Late last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. split the original bill into two parts, one offering protections for gays, lesbians and bisexuals and the other supporting trangendered people.

According to reports, both Frank and Pelosi worried that the section protecting gender identity would kill the overall bill. That the pair might have miscalculated the reaction to the changes they made as a result of those fears was evident in a pair of statements Pelosi released on Monday.

The first of Pelosi’s statements assured she would stick by her decision to split the landmark bill into two parts, despite her personal feelings about the transgeneder community. Another statement, released a few hours later, suggested a change of heart.

"After discussions with congressional leaders and organizations supporting passage" of the bill, committee and floor votes on the bill had been postponed to "allow proponents of the legislation to continue their discussions with members in the interest of passing the broadest possible bill," the San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier today.

That statement regained the support of Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., who balked at backing the bill after hearing of last week’s changes. 

More than 90 national and state lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations had a similar reaction to Monday’s news, prompting a letter that was hand-delivered to Congress that urged lawmakers to “reject substitute legislation that removes transgender protections from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and instead get back to work to pass H.R. 2015, an ENDA bill that provides job protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.” 

In a four-page statement released to the press on Friday, Frank defended his decision by stating, "The question facing us—the LGBT community and the tens of millions of others who are active supporters of our fight against prejudice—is whether we should pass up the chance to adopt a very good bill because it has one major gap.

"I believe that it would be a grave error to let this opportunity to pass a sexual orientation nondiscrimination bill go forward," he added, "not simply because it is one of the most important advances we'll have made in securing civil rights for all Americans in decades, but because moving forward on this bill now will also better serve the ultimate goal of including people who are transgender than simply accepting total defeat today."