WASHINGTON — In 1996 — the year the United States Senate passed the Defense of Marriage Act — the body also came within one vote of passing a bill to outlaw discrimination against gays and lesbians.

More than 16 years later, the tide has turned on marriage equality and DOMA’s federal definition of “marriage” is before the Supreme Court and could be gone by June. Despite widespread popular support, though, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — a job nondiscrimination bill for LGBT people modeled after Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — remains in a holding pattern, unlikely to move forward in Congress because of House Republican leadership’s opposition to the measure.

This year, the bill's new sponsors are pushing for a new vote in the Senate, and simultaneously pressing President Obama to take executive action barring discrimination on federal contacts, both sponsors said in interviews with BuzzFeed.

Throughout much of the 16 years since ENDA failed in that Senate vote, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Barney Frank, both of Massachusetts, led the fight in Congress for the bill, which would ban most private employers from discrimination against LGBT employees. Come January, neither Kennedy, who died in 2009, nor Frank, who did not run for re-election, will be in Congress. Instead, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Rep. Jared Polis, both of whom took federal office in 2009, will be leading the fight for LGBT workplace protections.

Merkley and Polis said they see a Senate vote on the bill — regardless of the House leadership — as an important step. Likewise, both have urged and say they will continue to urge Obama to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees. As the 2012 ends, moreover, LGBT advocates appear to be coalescing in agreement on pushing on both of these fronts.

There remains, however, the House. Polis, while optimistic about LGBT progress broadly, quickly pointed to Republicans as the sticking point on getting ENDA passed.

"I hope to continue to increase the number of sponsors of ENDA in the next session. I am confident we will be able to do that," he said. "We still face opposition from Republican leadership, both in the committee and within the wider House, and their opposition makes it very unlikely that we will be able to bring it to the floor even if we’re able to get a majority of members to commit to support it.”

Merkley said his experience banning sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination while Oregon’s House speaker made it natural for him to take on the leadership of ENDA in the U.S. Senate.

“While Sen. Kennedy was still alive, he was working with his team to pass the torch on key issues and he asked me to carry the torch on ENDA,” he said in an interview in his Senate office. “I grew up with a passionate, fierce conviction that equality really means equality — whether it’s related to issues of color or related to issues of ethnicity or related to issues of sexual identity. This is why, when I became speaker, I carried this battle in Oregon. I think the reason that Kennedy and his team asked me to carry the torch on ENDA is not only because I was on the right committee … but because of my demonstrated advocacy on these issues.”

The committee is the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led by Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. And the bill, despite a Democratic majority and Democratic chairman, hasn’t moved out of committee since President Obama took office. (During that time, a bill to repeal DOMA, the Respect for Marriage Act, did move out of the Judiciary Committee, although it has not received a floor vote.) Harkin and Merkley will be joined on the committee in January by another strong ENDA supporter: Sen.-elect Tammy Baldwin, who will be the first out LGBT senator.

Merkley said he understands Harkin’s handling of the bill in the 111th and 112th Congresses.

“I understand that chairs of committees wrestle with a complex setting, trying to find the right moment. I don’t want to speak for Chairman Harkin, but I think he wrestled with whether to proceed with a mark-up in the committee or try to go directly to the floor, in which case you essentially are in competition with everything else to get it to the floor. Sen. Harkin is a strong advocate for the bill," he said. "He wants to win this battle, and as committee chair, he’s working to find the most effective path."

Harkin spokeswoman Liz Donovan expressed Harkin's strong support for the bill and added, "Chairman Harkin is committed to working with Senators Merkley and [Sen. Mark] Kirk [of Illinois] and members on both sides of the aisle to move ENDA through the HELP committee in the 113th Congress."

Merkley said he's not looking for a symbolic victory.

“Success is getting it passed," he said. "It is outrageous that at this point in the path towards equality under the law in America, members of the GLBT community are still denied fundamental, everyday privileges as a part of their daily lives, be it housing, be it in restaurants, be it in employment. None of that is acceptable.”

Going a step further than he has previously, Merkley noted the importance of getting a vote of the full Senate on the bill. A version of ENDA containing sexual orientation protections aimed at anti-gay treatment and gender identity protections aimed at anti-transgender treatment has never been voted on by the full Senate.

“I believe there is a time, regardless of what happens in the House, where senators have to declare where they stand. That declaration, via a vote, enables citizens to say, ‘I agree or disagree.’ And for that community to be able to say, ‘Well, this person is our champion or this person is not,’ and to go and work to try and persuade more senators that this is an issue of fundamental equality and they should get on board,” he said. “If they don’t have the vote, all they have is the sponsorships. The sponsorships don’t tell the complete story.”

Does that mean he wants a vote in the 113th Congress?

“I would like to see there be a vote, yes, I would,” Merkley said,” adding, “And I say that in this sense, when I worked on these issues in Oregon and when I worked on them here, I think that conversation needs to be held in partnership with the advocacy communities. In terms of wrestling with the pros and cons of different approaches, different strategies, different tactics.”