People are very ignorant about GLBT rights,

[La Lioness Priyanka]

this is partly why i think we don't have enough straight support of ENDA etc

i am in a Master program for Industrial Organizational Psychology, in almost all my classes we discuss legal rights/limits etc of employment laws. I cannot tell you how often i have to correct people when they think that Sexual Orientation is already covered by federal law.

I did a paper when i was an undergraduate at NYU, and most people who worked in firms where Sexual Orientation was part of their non discriminatory policy, felt that gay people didn't need additional protection since companies already provided for it.

i think part of the apathy is that liberals especially those in liberal state w. gay rights protection, don't realize that its not a federal protection and plenty of states don't have it.

just my two cents this morning

:hi:

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Worse are the people who DO know about GLBT rights, and just don't care

The Democratic candidates for President, by way of example.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. well yeah there is that too but i was talking more about employment laws

and not marriage laws.

i thnk its safe to say everyone knows we cannot get married

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. I don't hear the candidates supporting equal employment, equal housing, etc

They know our issues, because goodness knows we have told them, repeatedly and often. The only response we ever get is a small, polite smile and the question, "Who else are you going to vote for?"

But to redirect my own highjacking of your post back to your point: What ENDA or ENDA-like bills have made it to a vote on the Senate floor? I would be very interested in seeing how the various Senators have voted on such matters.

[leftofcool]

3. Absolutely!

[terrya]

11. You see a lot of that in GDP.

It truly is sad to see.

[TechBear_Seattle]

15. I am willing to make allowances for ordinary people

Frontrunners for national office have aboslutely no excuse.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. politicians will only do what a populace wants. if we dont work on curing the apathy

we wont get our rights for another 20 years or so

thats my feeling

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. Truman desegregated the military in 1948, when most of America wanted segregation

The United States Supreme Court ruled against segregation in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, when most Americans saw no problem with "separate but equal." The Court struck down antimiscegenation laws in the 1967 ruling of Loving v. Virginia, even though most of America still had a problem with interracial marriage.

We do not have to "cure" the apathy and ignorance of the populace. We only need to elect men and women to office who have already been cured.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

19. what do you think has changed in the politiciuans of today?

serious question. not snark

[Tyler Durden]

22. Cowardice, or craven lust for power.

There are some who claim that they are just trying to stay in office because that the only way they can be effective is in increments from the inside.

Poppycock.

The way to change things is to RAISE HELL.

"L'audace! L'audace! toujours L'audace!" -Frederick the Great

[jberryhill]

27. "Most of America"?

By the time of _Loving_, there were only 16 states with anti-miscegenation laws. In "most of America" such laws had either been repealed or never enacted.

The first court to overturn an anti-miscegenation law was the California Supreme Court in 1948.

So it was almost 20 years between the first state supreme court to overturn one, and the US Supreme Court.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. thats somewhat what i feel, without enough support from populace our politicians

dont do anything brave

[jberryhill]

32. In general, that' s what they are supposed to do

I'm sure that with his 19% popular support, Bush thinks he's being real "brave".

Yes, some unpopular actions are brave, because they are right. A lot of unpopular actions, this administration being a case in point, are unpopular because they are wrong.

As pointed out downthread, a lot of people assume that sexual orientation already is a protected category in the area of employment law. What those people are apparently not seeing is evidence of actual employment discrimination that would demonstrate otherwise.

The "sympathy factor" is a tough sell to some extent because same-sex households make nearly twice as much as national average, and there is lower overall unemployment among gays than average (www.gaydemographics.org). So the problem is that people who make less and are less likely to be employed may not get excited by the position of a group which, as a group, makes more money and is more likely to have a job.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

34. thats same sex household income thing is a big lie. they polled only people

who subscribed to some gay rights magazines like the advocate. basically polled rich men and said it was the demographics for all gay people. big lie. most gay people i know are poor,

women lead household are always much poorer and are disproportionately below the poverty line.

you kind of prove my point that people are very ignorant about the real plight of gay people.

[jberryhill]

35. That's an anti-gay site?

The reference cited is a Public Use Microdata sample of US Census data.

Your "most gay people i know are poor", and my "most gay people i know are not poor" (including those in my family) don't paint an accurate picture of anything either way. Most people are ignorant of your personal experience, as they are of anyone else's personal experience. Are they poor because they were fired for being gay?

