Providing for Consideration of H.R. Colorado Wilderness Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Equality Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, a distinguished member of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the time; and I want to thank her for her eloquent opening.

Mr. Speaker, we are just weeks away from the 53rd anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous speech at the National Cathedral. That is when he uttered the powerful line, ``The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.''

In many ways, those words are as misconstrued as they are well-known, because some have taken them to mean that if you just wait long enough, justice is inevitable. Dr. King knew better, though. He knew that for the moral arc to bend, people needed to be courageous enough to actually bend it.

Just 6 years after this line was spoken, Members of this Chamber showed that courage when they introduced the original Equality Act. They did so in the shadow of the Stonewall riots, at a time when even discussing LGBTQ issues publicly was seen by many as taboo.

These Members recognized the fundamental unfairness in a patchwork of State laws being used to deny some Americans fundamental rights like jobs and homes, just because of who they were or who they loved.

They had the backbone to act, giving a voice in these hallowed Halls to the many advocates nationwide fighting for equality from the outside.

Getting to this point has been a long, long, long road, and I am a proud cosponsor of the Equality Act that is before us today, and I have pushed for this day for a long time. I know this hasn't been easy. So many people and so many organizations, though, never wavered. And along the way, they changed hearts and minds on this issue.

What may have been a radical idea then is not now. In fact, most people today not only support such protections for LGBTQ Americans, they incorrectly believe that they are already in place. That is how common sense this bill is, Mr. Speaker.

This House made history when it passed the Equality Act for the first time last Congress, and we did so in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, it didn't even get a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, and the prior Republican President didn't support it. But now we have new leadership in the Senate and a President who has made passing this bill a top priority.

This moment represents our best chance yet to finally make the Equality Act the law of the land. This moment, Mr. Speaker, is an opportunity to bend the moral arc toward justice, toward fairness, and toward equality, and I encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to seize it.

Let's support this rule and the underlying bill, and let's take a historic step forward toward building a more fair and just society for all Americans.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I have some good news for the gentlewoman who just spoke. The reconciliation bill that is coming to the floor, hopefully, on Friday will have a whole bunch of resources in it to help States safely reopen schools. So I hope we will get a good bipartisan vote on that.

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