Virginia's Largest Employers Urge Passage of LGBT Non-Discrimination Bills

For years Virginia Republicans claimed they were the "pro-business" party yet for decades made Virginia businesses less competitive in their ability to recruit top talent and employees by pandering to anti-gay hate groups like The Family Foundation and "Christian" extremists.  Now, with the change of control of the Virginia General Assembly to the Democrats, LGBT appear poised to gain long over due non-discrimination protections.  In a recent letter, 30 of Virginia's largest employers (locally, that includes Newport News Shipbuilding) have urged passage of the Virginia Values Act that would end anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodation and health care access.  The letter can be found here.  Virginia Business Magazine looks at the development.  Here area article excerpts:

More than 30 Virginia employers — including Altria Group Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Capital One Financial Corp. and Dominion Energy — on Monday sent a letter to Virginia lawmakers asking for comprehensive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) nondiscrimination protections.

The letter addressed to House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, and Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Falls Church, states that employees, their families and customers deserve equal opportunities at work and in daily life.

“Because many LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ workers prefer to live and work in communities with nondiscrimination protections, such a law will give Virginia’s employers tangible advantages in recruitment and retention,” reads the letter released by the Virginia Values Coalition, a statewide group pushing for passage of the Virginia Values Act, which would prohibit LGBTQ discrimination in Virginia.

“Business leaders know that a welcoming Virginia is crucial to their economic competitiveness,” said Kasey Suffredini, Freedom for All Americans CEO and national campaign director. “Nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Virginians and visitors will make it easier for businesses to recruit talented workers, to expand investments in the state, and to attract tourism business.” The crossover companies (companies that both signed the letter and were recognized as a best place to work for LGBTQ equality) included Altria, Capital One, Dominion Energy, Hilton and Nestlé USA Inc. “Virginians and businesses agree — it is past time for LGBTQ people in the commonwealth to have comprehensive nondiscrimination protections,” HRC President Alphonso David said in a statement. “These protections are good for business, good for tourism, good for the economy, and most importantly, vital for the 250,000+ LGBTQ adults living in Virginia. It’s heartening to see so many Virginia businesses publicly support these protections and push for equality for all.”

2018 Hampton Roads Pride Launch - Setting New Records

Numerous state and local elected officials 

Governor Ralph Northam

The husband and I attended the launch party of the 2018 HR Pride project for presenting this year's Pride event which will occur on June 30, 2018 in Norfolk's Town Point Park.  The event was at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk.  The event has grown larger and larger over the last five years as has the list of sponsors who help fund the festival.  Presenting sponsors will include Decorum Furniture, Newport News Shipbuilding ("NNS"), and WHRO-TV.  Stepping up at a truly amazing level was the City of Norfolk which now realizes that HR Pride and the annual Pride event is helping to make Norfolk in particular, by the region in general much more appealing to corporations and individuals seeking to relocate to a city/region where diversity and inclusion are welcomed.   Not that many years ago, previous mayors and city councils treated the LGBT community as if it were radioactive.  Today, the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach (on a much smaller scale than Norfolk), NNS, Virginia's larges corporate employer, numerous banks (one at the $10,000 level), USAA insurance, the CIA and many others all pledged funds to support the pride event which is now Norfolk's largest festival event other than Harborfest.

Politically, the event has also become the place to be seen, at least for Democrats and in attendance were Norfolk school board candidates, at least one congressional candidate.  The host of the event was Pam Northam, First Lady of Virginia.  With her was her husband, Governor Ralph Northam (who gave a much deserved shout out to my husband who does his hair), Congressman Bobby Scott, a number of members of the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senator Lynnwood Lewis, plus the Mayors of Norfolk and Virginia Beach (see the images above).

Perhaps most surprising was a resolution from the Virginia General Assembly - historically a body NOT friendly to the LGBT community - approved by both the Senate and the House of Delegates that recognized Hampton Roads Pride for the work it has done to increase diversity and inclusion, promote the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, and to recognize its 30th anniversary (see the image below).  Many older members of the LGBT community likely never believed that the day would come when such a resolution would ever be forthcoming.

All in all, it was an amazing event and convinced many of us of the old guard, if you will, that our efforts over the years have been worth the effort.   Sadly, in the age of Trump, we must redouble our efforts to make sure that progress continues. 

click image to enlarge

Corporate America: The LGBT Community's Most Powerful Ally

Here in Virginia corporations were not so long ago barred from offering domestic partner insurance benefits unless the corporations were large and basically self-insured.  What changed this?  Large corporations, including Capital One, demanding that the Virginia General Assembly repeal the ban and allow corporations to be competitive in recruiting the best talent and employees.  Another example of corporate America's blow back against anti-gay bigotry is the reason debacle in Arizona where GOP governor Jan Brewer was forced to veto a GOP backed bill.  Sadly, the Virginia GOP still has not gotten the larger message.  A piece in Metro Weekly looks at how corporate America has become, whether for the right reasons or not, become one of the LGBT community's most powerful allies.  Here are highlights:

While the debate over LGBT equality may continue to take place among the general electorate, that debate has reached its conclusion among corporate America. To be anti-gay increasingly means to be anti-business. 

