Standing in solidarity with Puerto Rico
The Task Force is a longtime ally of the Puerto Rican LGBT community. We’ve been working in collaboration with activists there to combat the epidemic of anti-LGBT violence, which in the past two years has cost more than 25 lives. The Task Force’s Pedro Julio Serrano traveled to Puerto Rico last week to participate in a series of events designed to support the local struggle.
Starting the weeklong visit, he participated in a religious service at the LGBT welcoming and affirming church Cristo Sanador in Río Piedras. The Task Force was publicly recognized for its work in Puerto Rico.
The next day, Serrano participated at a protest at the Capitol to denounce the rationing of medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS in the municipality of San Juan. Protestors demanded equal treatment and access to proper services for patients.
One of the most important events was a training for prosecutors on how to deal with hate crimes. This is particularly critical due to the fact that even though the local hate crimes law requires authorities in Puerto Rico to investigate whether the murders were motivated by the victims’ sexual orientation or gender identity, not a single case has been prosecuted as such.
Later in the week, the Task Force joined other organizations, students, parents and teachers at a Hatillo school for a protest against the alleged discrimination and bullying of LGBT students by the school’s director. These students allege their movements have been restricted within the school premises, have been subjected to punishments without any reason and have been told not to hold hands with their same-sex partners.
Continuing with the effort against bullying and as part of the Boys & Girls Club Week, the Task Force also led a chat on bullying to the participants of the local club at the Luis Llórens Torres public housing complex. Almost 100 youth and volunteers participated and made a public pledge to stop anti-LGBT bullying.
Closing the series of events, Serrano participated in the launch of the “Dance, Don’t H8″ tour by Aleshander, a local singer who’s promoting a public service campaign to combat prejudice and foment respect for every human being. During his visit, he participated in several media interviews, as well.
The Task Force has been in Puerto Rico on numerous occasions to respond to the scourge of anti-LGBT violence. This includes responding to the killing of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a 19-year-old student murdered in Cayey in November 2009. In 2010, the Task Force’s National Religious Leadership Roundtable convened one of its semi-annual meetings in Puerto Rico to stand in solidarity with the Puerto Rican LGBT community. Also in 2010, the Task Force also led a delegation of elected officials and activists from New York City and Chicago that traveled to Puerto Rico to denounce the epidemic of anti-LGBT violence.
Last year, the Task Force participated in the International Day Against Homophobia march in San Juan and has been very active in denouncing the attacks against LGBT individuals in Puerto Rico. The Task Force also assisted in the response to several of the anti-LGBT crimes that have ocurred in the past two years.
The Task Force will continue to help local activists with efforts to curb the anti-LGBT violence and discrimination in Puerto Rico.
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Health equity at the intersections: Latino/a and LGBT health
This blog post is jointly written by Veronica Bayetti, policy research specialist at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health; and Patrick Paschall, Esq., policy advocate at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. This post is part of the Blog Carnival “Health Equity Can’t Wait” taking place April 25-27, 2012.
As advocates committed to health equity, it is imperative that we always look at the whole picture because it is easy to work in our advocacy silos and only look at one aspect of a people’s lives: sexual orientation, or gender, or race. But as the brilliant late poet Audre Lorde once said, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we don’t live single-issue lives.” We cannot fully fight for social justice unless we sit with this reality.
We will never fully understand the struggle of someone trying to access an abortion if we do not also know how being a transgender man of color has affected his experience. We cannot know an immigrant’s struggle to access culturally competent and affordable health care if we do not think about how being queer has affected where she feels safe. If we do not look at the intersections, we paint an incomplete picture and we fail to see the very real ways that multiple marginalized identities play out in people’s lives.
In the groundbreaking report Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality found that Latino/a transgender people experience far higher rates of discrimination than the general population or than either the Latino/a or transgender populations as a whole. For example, 23 percent of Latino/a transgender people reported being refused medical care due to bias, and 36 percent reported having postponed care when they were sick or injured due to fear of discrimination.
Additionally, nearly one in 10 Latino/a respondents were HIV-positive (8.44 percent) and an additional 10.23 percent reported that they did not know their status. This compares to rates of 2.64 percent for transgender respondents of all races, .50 percent for the general Latino/a population, and 0.60 percent of the general U.S. population. This means that Latino/a transgender people are nearly four times more likely than the transgender population and over 16 times more likely than the general Latino/a population to be HIV-positive.
But the story doesn’t end there: one of the most striking statistics is that a staggering 47 percent of Latino and Latina transgender people reported having attempted suicide, compared to 1.6 percent of the general population. That makes Latino and Latina transgender people 29 times more likely to attempt suicide than the general population.