Can you post a link to a set of statistics that I should be looking at, and which are not a "big lie"? I had genuinely believe that gaydemographics.org was not an anti-gay site.


women lead household are always much poorer and are disproportionately below the poverty line.


As is true of every defined class under employment discrimination laws. If your point is that people are unaware of the economic disparity resulting from anti-gay discrimination, then I would like to see the supporting statistics.

Absolutely, knowing the experiences of my own family members does not blind me to attitudes and discrimination against others, but I would be sincerely interested in a set of economic statistics demonstrating a cumulative disadvantage.

One obvious flaw in the stats at gaydemographics is that in order to do a more accurate comparison of, say, median income of gays as a group, then one first has to correct for geographic distribution of same-sex households as shown in the census data shown prior to the PUMS analysis.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

36. i didnt say it was an antigay site. i said the information was incorrect because of they way

people are polled.

some of the criticism of the polling works can be found in Amy Gluckman, Betsy Reed, and the contributors to their anthology, Homoeconomics: Capitalism, Community and Lesbian and Gay Life (New York: Routledge, 1997)

out gay household for instance are different from not out household. if you are rich lawyer in nyc, you identify as gay on the census. if you are a poor person in alabama, and could risk your job if they find out you are gay, you dont put that information anywhere. not even on census forms.

[jberryhill]

41. I meant "anti-gay" in the sense that it is perpetuating a harmful lie

But you seem to believe the PUMS data is based on polling. It is based on census data of unmarried same-sex households. There is no sexual orientation census data.

http://paa2006.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=61196

"The Impact of Sexual Orientation Anti-discrimination Policies on the Wages of
Lesbians and Gay Men"


For these analyses, we use the 1990 and 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Samples
(PUMS). The 1990 sample was derived from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series
(IPUMS) data (Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch,
Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander. Integrated Public
Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0 . Minneapolis, MN:
Minnesota Population Center , 2004, www.ipums.org). For
the 2000 sample of same-sex couples, observations from the 5% and 1% PUMS are
combined. A 1-in-2 sample of non-coupled and different-sex coupled individuals was
drawn from the 1% PUMS. We restrict the analyses to full-time workers age 18-69.
The 1990 sample includes 12,653 individuals from same-sex couples and 1,008,082 men
and women who are either not coupled or part of a different-sex couple. The 2000
sample includes 52,580 individuals from same-sex couples and a random sample of
654,589 men and women who are either not coupled or part of a different-sex couple.


But if one has to buy an eleven year old book to get at relevant data, I can certainly understand ignorance of it. However, M.V. Lee Badgett, who is a chapter contributor to Homoeconomics (and associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies) has consistently reported no statistically significant wage difference between straight and lesbian women - both of which earn less than gay or straight men.

[Dhalgren]

5. K&R!

One aspect of the marriage issue is that a lot of people seem to think that "civil union" is equal to "marriage" legally - it is not. That is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party is really disappointing me - at some point we have to stand up for what is right and fair and drop this irksome equivocation...

Employment is a huge area in this country where LGBT equal rights is sorely lacking. It may be great in some more progressive states and municipalities (as you said) but it is horrid in most others.

:thumbsup:

[Benhurst]

6. What would you expect from a people who have stood by as the

Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been shredded by the Bush Crime Family and a complicit Congress?

[readmoreoften]

43. Excellent point.

There was been no movement against the BFEE but The Great Uprising of the American Eyebrow.

[xchrom]

7. right wing propaganda have made people fearful of federal legislation.

i.e. christian conservatives blast things like enda or hate crimes -- because and rightfully so -- they'd have to watch what they say from where? -- the pulpit.

while yes -- it's discrimination or violence that can wind your ass up in jail.

if some one spouts off enogh hate from the pulpit{dobson, phelps anyone?} -- you may in some fashion be held accountable.

but i have to say here -- that we should NEVER have given up the fight for the ERA -- it's partly the fault of liberals, progressives, women, etc -- when we gave up on adding that to the constitution.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

8. i agree.

:loveya:

[sepulveda]

9. i 100% support

gay marriage, equal gay rights, etc.

but i do not support the concept of hate crimes.

so, just for the record, it's not just conservatives that do not support hate crimes.

