting the corporate world to endorse it,\u201d said Merkley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) visited Western\u2019s Werner University Center on Feb. 5 to discuss his new bill, the Equality Act, with a small audience of students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}