These statistics make it clear that it is not enough to focus on one group of people – whether it be Latin@s, LGBTQ folks, or any other group – without recognizing that there are many communities within them, each with their own struggles, their own celebrations, their own priorities. We cannot in good faith advocate for an end to cervical cancer, or advocate for safer immigration detention standards, if we don’t include LGBTQ people.
We cannot fight for LGBTQ liberation if we do not stand in support of immigrant’s rights, or reproductive justice. These issues must be as inextricably linked in our advocacy as they are in people’s lived realities. Anything less will stop short of health equity.
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Task Force congratulates labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta on receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Task Force congratulates legendary labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta on becoming a 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Huerta co-founded the National Farmworkers Association with labor leader Cesar Chavez in 1962. She is a longtime supporter of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. Huerta was a keynote speaker at the Task Force’s National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change in 2009 in Denver, Colo.
You can watch her Creating Change speech here:
You can also watch parts two and three.
Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey says:
Congratulations to Dolores Huerta on this tremendous and much-deserved honor. Dolores is a legendary labor and civil rights leader who has spent a lifetime working to make lives better for all. She has been a strong advocate and leading Latina voice for full equality for LGBT people, and we were grateful to have her address our 2009 National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, where she inspired thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights advocates from around the country and the world. Dolores not only recognizes our common humanity — she has been a fierce, fearless and fabulous voice for justice.
The Task Force applauds the U.S. Senate’s passage by a vote of 68-31 today of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill, which for the first time includes explicit protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) survivors of domestic violence.
The 1994 federal law provides funds to enhance investigation and prosecution of violent crimes such as domestic violence and sexual assault, and it bolsters victim services programs. The Task Force Action Fund, along with a broad coalition of organizations including the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, has been lobbying for inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the law.
Statement by Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey:
To be the target of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence or stalking is terrifying and traumatic. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are not immune from this violence, and their distress should not be further heightened by a lack of proper response from service providers or law enforcement. Imagine being assaulted, scared and in pain — and then being turned away from receiving basic services and care. No one should ever be subjected to such inhumane treatment.
Reauthorization of this inclusive Violence Against Women Act will go a long way toward ensuring everyone has access to life-sustaining resources. Lives are literally on the line, and we thank the Senate for passing this critical legislation. We urge the House to swiftly follow suit.
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The “Social Security Equality Act of 2012,” which seeks to end the discrimination same-sex couples face with respect to Social Security benefits, was introduced by U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and includes 90 House co-sponsors.
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey spoke at today’s Capitol Hill press conference, along with representatives from the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders) and AIDS Community Action Foundation. Actors George Takei and Hal Sparks also spoke.
Statement by Rea Carey, executive director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:
We hear far too many painful stories of loving, committed same-sex couples left anxious and vulnerable because the federal government refuses to recognize their relationships — including their legal marriages. This stretches to Social Security, which should offer some security to Americans, particularly in their time of need, as when a spouse dies.
Social Security survivor benefits help to keep widows and widowers from falling into poverty following the loss of their loved one. If you are a married opposite-sex couple and your spouse passes away, you are covered. This is not so for married same-sex couples, who continue to face discrimination by their own government because of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. The Social Security Equality Act would help give them the financial security they have so far been denied and so desperately need.
Families like Mina and Sharon, who have known each other since 1945, when they were children growing up on the same street in Cleveland, Ohio. They fell in love and have built a life together as a committed couple for over 40 years. Mina and Sharon, now in their 70s, are legally married in California but their relationship remains invisible in the eyes of the federal government. This means one of them would be denied Social Security survivor and spousal benefits when the other died. Grieving the loss of a spouse is traumatic enough without inflicting the indignity of your government saying it doesn’t recognize your love. No one should have to suffer that way.
Providing survivor benefits, spousal benefits and death benefits is a matter of fairness. It would help keep same-sex families out of poverty and allow for dignity as they age. We thank Representative Sanchez and the other members of the House who have stood up today on behalf of LGBT families across the country. We urge the House leadership to act on this bill.
You can also take action today to urge Congress to pass the Respect for Marriage Act.
The use of criminal background checks to disqualify job applicants, whether anything in the applicant’s record is relevant to the job or not, has been a rising trend over the last few years. It has recently reached such a level that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) weighed in on the matter today. And they weighed in solidly on the side of workers across the country. These tactics have a huge impact on minority communities because of police and prosecutor practices that lead to overrepresentation of minority communities in the criminal justice system, and they have an especially high impact on transgender people and transgender people of color.
