Baldwin and Polis working on equality

There are currently three openly gay members of the United States Congress: Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

This past weekend, two of those members (Baldwin and Polis) spoke about the future of gay rights in Congress.

Speaking to an international conference of gay politicians in San Francisco, U.S. Reps. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., said they expect a domestic partner benefits bill to come up for a vote by the end of the year and the employment bill to reach the floor early in 2010.

The lawmakers said they are also confident that the House will include in the annual military spending bill next year a provision to repeal the law that bans gays from serving in the U.S. military. All the measures face a harder time in the Senate following the death of longtime ally Sen. Edward Kennedy, but Baldwin and Polis said they remained optimistic.

"I'm hopeful we will see those three pieces of legislation make it all the way, or damn close," said Baldwin, who is sponsoring the federal worker domestic partner bill.

I have written before about the increasing support for repeal of the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy and it is nice to see some Representatives come forth and push for that repeal as well.

President Obama campaigned on repealing DADT, but has since done nothing to keep that promise. Hopefully Congress will pick up the ball that Obama dropped.

Earlier this year, deputy federal public defender Brad Levenson won same-sex benefits via the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It would be great if Congress could craft legislation to extend those benefits to all federal workers so they wouldn't be forced to go to court like Levenson.

Granted, it would be nice to repeal DOMA (which Obama claimed he would work towards doing) and extend same-sex benefits to all citizens not just federal employees...but any step in the right direction is a good step.