What Obama Could Do for L.G.B.T. Workplace Protections The United States Senate, which has had us all switching to the Paint Drying Network in search of relative excitement, did its job today and passed, 64-32, an important, far-too-delayed bill to ban discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation or identity. The House is unlikely to follow suit. Speaker John Boehner has declared legal action about that sort of discrimination to be "frivolous," and the Tea Party caucus is almost certain to oppose even voting on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. That's why President Obama should step in. He should show the same personal commitment to this cause as the 10 Republicans who joined Senate Democrats in passing the bill, and sign an executive order forbidding discrimination among federal contractors against gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. That order has been languishing somewhere in the White House for years. As Mr. Obama said last week, workplace discrimination is "offensive. Exactly, starting with the workplaces of federal contractors. The Senate measure is decidedly imperfect. It contains an unacceptably broad religious exemption that was larded into it to try to woo more Republican votes. It would go beyond the usual exemption for churches and other houses of worship to any religiously affiliated institution. So a hospital could fire a doctor just because the hospital management does not approve of her sexual orientation. Other civil rights laws don't have such a far-reaching exemption, which gives an air of legitimacy to the very sort of discrimination it is supposed to end. If this bill advances at all in the House, you can expect the far-right caucus there to try to expand that exemption even further - to, say, include any employer who doesn't approve of gay people for personal reasons. But, instead of ending on a down note, I'll list the 10 Republicans who found the courage to vote for civil rights for all Americans - including some pretty surprising ones. They are Mark Kirk, Susan Collins, Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, Dean Heller, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey. If this keeps up, we may have to take all that talk of G.O.P. moderation more seriously.