Today, the EEOC took an important step in stopping this form of discrimination by issuing updated guidance clarifying that it is a violation of the federal civil rights laws to use criminal background checks in a manner that discriminates on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
This comes just days after the EEOC announced in a game-changing ruling for transgender employment rights that the prohibition on sex-based discrimination found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes a prohibition from employers discriminating on the basis of gender identity.
What does this mean for transgender people?
We know from Injustice at Every Turn, the groundbreaking report from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality published last year, that transgender people face double the rate of unemployment compared to the general population, with rates for people of color up to four times the national unemployment average.
We also know that sixteen percent (16%) of transgender people reported having been incarcerated, with black (47%), American Indian (30%), and Latino/a (25%) respondents at highest risk for going to jail/prison. Compare the rates of transgender people who have been imprisoned to the general U.S. population, which sits at just 2.7% having been imprisoned at some point in life, and we see that disqualifying employees on the basis of a criminal history has a disproportionate impact on transgender people, especially transgender people of color.
In short, today’s announcement clarifies that employers cannot use criminal background checks to discriminate against employees or potential employees unless they can prove that the criminal background actually disqualifies the applicant for the job. It is important to clarify a few things about today’s guidance, though.
- Employers are allowed to disqualify people from positions based on criminal history, but only if the employer can show that the exclusion is “job related and consistent with business necessity.”
- This means that employers may still require you to submit to a criminal background check, but employers CANNOT use the criminal background check in a discriminatory way.
- Employers CANNOT use the practice if it operates to disproportionately and unjustifiably exclude people of a particular protected class.
- And since the EEOC recently announced that transgender people are protected under sex-based protections in federal civil rights laws, transgender people are protected from this form of discrimination in hiring.
For more information on today’s announcement, the EEOC put out a press release and a questions-and-answers document that provides helpful information about the ruling.
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United We Stand: Achieving Health Equity for All
This blog post is jointly written by Kellan Baker, MPH, MA, Health Policy Analyst, LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress; Patrick Paschall, Esq., Policy Advocate, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; and Harper Jean Tobin, Esq., Policy Counsel, National Center for Transgender Equality. This post is part of the Blog Carnival “Health Equity Can’t Wait,” taking place April 25-27, 2012.
The Center for American Progress, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force are partners in the Health Equity and Accountability Act Community Working Group, a broad coalition of health equity advocates. A cornerstone of this group’s work over the last year, the Health Equity and Accountability Act, is a groundbreaking effort to promote health at the intersections of disparities related to factors such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigrant status and disability status.
We do this important work at the intersections because, as the Institute of Medicine report on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health emphasizes, “the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs.”
Moreover, the effects of health disparities multiply exponentially for those who are members of more than one minority population: LGBT people of color may be more likely to experience worse health and greater health care access disparities than either their heterosexual and nontransgender counterparts within communities of color or their white counterparts within the LGBT population.
But the full extent of LGBT health disparities remains unknown. Major health surveys collecting data that can help identify disparities do not ask respondents about their sexual orientation or gender identity, meaning that researchers must often rely on anecdotal data and limited studies that cannot fully explore LGBT health disparities. This data gap particularly erases the experiences of those at the intersections of multiple disparity populations, such as LGBT communities of color.
Some Things We Do Know about LGBT People and Health Disparities
According to the American Community Survey, same-sex couples live in almost every county across the country. More than one million of these families, many of them black and Latina lesbians, are raising children. The challenges these families and other LGBT people face include discrimination in employment, housing, relationship recognition, health insurance and health care access — all of which give rise to health disparities such as greater exposure to violence, higher rates of conditions such as HIV and cancer, and a greater burden of mental health concerns such as depression.
Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, released in 2011 by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found that one in five transgender people has been refused health care outright due to anti-transgender bias. Such disparities are worst across the board for transgender people of color: For example, 31 percent of African-American transgender respondents reported being uninsured, compared to 17 percent of white respondents.
How LGBT Advocates Are Advancing Health Equity
The lack of data on LGBT health means that one of our biggest priorities is data collection. We are currently working with the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that federally supported health surveys collect information about the health needs and experiences of LGBT people in order to give a much fuller picture of the diversity of LGBT communities. As part of its LGBT Data Progression Plan, the department is developing sexual orientation and gender identity questions for surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey.
We are also informing LGBT people about their rights under the health reform law. In particular, recent federal regulations ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by the state-based health insurance exchanges, which will connect consumers with affordable private coverage starting in 2014. The Affordable Care Act also extends nondiscrimination protections in the health system on the basis of HIV/AIDS status and sex. Such sex protections have been interpreted to include gender identity, including in a recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling that sex protections prohibit employment discrimination against transgender people.
