Polls Show Huge Public Support for Gay and Transgender Workplace Protections

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/06/protection_poll.html

A new poll from the Center for American Progress shows that the American public strongly supports workplace nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender people.* This support comes at a time when new research shows just how much dis- crimination and harassment this population faces on the job.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research fielded the poll of likely 2012 voters in the first and second weeks of April 2011. Nearly three-fourths of voters (73 percent) support protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. This support cuts across political party affiliation, with 81 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of independents, and 66 percent of Republicans supporting workplace nondiscrimination laws for gay and transgender people.

Catholic (74 percent support) and senior citizen (61 percent support) voters are also clearly in favor of employment protections for gay and transgender people. Even among voters who identify themselves as feeling generally unfavorable toward gay people, a full 50 percent support workplace nondiscrimination protections for the gay and transgender population.

Since at least the early 1980s, a majority of Americans have supported equal rights and opportunities for gay people in the workplace. Polling questions about transgender workers have only been asked recently. But the CAP poll shows that voters support transgender protections at almost the same rate they support gay protections. Seventy- five percent of likely voters say they favor “protecting gay and lesbian people from dis- crimination in employment,” while 73 percent say they favor these protections for “gay, lesbian, and transgender people.” The responses are essentially identical.

The survey also found that 9 of out 10 voters erroneously think that a federal law is already in place protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. A similar number of voters also did not know whether their state had a gay and transgender workplace discrimination law. These numbers show the huge disconnect between voter perceptions about workplace protections and the realities that gay and transgender people face on the job.