Congressional Report: Support for the LGBT Equality Slate by the LGBT Equality Caucus
This morning That’s My Congress has released a report scoring the legislative performance of members of the LGBT Equality Caucus of the House of Representatives in the 111th Congress. The report takes 12 bills identified by the caucus as a slate of legislation in support of civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. For each of the 12 bills, we provide a brief summary and indicate how many members of the LGBT Equality Caucus have signed on in support through the act of bill sponsorship or cosponsorship. We also indicate how many of these bills each of the 79 current members of the caucus has sponsored/cosponsored. This allows us to characterize significant variation in the degree of behavioral support for the LGBT policy agenda within the caucus itself. Among our findings:
- 48% — less than half — of the members of the LGBT Equality Caucus support two-thirds or more of the LGBT legislative slate;
- 15% of caucus members support more than half but less than two-thirds of the LGBT legislative slate;
- 13% of caucus members support just half — 6 out of 12 — of the LGBT legislative slate;
- 24% of caucus members support less than half of the LGBT legislative slate of bills.
These results reflect the state of legislative support as of June 28, 2009; the report itself will be updated on a regular basis in the future to reflect changes in levels of support among members of the caucus.
We will be discussing our findings and their implications for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement in greater detail over the next few days on the blog here at That’s My Congress. To see the raw results for yourself, including particular information about which caucus members have failed to support which bills, read the report here.