According to Deena Fidas, director of the Workplace Equality Program for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the game-changing moment came when New York lawmakers approved marriage-equality legislation in 2011.

"That was really the first time there was a breakthrough of this being a relative fringe area of corporate support," Fidas tells Metro Weekly, noting that during the fight against Proposition 8 in 2008 only a handful of businesses weighed in. However, thanks to a collaborate effort by a number of LGBT-rights organizations, about 40 businesses from Wall Street to upstate New York publicly voiced their support for the state's same-sex marriage bill.

The tidal shift is apparent with adoption of nondiscrimination policies as well. In 2002, when HRC launched its Corporate Equality Index, which has come to serve as the national benchmark tool on corporate LGBT policies, only 13 businesses achieved a perfect score. In 2014 that number stands at 304 businesses. Among Fortune 500 companies, 91 percent have nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation and 61 percent include gender identity. Sixty-seven percent offer equivalent medical benefits between spouses and partners and 28 percent offer transgender-inclusive health care benefits, including surgical procedures. 

While the adoption of such inclusive policies has been on the rise, major corporations have also now begun to take their views on LGBT-rights out of the boardroom and into the public square. A month before the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act's federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, in March 2013, nearly 300 businesses and city governments, including major businesses such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Starbucks, Morgan Stanley, Google and cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles, filed a brief with the Supreme Court calling for DOMA be struck down as unconstitutional. The brief argued in part that DOMA hurts workplace efficiency and employee morale, and thus forces employers to participate in the injury of their own workforce morale.

[W]hile many of these businesses have expressed a desire to be on the right side of history, their decision to take action on issues of equality is just as much pragmatic.

"As they've learned, there are a lot of very practical implications for businesses when we have uneven laws. There were very material challenges they were having to reconcile with differing state and federal tax systems," Fidas says. "So while there's certainly a more social justice and equality case to be made, there were also these very real administrative costs that were going toward renovating these uneven laws and how they impact the implementation of things like domestic partner benefits." 

But perhaps the greatest example of how powerful an alliance the LGBT community has forged with corporate America came this past February when lawmakers in Arizona approved anti-LGBT legislation that would have effectively made it legal for businesses to turn away customers due to their religious beliefs.

Brewer isn't the first member of a party with deep ties to the business community to find herself siding with equality following pressure from the nation's most profitable companies. Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, has invested millions of dollars into forging GOP support for issues such as LGBT workplace protections and marriage equality. More than 120 leading U.S. employers have joined HRC's Business Coalition for Workplace Fairness supporting passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

"My interactions with business leaders have shown me that corporations want to attract the broadest pool of talent possible," says Angelo. "When there are exclusionary policies explicitly stated in state laws or constitutions, or the absence of inclusionary policies as part of company policy, they find less of a chance to attract talented workers who also happen to be LGBT."

Reflections as Gay Marriages Resume in California

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted its stay in the Proposition 8 case and gay marriages resumed in the nation's most populous state as couples turned out in droves to tie the knot.  I'm thrilled for these couples who will now be living in a state where they receive equal rights as citizens.  It's a bitter sweet feeling knowing that in Virginia it may be many years before LGBT Virginians ceasing being the new blacks under Virginia's discriminatory laws.  One thing the flood of California marriages will do is set the stage for more pressure on Virginia businesses to demand that the Virginia GOP stop pandering to spittle flecked Bible beaters as the competition for top employees becomes increasingly tilted against Virginia businesses.  In the past, big businesses have been the major players in reversing anti-gay laws - e.g., Capital One led the charge to end the ban on employer paid insurance benefits for same sex partners.  Think Progress looks at developments in California:

On Friday afternoon, the ninth circuit court lifted its stay on same-sex marriages in the state of California, acknowledging the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hollingsworth v Perry that supporters of anti-gay Proposition 8 did not have standing to appeal a lower court judge’s ruling that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The move, which came earlier than expected, allows gay and lesbian couples to begin getting married immediately.

As soon as the news came down from the ninth circuit on Friday, California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris began marrying couples — starting with Proposition 8 plaintiffs Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier.

UCLA estimates that 37,000 same-sex couples in California will get married in the next three years. 

Earlier on Friday, the Office of Personnel Management issued new guidance for “heads of executive departments and agencies” on how they should treat the gay and lesbian couples whose marriages are newly acknowledged as valid, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Both situations underscore the immediate, life-changing impact that same-sex couples are experiencing in the wake of Wednesday’s decisions.

The contrast between California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli could not be more stark: Harris supports modernity and equality while Kookinelli supports hate, ignorance and bigotry (all while likely tortured by self-loathing and secretly longing for some hot gay sex).