Other recent health equity efforts include:
- A report about the Affordable Care Act and LGBT people from the Center for American Progress and the National Coalition for LGBT Health
- A resource from the National Center for Transgender Equality on sexual and reproductive health care for transgender people, particularly in Title X clinics
- A webinar hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Center for American Progress about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act for LGBT people and their families
- A report from the Center for American Progress about the experiences of LGBT African Americans
These and other efforts, including the Health Equity and Accountability Act, are critical steps in the direction of building a world in which complexity of identity is not reduced to multiplicity of risk. Achieving health equity for all will require collecting more data, conducting more research, and dedicating more resources to understanding and fighting the health disparities that affect disadvantaged communities. Our work is based on the conviction that together, we can end disparities and build a healthier nation.
Task Force hails EEOC ruling protecting transgender workers
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force applauds the opinion by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that transgender people are protected from discrimination by federal law. The EEOC found that an employer who discriminates against an employee or applicant on the basis of the person’s gender identity is violating the prohibition on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The ruling involves the case of Mia Macy, a transgender woman denied a job by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Macy is represented by the Transgender Law Center. This precedent-setting decision applies to both private and public employees in the United States.
Findings from Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality showed what a severe and life-threatening problem employment discrimination is for transgender people: 26 percent lose their job just because they are transgender, 90 percent experience mistreatment, discrimination or hide who they are to avoid it.
Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey says:
This is a historic victory for transgender people and their families — and it couldn’t come too soon. Our national survey on transgender discrimination found staggering levels of workplace discrimination against transgender Americans. This jeopardizes their ability to have or keep a job, have a roof over their head, and feed and take care of their family.
Mia Macy’s situation is a case in point. She and her family moved from Phoenix to the Bay Area because of a job offer. After the job was taken away, they couldn’t afford to keep up their house payments, and their home was foreclosed on. This has been devastating. This is no way to live, and the EEOC’s ruling will go a long way toward addressing such injustices.
We applaud the EEOC for this opinion and congratulate the Transgender Law Center for its work leading to this victory. Special thanks to Mia for her courage. Transgender people across the nation will now know that they are protected by federal law and have legal recourse if they are denied a job or fired just because of who they are.
However, we still need clear, explicit protections for transgender people in the 34 states that don’t have those laws, as well as on the federal level. We continue to call on Congress to move the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, with a Senate hearing on the bill with no further delay.
Genderqueer people face distinct patterns of discrimination and violence according to a new study based on the dataset gathered for Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality.
The study, A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, was just published by the LGBTQ Policy Journal at the Harvard Kennedy School. It examines the experiences of genderqueer individuals and others who clearly identified as neither a man nor a woman.
A Gender Not Listed Here found that, when compared to transgender-identified respondents surveyed in Injustice at Every Turn, genderqueer respondents said they were more likely to be unemployed (76 percent vs. 56 percent); suffer physical assaults (32 percent vs. 25 percent); experience harassment by law enforcement (31 percent vs. 21 percent); and forgo healthcare treatment due to fear of discrimination (36 percent vs. 27 percent). There were other measures in which transgender respondents suffered higher levels of discrimination or harassment.
“These findings aren’t just groundbreaking for our academic understanding of the genderqueer experience,” says study author Jack Harrison of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Policy Institute. “As with Injustice at Every Turn, they are a call to action. No one should have to get up in the morning fearing they will be denied a job, abused by police, mistreated by a doctor or attacked while walking down the street simply because of their gender identity and expression. For genderqueer people, this is a harsh and unacceptable reality.”
Harrison authored A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey along with Jaime Grant of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College and Jody L. Herman of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The study also found that genderqueer individuals had distinct demographic characteristics. Compared to other Injustice at Every Turn respondents, they were more likely to be people of color (30 percent were people of color vs. 23 percent who were people of color in the overall sample) and young people (89 percent vs. 68 percent were under age 45). These demographic findings mark a crucial new development in the understanding of the way race and age affect gender identity/expression-based discrimination.
To download: Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
President Obama today announced his support for the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act, federal legislation aimed at combating anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) bullying and discrimination in our nation’s schools. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is working in coalition to advocate for the passage of both these critical bills. Specifically, in January, at our Creating Change Lobby Day, hundreds of LGBT advocates met with their senators and urged them to pass these important pieces of legislation.
Statement by Rea Carey, executive director , National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:
We thank President Obama for endorsing the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act. The epidemic of bullying and discrimination in our nation’s schools is a tragedy and an outrage. No student should fear getting beaten up, harassed and tormented while simply trying to get an education. We have a responsibility to ensure all young people are protected from this pervasive bullying, discrimination and abuse. Parents, educators, policymakers — all of us — need to stand against this unacceptable behavior. The president did that today. We urge him to now help get these life-saving bills through Congress.
