WASHINGTON — A measure that would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity overcame a significant obstacle in the Senate on Monday as seven Republicans crossed party lines and voted to begin debate on the bill.
The 61-to-30 vote means that the full Senate will consider a measure to extend federal nondiscrimination law to gay, lesbian and bisexual people for the first time since 1996 – a stark reminder, supporters said, that as the public has come around to accepting gay rights, Congress has been slow to keep pace.
Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, one of the Republicans who voted to open debate, had announced Monday that he would vote yes on the bill, known as the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, saying that after conversations with voters at home and colleagues in the Senate, he had come to the determination that “supporting this legislation is the right thing to do.”
It is the first time that the full Senate has considered a measure that includes protection for transgender people.
The bill will face other crucial tests this week before the Senate can ultimately schedule a final vote to approve it, but the first filibuster test was a pivotal hurdle.
The anticipated vote comes four months after the Supreme Court invalidated a federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriages, and nearly a year after some conservative leaders warned that losses in the 2012 elections exposed the party as being out of touch with much of the country on social issues.
“If you’ve been told your entire career that Republican primary voters are hostile on these issues, and people have only just started to educate you otherwise,” said Jeff Cook-McCormac, a Republican lobbyist who has been pushing to get the bill enacted, “it takes a little while for that to sink in.”
Because of opposition in the Republican-controlled House, passage there seems unlikely. Speaker John A. Boehner reiterated his objections to the bill on Monday, releasing a statement that said he believed it would invite too many lawsuits.
Elsewhere in the House on Monday, however, there was an encouraging development for supporters of gay rights. Representative Michael H. Michaud, Democrat of Maine, said that he is gay, becoming the seventh member of Congress to be openly gay, lesbian or bisexual.
While opposition appears less organized than in previous gay rights debates in Congress, senators of both parties said the emotion surrounding the issue had complicated efforts to break a Republican filibuster attempt.
One senator recalled having to explain to a colleague that the legislation would not require insurance companies to pay for sex-change operations. Another spoke of phone calls from constituents who were convinced that their children could be taught in school by men wearing dresses. And conservative groups like the Family Research Council are warning their supporters that the bill would force Christian bookstores to hire drag performers.
To break through the misinformation, supporters said, they have presented senators with polls showing that a majority of Republican voters favor protections for gay, lesbian and transgender workers. And they have made appeals to bedrock Republican principles.
“I’m a Lincoln guy,” said Norm Coleman, a Republican former senator from Minnesota who is lobbying for the bill, known as the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. “So if you go back to who we are, what we are about as a party — economic freedom, equality, the right to earn a living — this makes sense.”
Democrats are confident they will have a good outcome regardless of the final vote, and have pressed ahead despite not being absolutely certain that the bill can pass. If they succeed, it will be the first time the Senate has passed an anti-discrimination bill that protects gay men and lesbians. One failed in 1996, the last time the issue came to a vote on the floor.
And if it fails this time, Democrats will be able to frame the loss as a victory by Republican extremists.
“How can they justify voting against it?” said Barney Frank, who tried to get a nondiscrimination bill passed when he was a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.
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