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Tag: anti lgbt discrimination
DeSantis Appears Willing To Support Ugly Anti-LGBT 'Don't Say Gay' Bill

DeSantis Appears Willing To Support Ugly Anti-LGBT 'Don't Say Gay' Bill

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday for the first time showed support for an anti-LGBTQ bill that bans discussion of LGBTQ issues or topics in schools while forcing teachers to out children to their parents at home.

“In terms of the schools, we’ve seen instances of students being told by different folks in school, ‘Oh, you know, don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet. Do all this other stuff,'” DeSantis said Monday, Florida Politics reports. “They won’t tell the parents about these discussions that are happening. That is entirely inappropriate.”

DeSantis also said it is "inappropriate" for teachers "to be hiding these things from parents," meaning issues of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“To get into situations where you’re not having the parent (involved), where you’re hiding things from the parent, you’re injecting these concepts about choosing your gender. That is just inappropriate for our schools,” DeSantis reinforced.

“We want to make sure our schools are focusing on the basics. We don’t want them to be engines for things like (critical race theory), things that are divisive and not accurate.”

The bill, officially Florida House Bill 1557, “Parental Rights in Education,” would also allow parents to sue the schools if they feel their "rights" as outlined in the legislation have been violated.

The "Don't Say Gay" bill was filed by freshman Florida House Republican Joe Harding, the founder of a local lawn care company who has no background in education or child development.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Trump Order On Transgender Students Is Separate And Unequal

Trump Order On Transgender Students Is Separate And Unequal

The muddled minds that now run the federal government think it’s fine, preferable even, to legally segregate public bathrooms. In 2017, this should shock.

The targeted group today is transgender students. And the bathroom stalls some want to keep them out of are in the public schools these youths attend.

This is of a piece with the attitudes and beliefs that created “For whites only” drinking fountains in the Jim Crow South. If you don’t see the correlation, you have company in the White House.

President Donald Trump rescinded the guidance the Obama administration issued less than a year ago. Obama directed public schools in America to treat transgender children equal to other children, allowing transgender children to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity, not the gender assigned at their birth.

Trump’s jab at the rights of transgender children was intended as a thank-you to the religious ultraconservatives who helped elect him. The new president was pressured by his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whose fingerprints are all over this travesty. Remember this moment as example No. 1 of how Sessions will limit civil rights rather than ensure equal treatment for all.

Sessions reportedly pressed Trump to make the move to circumvent a pending case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involves a Virginia transgender high school student who was restricted to using a segregated bathroom by the local school board.

G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board is the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education for transgender students. It could codify their rights as equally protected under Title IX. Arguments were to be heard in March.

But the Trump team wanted to get its licks in first.

Guidance issued by the Obama administration had bolstered the transgender student’s case, but now that the policy has been reversed, the Supreme Court could sent the matter back to the lower court.

G.G. is Gavin Grimm. His story is typical for many transgender youth.

Gavin’s school first told him to use a bathroom in the nurse’s office. But the separate accommodations were alienating and humiliating. Eventually, school administrators relented, and for two months Gavin used the boys’ bathroom. Other students, as they tend to be, were fine with it.

But a few parents and busybodies from town got involved, lodging complaints. The school board overreacted, barring Gavin from the boys’ restroom. In 2015, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Gavin sued.

As Gavin has so often and graciously explained, he is not making a “choice” any more than a gay or straight student chooses his or her sexual orientation. The doctors who treat children diagnosed with gender dysphoria recognize that truth.

It’s morally and legally wrong to deny a person’s public rights or cast hardship upon him or her simply to bolster the comfort level of a larger group. It shouldn’t matter if the singled out person is a student relegated to a unisex bathroom or a black person restricted from using a water fountain or a family of a particular religion barred from a neighborhood.

Public concerns about transgender people could be alleviated by a broader understanding that gender identity is separate from sexual orientation. The confusion too often spins into generalized fears about predatory sexual behavior like pedophilia, which has nothing to do with gender identity or whether a person is gay or straight.

Most larger school districts have been quietly doing the right thing, accommodating transgender students and easing understanding among classmates and parents.

But not all do so, which is why it’s necessary to have the law firmly delineated on matters of civil rights.

Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, appears to understand this. She pushed back against Sessions but lost.

DeVos reportedly insisted the Trump order underscore that LGBT students be shielded from bullying. Perhaps that will ease her conscience. It will not fully protect these students.

The Trump administration is sending a dangerous mixed message.

It is giving school districts the thumbs up to discriminate, while also recognizing that transgender children are at risk.

The righteous path is to be clear and unequivocal: Transgender children deserve equal treatment among their classmates. And they shouldn’t have to wait for a president or his weak-kneed Cabinet to evolve enough that they embrace the full reach of civil rights in America.

