114th Congress Begins: 80% White, 80% Male, 92% Christian (Representative of America? NO!)

Via Talking Points Memo comes this excellent infographic visualizing the (lack of) diversity in the 535 Members of the United States Congress who are supposed to represent the 320 million people who live in this country. Most of the diversity that does exist in Congress comes from the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Specifically:

There are a total of 81 minorities that are Democrats in both houses combined and 16 that are Republicans, according to data from CQ. The 114th Congress also has 79 Democratic women and 29 Republican women, also according to CQ. 

Of the 188 Democrats in the newly sworn-in House of Representatives, 78 are minorities, according to CQ. Despite the rise of new stars like Rep. Mia Love (UT, pictured above) just 12 of the 246 Republicans in the House majority are minorities. In the Senate, percentages are slightly better for Republicans. There are four Republican senators who are racial minorities and 3 Democrats who are racial minorities. 

By gender, there are 65 House Democrats who are women and 23 women are on the other side of the aisle, according to CQ. That leaves 123 Democratic men and 223 Republican men. In the Senate, there are 14 Democratic women and a record six Republican women leaving 30 Democratic men plus another two Independents who caucus with Democrats and 48 Republican men.

However, the Washington Post points out that it is in the area of religious representation that the Congress does the worst. There is only 0.2% representation (i.e. 1 member) who declares themselves to have no religious affiliation while 20% of Americans declare that they are affiliated with no specific religion.

Queer Quote: Speaker Boehner Lies About ENDA (Again)

Speaker John Boehner has been under increasing pressure to allow a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) since the measure passed the United States Senate recently. Boehner's response to LGBT advocates calling for leguslative action to outlaw anti-LGBT workplace discrimination has generally been to lie about what the law does.

He was asked about ENDA on Thursday and repeated his false statements on the bill, which is today's Queer Quote:

I am opposed to discrimination of any kind — in the workplace and any place else. But I think this legislation — that I have dealt with as chairman of the Education Workforce Committee long before I was back in the leadership — is unnecessary and would provide a basis for frivolous lawsuits. People are already protected in the workplace. I am opposed to continuing this.

Listen, I understand people have different opinions on this issue, and I respect those opinions. But as someone who has worked in the employment law area for all of my years in the statehouse and all of my years here, I see no basis or no need for this.

It must be repeated that this statement is simply not true, and that if Speaker Boehner really believes this is a true statement, then he must be an idiot. The fact is that 29 states do not have laws that protect LGBT people from being fired based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Since it is probably not the case that Boehner has risen to be second in line to become President of the United States while being an idiot, one can only conclude that Speaker Boehner is deliberately repeating a lie in order to deflect attention from the call to allow a vote on ENDA.

QUEER QUOTE: John Boehner and Chad Griffin Trade Barbs Over ENDA

The same day that the U.S. Senate took an important step towards passage of a federal LGBT rights bill, the Speaker of the House made it clear he opposes the legislation from becoming law, provoking sharp words from the head of the largest LGBT rights group in the United States. The Senate voted 61-30 to bring ENDA to the floor, but before that happened John Boehner had his spokesperson release a statement saying "The Speaker believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs." Additionally, the Speaker's office also said that "We have always believed this is covered by existing law. [This is] not a new issue or a new position -- it's a longstanding position, and, frankly, not 'news' at all. This has been his position, on the record, for years, stated publicly many times."

Chad Griffin, head of the Human Rights Campaign, reacted to the false assertion that current law already protects LGBT people from employment discrimination by saying: "The Speaker, of all people, should certainly know what it's like to go to work every day afraid of being fired. Instead of letting the far right trample him again, it's time for Speaker Boehner to stand with the majority of everyday Republican voters and support ENDA."

What the Speaker is doing is continuing to bolster the incorrect impression held by 69% of Americans that anti-LGBT discrimination is already illegal, thus decreasing the momentum to actually enact the policy into law. This is truly odious behavior by a public official, because lack of LGBT employment discrimination has actual negative impacts on actual people.

Hat/tip to Talking Points Memo

GRAPHIC: Explains Why GOP Acts The Way It Does

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker explains why the GOP majority in the U.S. House voted to shut down the federal government for the first time in 16 years last night. It was primarily due the far rught wing of the Republican majority, who have been dubbed the "suicide caucus" by fellow conservative commentators.

As the above map, detailing the geography of the suicide caucus, shows, half of these districts are concentrated in the South, and a quarter of them are in the Midwest, while there’s a smattering of thirteen in the rural West and four in rural Pennsylvania (outside the population centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). Naturally, there are no members from New England, the megalopolis corridor from Washington to Boston, or along the Pacific coastline. 

These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans. They were elected with fourteen and a half million of the hundred and eighteen million votes cast in House elections last November, or twelve per cent of the total. In all, they represent fifty-eight million constituents. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just eighteen per cent of the population. 

[...] 

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed. 

In one sense, these eighty members are acting rationally. They seem to be pushing policies that are representative of what their constituents back home want. But even within the broader Republican Party, they represent a minority view, at least at the level of tactics (almost all Republicans want to defund Obamacare, even if they disagree about using the issue to threaten a government shutdown).

