Wake up, folks. It’s 2019 and LGBTQ rights are (still) at risk.
Gay Rights
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments from a man in New York and another man in Georgia who were each fired from their jobs after coming out as gay. The high court also heard the case of a transgender woman (who had been living life as a man) in Michigan who was fired after she informed her employer that she intended to live and work as a woman.
Gerald Lynn Bostock, who had worked with an at-risk children’s advocacy program in Georgia for more than 10 years was fired from his job after joining a gay softball league.
In New York, Donald Zarda was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor after he told a female client that he was gay so that she would feel at ease being tightly strapped to him during a jump.
Aimee Stephens worked for 6 years as a funeral director for the Harris Funeral Home in Livonia, Michigan. Originally presented as a man, Stephens contemplated suicide due to despondency over her gender identity. Then, in 2012 and at the age of 51, Stephens decided to come out at work as a transgender woman.
For 8 months, she worked on a letter to her boss and co-workers telling them of her gender identity. However, 2 weeks after giving the letter to her boss, Stephens was fired.
In each case, plaintiffs argued that they had been discriminated against on the basis of sex, which is banned by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, the employers argued that sexual orientation and preference are not protected under existing civil rights laws.
So, who’s right?
Interestingly, despite advances favoring gay marriage and other LGBTQ rights, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not illegal. Legislation banning LGBTQ discrimination exists in only 21 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. However, in the 29 remaining states, a gay couple could get married on Sunday then be fired from their job and kicked out of their apartment on Monday solely because of their sexuality or gender identity.
Although LGBTQ rights in America have come a long way, they still have a long way to go.
DJ, as a Gay, Black, female (GBF), I appreciate you covering LGBTQ-related stories, especially as they relate to discrimination and ‘Equal Rights.’ The challenge for me is always this -my awareness of just how tricky most LGBT-related discussions are for me because I have such mixed feelings about all of it. Regular readers may recall in the past I’ve shared a bit about how I had struggled with accepting my sexual orientation, throughout my teen and early adult years (most of my 20s). My mother was a deeply religious woman. Homosexuality was never something she understood. But she loved her child with all of her heart. And like any loving mother (or father) she could not take seeing her child suffer any longer. It was her loving words, one sunny afternoon, that finally set me on a path to finding that inner Peace within. She left this world much too… Read more »