Follow Mary Sanchez on Twitter @msanchezcolumn.

IMAGE: Rally to protect the rights of transgender students tonight, by the White House, in response to the administration’s withdrawal of the transgender-rights directive. Victoria Pickering/Flickr

Louisiana Judge Throws Out Executive Order Protecting LGBT Rights

Louisiana Judge Throws Out Executive Order Protecting LGBT Rights

(Reuters) – A Louisiana judge on Wednesday threw out an order from the state’s Democratic governor aimed at protecting the rights of gay and transgender people, ruling that the governor had overstepped his authority.

In addition to protecting LGBT rights, the executive order from Governor John Bel Edwards protected state employees against discrimination based on race, religion, disability and age. It banned state agencies from discrimination, while offering an exemption for churches and religious organizations.

The “Executive Order is a violation of the Louisiana Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine and an unlawful usurp of the constitutional authority vested only in the legislative branch of government,” Judge Todd Hernandez, of the 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rogue Parish, said in his ruling.

The order had been challenged by the state’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, a Republican who has described himself as a “campaigner for conservative family values.”

In a statement, Landry applauded the judge’s decision and said his objections concerned what he saw as the governor operating outside of his legal mandate.

Edwards said he was disappointed in the ruling and planned an appeal.

“With great respect for the role of the Louisiana legislature, we continue to believe that discrimination is not a Louisiana value and that we are best served as a state when employment decisions are based solely on an individual’s qualifications and job performance,” he said in a statement.

Laws curtailing LGBT rights have been pushed in a few socially conservative states, sparking criticism from corporate, entertainment and sports leaders that they are discriminatory. The most contentious has been a North Carolina law that bars transgender people from using public bathrooms that do not match the sex on their birth certificates.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Additional reportting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida; Editing by Tom Brown and Leslie Adler)

IMAGE: Supporters of gay marriage hold rainbow-colored flags as they rally in front of the Supreme Court in Washington March 27, 2013.  REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Two New Reports On LGBT Poverty Shatter Media Myth Of LGBT Affluence

Two New Reports On LGBT Poverty Shatter Media Myth Of LGBT Affluence

Published with permission from Media Matters for America

Contrary to media misperceptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) affluence, two new reports by the Williams Institute and Center for American Progress show the LGBT community continues to face higher rates of poverty, low wages, and economic insecurity than non-LGBT people.

The Williams Institute, an LGBT think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), released its findings “that poverty remains a significant problem for LGBT people” in a report on September 13. The study found that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would dramatically cut the poverty rate for same-sex couples — a 46 percent drop for lesbian couples and a 35 percent decline for gay male couples. The author, economist M.V. Lee Badgett, noted that the study showed that the notion that the entire LGBT community is wealthy is nothing more than “a misleading stereotype” and that “raising the minimum wage would help everybody.” From the Williams Institute:

The Williams study follows a September 8 report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) that focused on the significant barriers that LGBT people face in accessing middle-class economic security. The study analyzes how anti-LGBT discrimination in employment and housing creates major hurdles for economic security, contributing to wage gaps faced by the LGBT community. CAP reported that up to 28 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans have been fired, not hired, or passed over for a promotion as a result of their orientation. As many as 47 percent of transgender Americans have experienced an adverse job outcome, such as “being fired, not hired, or denied a promotion” because of their gender identity, according to the report. CAP also noted that “LGBT people often struggle to find stable, affordable housing” and experience disparately higher out-of-pocket health care costs, which compounds the impact of economic insecurity experienced by LGBT people and their families.

Media frequently focus on the buying power and affluence of the LGBT community, and on companies that eagerly court the “pink dollar.” On July 20, when one marking firm — Witeck Communications — published its findings that LGBT American buying power reached $917 billion in 2015, it was picked up by Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, CNBC, and USA Today. While another study quoted by Business Insider claimed LGBT Americans take “16% more shopping trips” and have more disposable income than their straight counterparts — claims echoed by a Nielsen study published in the National Journal in 2015.

Gary Gates of the Williams Institute told The Atlantic in 2014 that the downside of this media-created perception “is that those marketing studies looked at the LGBT community as a consumer market” and may only be seeing LGBT Americans who are in an economically secure enough situation to come out. Marketing studies don’t show that LGBT individuals face higher rates of poverty than their non-LGBT counterparts, or that 29 percent of LGBT Americans have experienced food insecurity in the last year. Right-wing media use the myth of LGBT affluence to dismiss LGBT discrimination and claim laws protecting the LGBT community are not needed. Currently, there is no federal law that protects people from being fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. CAP concluded its reporting by noting that the best way to address LGBT economic insecurity would be the passage of a broad-based federal nondiscrimination law called The Equality Act — which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, employment, and housing.

Photo via Flickr/Ted Eytan