Good news for gay couples and employees as April sees two LGBT rights measures in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
These are the Employment Non-Discrimination act (ENDA) and the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).
ENDA seeks to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in workplaces that have 15 or more employees.
UAFA hopes to give US citizens and permanent residents the right to sponsor a same sex partner for permanent residence, a right that is available to heterosexual spouses.
While introducing the bill US Rep Jerrold Nadler said “Thousands of committed same-sex couples are needlessly suffering because of unequal treatment under our immigration laws, and this is an outrage,”
Joe Solmonese, human rights campaign president, re-enforced the message behind UAFA “Our nation’s discriminatory immigration laws force binational same-sex families to decide between breaking up or living in exile. No American family should face this decision.”
25 nations already allow citizens to sponsor same sex partners for legal immigration including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Both bills risk being shot down by the republican controlled House of Representatives.
