the end of enda?

The ENDA, or Employment Non-Discrimination Act, will be the first federal law protecting the rights of the LGBT community ever if and when it passes. Unfortunately, the if factor is growing, due in no small part to the political pressure on Democrats by gay rights groups.

Read a full article from Salon.com opinion here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/08/lgbt/
(Thanks, John Aravosis.)

The question Aravosis raises here: Is it worth tossing out this bill, putting it on indefinite hold, or just point-blank dooming it to failure if it does not include gender identity in its protections? (The original version covered only sexual orientation, a category of protection missing from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transgender/transexual/etc components of gay rights agendas precipitated the addition of "gender identity" into the bill, which is what may be its downfall.)

For a little background reading, check out this excerpt from a March 2001 Camille Paglia column, from the same:

...Which brings us to another subject, the furor this past month over a report by psychiatrist Robert Spitzer of Columbia University that, from his rather cursory interviews with 153 men and 47 women, the "reparative therapy" endorsed by conservative Protestant groups can in some cases change sexual orientation from gay to straight. That Spitzer had helped to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to drop the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 makes his current study harder to dismiss.
Nevertheless, screeching gay activists immediately descended on the media to denounce and defame Spitzer as a tool of the far right. This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. Why should the fluidity of sexual orientation threaten any gay secure in his or her identity?
What gay ideologues, inflated like pink balloons with poststructuralist hot air, can't admit, of course, is that heterosexuality is nature's norm, enforced by powerful hormonal cues at puberty. In the past decade, one shoddy book after another, rapturously applauded by p.c. reviewers, has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality in the animal world and, without due regard for reproductive adaptations caused by environmental changes, toxins or population pressure, reductively interpreted bonding or hierarchical behavior as gay in the human sense.
Because of the unblushing dishonesty of strident activists and campus "queer theorists," whose general knowledge of science would fit into Marie Antoinette's thimble, we are ironically further from understanding homosexuality than we were in 1970, when popular culture was moving into the seductive gender-bending era typified by the brilliant David Bowie. With the emphasis on external "politics," all respect for psychology has been lost. Did no one notice the grotesquely misogynous dialogue put into gay men's mouths on "Queer as Folk"? That kind of catty aversion to the female body is learned, not inborn, and it can be partly traced to early family relations, before personal memory has even gelled.
My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility. In vicious attacks like the one on Spitzer, gay activists, with all their good intentions, are aligning themselves with the forces of ignorance and repression. Too little reliable work is currently being done in homosexuality because free inquiry cannot be conducted in a politicized atmosphere of harassment and intimidation.

(Emphases mine.)

I feel the need to point out that, despite all the ire she continually incites (much of which she deserves and, dare I say, enjoys), Paglia is herself a gay woman and has identified as such for at least 40 years. This is perhaps a bit over the top, but her central point continues to be true, and the same attitudes she is writing about (in light of the repression of scholarship) are potentially driving this essential legislation into the ground.