[xchrom]

10. we're aware of the division. nt

[Tyler Durden]

12. If there were 100% Equal Protection Under The Law, you wouldn't need it.

If we are all given total, 100% Equal Protection Under The Law AND public school education that teaches it, then hate crimes bills are irrelevant.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. i wonder if it will happen in my lifetime. i will be 30 this year

[Tyler Durden]

14. I'm 55. I've been waiting my whole life too, Pri.

Think of how depressed I get thinking about it.

[Creideiki]

18. Jocularly speaking

It's fairly easy to equate hate crimes (against any group) with terrorists that are looking to scare people into doing what they want, whether it's behave a specific way or move out of threatened areas. So why do you support the terrorists? ;)

Less jocularly speaking, the common argument I'm given is that we should prosecute the act not the motive, but we already separate act and motive--assault and aggravated assault, manslaughter and murder. So why would one more grade in our determination of motive really bother people?

[qb]

20. Friends of mine moved to Minnesota from Louisiana

because they could get fired there for being gay. Great post - K&R

[La Lioness Priyanka]

21. thanks. i think we need to do more campaigning letting peopel in blue states

know that there are gays in red states. they have no employment protection.

[Deep13]

23. Yup, I knew that.

:(

[FloridaJudy]

24. GLBT rights are human rights.

Period.

It's amazing to me the number of people who don't get this. Just last night an otherwise sane lady somehow got the notion that the reason a (heterosexual!) couple was indulging in an over-the-top display of public affection was because our local city counsel had voted to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. She also seemed to believe it would lead to forcing women and men to share the same restroom. After going WTF?, I gently pointed out that her logic was bat-shit crazy. Fortunately she backed down, or else I would have had to walk out on a delicious dinner. I do believe she took me for a lesbian, and at least had the class not to insult me to my face. And I had the class not to correct her impression. If other people judge me based their perceptions of my sexual orientation, then I'm not interested in cultivating their approval.

Now, if she'd mistaken me for a Republican, I really would have been pissed.

[GeorgeGist]

25. SOME people ...

aren't as ignorant as you think we are.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

29. i know that, i meant that even well meaning people, and people who arent bigots are often unaware

[NMMNG]

26. They are often completely ignorant

And rudely dismissive of us when we demand our rights/lament the fact that we don't have them.

Look at what I discovered the other day while doing some research. This is the sort of ignorance we're up against. People who think we have full employment protection--so WTF are we bitching about? Then there are those who assume we have hate-crimes protection as well. The ignorance is astounding.

I want to tell these "stop whining" people stop withholding our f*cking rights and we will !.

[DarkTirade]

31. That's funny, I seem to recall looking at the anti-discrimination laws in FL

when I lived there and not once did they mention sexual orientation.

:banghead:

[NMMNG]

37. Florida is one of the worst

They're doing everything in the book to outlaw being gay. :-(

[DarkTirade]

38. Yeah, I'm SO glad I'm out of there.

[NMMNG]

40. You couldn't pay me to go there

It's one of the states I wouldn't go near, thanks to their virulently homophobic nonsense.

[DarkTirade]

42. The whole state is just not a good place to be in general, IMO.

Or at least the parts of it I've been to.

[bliss_eternal]

33. It certainly doesn't help that people watch Fox news....

...and consider them an actual source for unbiased information.

Yeah, as if. :eyes:

Limbaugh, O' Reilly and Coulter regularly spread lies about gblt's trying to scam the hetero system. It's difficult to tell people the truth after they've heard it on what they consider a reliable news outlet (i.e. radio, tv). There's still a great many out there that think if it's on the air, it's got to be the truth. They lack the ability to think critically, or to diffuse the message for the true intent. In the case of Fox, their intent is based in hatred, fear and hypocrisy.

[NMMNG]

39. Yep

Any time we attempt to ask for the same thing everybody else has we're "advancing the gay agenda" or "cramming our sexuality down peoples' throats". Thank you MSM. :banghead:

[bliss_eternal]

44. When will we hear about....

...the advancement of the bigotry agenda? The Uber Christian, right wing zealot hatred agenda?

It saddens me that more don't see all of this for what it is, and continue to perpetuate blame and shame on the glbt community.

[NMMNG]

45. That's just "fighting for Truth",

"reclaiming Amurka for Jesus", or some other such nonsense. :eyes:

Have you ever noticed that only their "enemies" have an "agenda"? They never do.

[xchrom]

30. saturday kick