Despite Marriage Victories, Gays Still Lack Employment Protections in 29 States

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Part of the Christofascists' agenda to punish LGBT individuals for not conforming to far right religious dogma has been to deprive us of legal recognition of our relationships with our life partners.  The other equally insidious piece of this stigmatization and state sponsored discrimination has been to deprive us of employment protections.  Sadly, despite the victories on the marriage equality front, in 29 states LGBT individuals can still be summarily fired from their jobs simply for being LGBT.  Virginia, all too typically, ranks among such anti-gay states thanks in no small part to the hate group known as The Family Foundation and its political prostitutes in the Virginia GOP.  A piece in Huffington Post and a column in the Washington Post look at this unfortunate reality.   First some highlights from the Post:

I hate to be the skunk at the gay wedding, especially after swooning over those happening in the most unlikely places. But it’s time we deal with a couple of inconvenient truths that won’t change until both the Supreme Court and Congress act. And only the court is poised to actually act.

Writing for The Post’s Monkey Cage, New York University professor Patrick Egan highlights the dilemma facing same-sex couples marrying in states without protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Gay people can now get legally married in more states than where they are legally protected from job discrimination.  As this map shows, there are now five states — Indiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia — where gay people can get legally married and where it is perfectly legal for an employer to fire someone for being gay.

But don’t think this fear of discrimination based on sexual orientation is some abstract concern. Doug Schilling of Iowa wrote to me after reading my post on all the gay couples getting married last week. Noting that his state was the second in the nation to legalize marriage equality, Schilling said he was suing his former employer “who fired me for being gay after I gave my partner a kidney.” Schilling has legal recourse because Iowa prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

What’s needed is employment discrimination protection on the federal level. There was great hope that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would provide such protection. But the legislation has languished in the House since it arrived from the Senate with 64 votes nearly a year ago. Rising concern over proposed religious exemptions to the bill, combined with dim prospects of passage in the House, have led many LGBT activists and organizations to withdraw their support for ENDA and call for a comprehensive civil rights law that adds sexual orientation to the nation’s anti-discrimination statute. This won’t happen any time soon.

[O]lder same-sex married couples will find themselves in a bind when the need for Social Security benefits arises. Attorney General Eric Holder determined last February that “same-sex marriages valid in the place where the marriage was celebrated” would be viewed as legal under federal law. Unless that law is the Social Security Act, as we learned in June. That’s when the Social Security Administration announced that federal law required it “to follow state law in Social Security cases.” What that means for the partner of a lesbian couple who married in New York state but live in Georgia, where marriage equality doesn’t exist (yet), is that your claim for survivor benefits will be put on hold

Huffington Post continues the analysis and underscores the discrimination that gays face even in states that now have marriage equality:

For many activists, the top priority after marriage is federal legislation that would outlaw a broad range of discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people. There's no such federal law now, and more than half the states do not ban discrimination by employers or public accommodations based on sexual orientation.

As a whole, the LGBT population is elated by the expansion of gay marriage. Yet according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, about 40 percent of LGBT adults aren't interested in getting married, compared to 24 percent of the general public. And nearly 40 percent of the LGBT respondents said the marriage issue had drawn too much attention away from other concerns.

Gay-rights groups are looking ahead to the next session of Congress. Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign said there will be an aggressive push for a comprehensive LGBT civil rights bill that would seek anti-bias protections even beyond the workplace — in realms such as housing and access to credit.

In past years, broad GOP support for such a bill would have seemed impossible, but Sainz foresees a new era.

"The constant expansion of the marriage map changes the reality for Republicans," he said. "With every passing day, those who oppose LGBT equality increasingly look like dinosaurs."

Shannon Minter, the center's legal director [National Center for Lesbian Rights], said the "breathtaking progress" on marriage equality shouldn't weaken the broader drive for LGBT rights.

"Every day, LGBT people are fired from their jobs, kicked out of families, and stigmatized in their communities," Minter said. "Our future work must assure that every LGBT person, no matter who they are or where they live, enjoys equality, dignity, and justice."

In short, there is still a huge amount of work to be done.  Each of us can aid in the task by living as "out" and proudly as our circumstances permit.  That means coming out to friends and family members even if one must remain closeted at work.