It may be Pride Month but that doesn't mean we've achieved full equality yet. In fact, when it comes to LGBTs and their families, the American dream needs fixing, as a newly released report amply reveals.
"A Broken Bargain" was released by the Movement Advancement Project, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Center for American Progress. The report looks at how discrimination, fewer benefits, and more taxes actually harm LGBT workers and prevent them from receiving equal treatment. Several other organizations partnered on the project, including the Service Employees International Union and Out and Equal Workplace Advocates, which is based in San Francisco.
According to the report's executive summary, the basic American economic promise provides that people who work hard and meet their responsibilities should be able to get ahead; but due to a litany of factors, that bargain is broken for LGBT workers. "Instead of having a fair chance to get ahead, LGBT workers and their families often are held back by bias, fewer workplace benefits, and higher taxes," the report notes. And while some employers have taken steps to ease the burden of unfair treatment, they can't fix the problem on their own because of unequal treatment of LGBT workers under the law.
The report also considers new trends that weren't in evidence five or even 10 years ago. One of those is that LGBT workers are raising children in significant numbers, with new analyses showing that 37 percent of LGBT adults are raising children.
Other factors have long been issues in the community, such as the fact that LGBT workers experience unemployment at an equal or higher rate than others. For transgender people, the unemployment rate is twice the rate of the population as a whole, and higher still for trans people of color.
LGBT workers face what the report's authors call the "1-2-3 punch" that hurts their families. First, couples have to be married, and workers must have a legal parent-child relationship to access most family benefits and tax relief. Of course, same-sex marriage is legal in only 12 states (some of them have yet to begin performing marriages), and most states have no mechanism for some LGBT parents to create legal ties to the children they are raising. Finally, even when LGBT workers can marry a same-sex partner, the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevents the federal government from recognizing their marriages. DOMA, of course, may not be around much longer, given the federal lawsuit currently under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court, but at the moment, it is the law.
There are two overreaching problems, the report states: job discrimination without legal protections makes it harder for LGBT workers to find and keep a job, and LGBT workers receive fewer benefits and pay more taxes, which puts them and their families at risk.
As for solutions, most must come from the federal government. The government oversees policies dealing with taxes and Social Security survivor and disability benefits, so if DOMA is struck down, there may be relief in these areas. Still, all LGBT workers, whether married or not, will benefit from protections provided by the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which has been stalled in Congress for decades. It's time that Congress take action and pass ENDA. But in the meantime, President Barack Obama should sign an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against LGBTs. A few months ago, 110 members of Congress urged the president to sign the order, according to Metro Weekly.
Finally, the federal government must provide pathways to immigration and citizenship for binational LGBT families. The Senate rejected this a few weeks ago, when an amendment was withdrawn that would have extended such protections. So in reality, even as Democratic lawmakers and the president have said they support us, policies implemented by the government continue to cause real harm to LGBT families.
We've been calling attention to these problems for many years and this report does a good job of drawing a comprehensive picture and putting our issues into context. It should be required reading by lawmakers and their aides, as well as those working in the White House. If our leaders are going to be wishing us "Happy Pride" for the rest of the month, they should at least have a thorough understanding of the systemic biases that LGBTs confront everyday, in every state.