So this explains why Republicans seem so far out of touch with the rest of the American population. It's because they actually are!

Hat/tip to Rachel Maddow.

Federal Gov't Shuts Down Due To GOP Intransigence

The federal government shutdown at 12:01 am this morning when Republicans who control the U.S. House refused to pass a "clean continuing resolution" that would authorize the federal government to spend funds. Republicans are insisting that various public policy positions they want to be enacted into law be included in any legislation that funds the government. Democrats, who control the United States Senate and the Presidency, refuse to go along with these demands.

It's amazing for me to think that just 6 weeks ago I was still working at a federal agency (National Science Foundation) that is now shut down along with every other "non-essential" federal agency. My best wishes go out to all my former co-workers there and I hope that you all are not permanently impacted negatively by the political shenanigans going on in Congress.

Speaker Boehner Meets Gay Congressman's Family

Charles Dharapak / AP

Last week the 113th Congress was sworn in and John Boehner was re-elected Speaker of the U.S. House. One of his ceremonial duties in that position is to take pictures with all of the newly sworn in members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Happily, 7 of the new Congressmembers are members of the LGBT community, including Sean Patrick Maloney, representing the 18th Congressional District of New York. Pictured above is Boehner with  U.S. Representative Maloney, right, with his legally married husband Randy Florke, and their two kids!

It's really 2013, y'all!

Hat/tip to Chris Geidner of Buzzfeed.

House GOP Has Wasted $1.5M Defending DOMA

Ever since the President and the Department of Justice made their decision public that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional in February 2011, the House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner have been paying superlawyer Paul Clement to defend the federal statute in federal court. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House (BLAG) authorized $1.5 million to defend DOMA and today comes word they have basically spent $1,447,996.73 of that amount.

BLAG has not gotten much for spending  nearly $1.5 million of taxpayer funds to defend discrimination, because DOMA has been declared unconstitutional by 5 courts in at least 3 federal circuits (the 9th, 1st and 2nd) with the most prominent loss at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management (along with the companion case Massachusetts v DHHS) widely expected to be taken up by the United States Supreme Court in its current term.

The Democrats in the U.S. House, led by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi have vociferously opposed the legal actions by BLAG as well as the wasteful spending of federal taxpayers to defend a statute which has been declared unconstitutional by multiple federal judges, is opposed in court by the Attorney General of the United States and whose repeal has been endorsed by the President of the United States.

Hat/tip to Washington Blade.

GRAPHIC: The Uselessness of Congress

Ezra Klein has a list of fourteen reasons why this (the 112th) Congress is the worst ever. One of the primary reasons can be encapsulated in the above image which graphically demonstrates how Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by John Boehner and Eric Cantor, have made the institution's productivity significantly worse. Most people would say this is due to divided government (Republicans control of one house of Congress while the Democrats control the other house) but Klein refutes this:

Now you may say that this simply reflects divided government. But while there are many instances of divided government on that chart — the 104th Congress, for instance, when Newt Gingrich and his Republican revolutionaries faced off against President Bill Clinton and still managed to pass 333 public laws — there’s no session of Congress with such a poor record of productivity.

Then again, if divided government goes away, due to redistricting and timing (Democrats need to defend 23 seats compared to 10 for Republicans thanks to a banner year in 2006), we might look back with fondness at the lack of scary legislation coming out of Congress!

Republicans Appeal DOMA Ruling To SCOTUS

As expected, the Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives have appealed to the United States Supreme Court to overturn the recent unanimous ruling from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. The organization paying for the appeal is the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), which consists of the 5 highest ranked members of Congress. Curious they made their decision to file for certiorari late on the last Friday in June, eh?

Anyway, as usual Chris Geidner has the deets:

In a filing obtained by Metro Weekly, BLAG asks the Supreme Court, which must agree to consider the case, to take the appeal for three reasons: (1) the constitutionality of DOMA Section 3 is "an issue of great national importance" and raises separation-of-powers questions; (2) the First Circuit decision conflicts with the Supreme Court's 1972 decision in Baker v. Nelson and other appellate decisions; and (3) the First Circuit "invented a new standard of equal protection review."  

In the course of the filing, called a petition for a writ of certiorari, BLAG states that "[t]he executive branch has ... abdicated its traditional role of defending the constitutionality of duly-enacted statutes."

It should be fascinating to see whether the Supreme Court will decide to accept case (which is expected) and how they will deal with the 40-year-old case of Baker v. Nelson which was decided when no state had legalized marriage equality and no court had ever found a constitutional right to marry included same-sex couples or even that LGBT people had any kind of constitutional protections at all.

Soon the heterosexual supremacists defending Proposition 8 will also have to decide whether they will appeal their federal appellate court loss to the United States Supreme Court. If SCOTUS accepts both, then there will be two blockbuster gay rights cases (both dealing with marriage equality in two very different contexts) in the 2012-13 term.

Approval of Congress Hits Single Digits (9%!)