Quoting from an email I just received from Sen. Jeff Merkley:

“The reality is that most LGBTQ Americans experience harassment or discrimination — unfair treatment that closes doors in housing, education, work, public accommodations and more. This is happening right here in America, the same country that prides itself in giving opportunity to anyone who is willing to work hard. That’s unacceptable. Congress needs to act right now to make sure every American is free of unfair discrimination that rips away their opportunities to chase the American dream.”

Commendable legislation. But why, Sen. Merkley, did you choose to introduce it when there is no chance of passage? Were LGBTQ Americans like myself less discriminated against back in 2009 or 2010 when Democrats controlled the Presidency, the Senate and the House? Or were we just not on your political identity radar then?

There’s a pattern here. Back in June 2018 you raised a ruckus over detention of immigrant children in a Texas gulag run by a private corporation. Again, commendable.

But where you in 2014 when President Obama dramatically expanded family detention space via private corporations and — according to a 2016 New York Times editorial — “… these privately run, unlicensed lockups are no place for children. Or mothers.”

Apparently not on your radar back then, either.

Trisha Driscoll

Eugene

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