Protection must extend to gays

It’s been more than 215 years since the United States adopted a Constitution intended to “form a more perfect union.” The job isn’t finished yet, but we’ve advanced a long way since the time when an exclusive body of male property owners, many of them slave owners, pioneered an experiment in self-government based on freedom and equality.

Compared with two centuries, three decades seems hardly enough time to break a sweat. Unless you’re among those still shut out of the nation’s equal-rights aspirations.

History offers cause for hope. At the federal level, as in Washington and other states, minority groups who suffer discrimination have been identified and enfolded in a widening blanket of legal protection. Washington state law does not extend those protections to gays and lesbians.

For 28 years, legislation has been introduced to rectify that shortcoming. Another attempt is being made this year in Olympia in the form of House Bill 1515.

If enacted, it would add sexual orientation to the classifications enumerated in the state law that already outlaws discrimination based on race; creed; color; sex; national origin; sensory, mental or physical disability, or the use of a guide dog or service animal. It is illegal to discriminate against such people in housing, employment and insurance coverage. It is OK, though, by state law, to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

People denied a job or apartment because of their race can bring a complaint before the state Human Rights Commission. People denied a job or apartment because of sexual orientation are out of luck.

As three decades of obstinacy show, some people in the Legislature want to keep it that way. Predictably, they will say that being treated the same as everybody else constitutes “special rights.” Some will argue that the injustice that gays and lesbians suffer isn’t as serious as the injustices other groups have suffered – and therefore is unworthy of being redressed. And some will just close their eyes.

State Rep. Lynn Schindler, R-Otis Orchards, who intends to vote against HB 1515, said, “I don’t think they actually proved a huge problem with discrimination.”

That raises a related question. At least five other states have such laws. Several Washington cities and some counties have ordinances against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Several major businesses have policies along the same line. Will Schindler and other opponents of HB 1515 ask for proof that those laws and policies have caused “a huge problem” – or any problem?

HB 1515 is long overdue. It won’t make our union perfect, but it will nudge us closer.