Today will likely be the day many of us have long known would come.
Twenty years of grass roots organizing and exhaustive advocacy has
brought us here, and yet it will now fail. The historic opportunity to
pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill out of the Senate Judiciary
Committee with an amendment providing for the unification of LGBT
families, is almost certainly gone.
Without an amendment in Committee, there stands zero chance of such
an amendment being added next month on the Senate floor. Media reports
(Politico, Washington Blade, AP) in the past few days has all but
confirmed that at least two leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats
have caved to empty Republican threats to sabotage immigration reform
if lesbian and gay Americans are included. These two prominent members
of the Senate Judiciary Committee could have stood up to the outrageous
Republican scapegoating of lesbian and gay Americans, but they did not.
If you have ever felt like calling a U.S. Senator, particularly if you
live in New York or California, you should consider making that call
now.
Despite hearing from tends of thousands of constituents in recent weeks, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) have not budged. They will refuse to vote for either amendment, and as a result, Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy, will likely not call either of his LGBT amendments (the one based on the Uniting American Families Act, which I helped write 14 years ago, or his historic and unexpected Marriage Equality “DOMA Carve Out” exception) for a vote knowing that the amendment will fail to garner the necessary 10 out of 10 Democratic votes to pass out of Committee.
