# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It can be difficult to talk to people who have a different opinion to you about racism - particularly if you feel strongly about your beliefs.Our tip for avoiding an argument is to never call somebody a racist. If you do this, the person will become defensive and not listen to anything else you say.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The latest episode of Gay TV on the Go's LGBT politics show Critical Thinking Hosted by Waymon Hudson turns its focus to what for too long has been seen as a divide in the fight for civil rights and equality: the intersection of race and LGBT issues. Constitutional law professor Olympia Duhart, who has also written a companion piece to this one, about the critical need for alliances between minority communities, sits down to discuss how race and LGBT issues connect, how lack of visibility for LGBT people of color hurts both their rights and the movement as a whole, and how we combat cynical efforts from opponents of equality to divide minority communities in the effort to stop the march toward equal rights.

The commonalities between the struggles for equal and civil rights among all communities have come into sharp focus recently, thanks in large part to the historic speech from President Barack Obama on his second inauguration. In his speech the president not only called for equality for LGBT Americans but included a reference to the Stonewall riots, widely seen as the start of the modern LGBT rights movement, along with mentions of Seneca Falls and Selma in a list of historic civil rights moments. The inclusion of the LGBT rights struggle as part of the larger, shared American experience of fighting for civil rights among women and people of color highlighted the intersections and commonalities that many minority groups face when seeking equality under the law.

But beyond the shared historic fight, talk of racial and LGBT equality often seeks to discuss the two struggles as separate, completely ignoring the fact that LGBT people of color exist. It is that separation that can cause real harm to LGBT people of color, who are often harder hit by discrimination and more marginalized in their needs due to the combined exposure to anti-gay and/or anti-transgender policies and institutionalized racial discrimination.

For example, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program's annual report on hate violence motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity and expression showed that over 70 percent of these victims were people of color, while 44 percent of them were transgender women. Transgender people of color are also almost 2.5 times as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers.

A recent report by the Center for American Progress' FIRE Initiative also found that this combination of anti-LGBT bias and racial discrimination derails black gay and transgender Americans' financial stability, creates barriers to accessing quality health care and erodes safeguards for LGBT families. This is also true for other LGBT communities of color, like Hispanic, Native American and Asian communities.

Consequently, this combination causes LGBT people of color to face high rates of unemployment or underemployment, overall lower rates of pay, higher rates of poverty and a greater likelihood of being uninsured. The youth in these communities also experience lower educational attainment and higher rates of homelessness than their peers. Unwelcoming school climates, employment discrimination and outdated family policies -- which bar LGBT parents from having legal relationships to their children and limit their access to safety net programs, family tax credits and health insurance -- perpetuate these negative outcomes.

Professor Duhart perfectly sums up why examining these intersections of race and LGBT identities are so vital, saying, "[T]he alliances we are forming are forged in common struggles. In many cases we are fighting common oppressors. By building bridges instead of barriers, we make the march easier for all of us on this long and arduous journey."

Professor Duhart goes on to to describe why embracing these commonalities matter:

This is a lesson that members of all oppressed communities -- and anyone committed to social justice -- should remember. Racism and homophobia intersect in complex ways to affect the lives of LGBT people of color and all of us. Rather than redeploying oppressive strategies against each other, people from disenfranchised communities are finally learning to focus on commonalities. The struggle for civil rights is expansive and universal. The work to be done is exhaustive.

Until we acknowledge the interconnectivity of our communities, including the common oppressors that seek to keep minority communities less powerful by dividing them, these staggering numbers will continue to build. By having these conversations, not only will we gain allies in the fight for civil rights, but we will become allies in struggles that lift up all minority communities by expanding racial, social, gender and economic justice.

Our goal should be, quite simply, equality for all.

Make sure you catch the entire interview on Critical Thinking Hosted by Waymon Hudson on Gay TV on the Go, and join the show's discussions on Twitter with the hashtag #WaymonWrapUp, and on our Critical Thinking Facebook page.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Conversation About Intersections Of Race And LGBT Issues (VIDEO)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The latest episode of Gay TV on the Go's LGBT politics show Critical Thinking Hosted by Waymon Hudson turns its focus to what for too long has been seen as a divide in the fight for civil rights and equality: the intersection of race and LGBT issues.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The It Gets Better Project exists to uplift, empower, and connect LGBTQ+ youth around the globe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today, HRC responded to offensive comments by Sen. Rand Paul saying that LGBT people should just go back in the closet if they fear discrimination. Today, at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Paul was asked whether employees should be able to be fired for being LBGT and responded that "if you are gay, there are plenty of places that will hire you" and " the things you do in your house, if you leave them in your house, they wouldn't have to be part of the workplace. "

"Rand Paul appears to be living in a different era. People should not be required to live in the closet or hide who they are in order to be treated equally and fairly under the law," said JoDee Winterhof, HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs. "Rand Paul is going to find very little support for his views among the nine out of ten Americans who have an LGBT person in their lives. But Rand Paul's comments do beg the question of whether his fellow candidates will call him out for embracing a platform of discrimination."

Currently, 31 states across the country lack explicit, fully-inclusive non-discrimination protections for LGBT people. A poll conducted for HRC earlier this year by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner found that 63 percent of self-identified LGBT Americans have faced discrimination in their personal lives. Of those who reported experiencing discrimination, nearly half have experienced discrimination in the workplace.

When asked by HBO's John Oliver about the Equality Act this year, Rand Paul declined to support the bill. Introduced in July with a record number of original cosponsors, the Equality Act would extend existing non-discrimination protections to LGBT people.

While in the Senate, Rand Paul joined Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham in voting against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have protected LGBT people from discrimination in the workplace.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rand Paul's Solution to LGBT Discrimination: Go Back in the Closet | Human Rights Campaign

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today, HRC responded to offensive comments by Sen. Rand Paul saying that LGBT people should just go back in the closet if they fear discrimination.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject of same-sex marriage.

"If you are among the many Americans - of whatever sexual orientation - who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it."

In a second dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia mocked the soaring language of Justice Kennedy, who has become the nation's most important judicial champion of gay rights.

"The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic," Justice Scalia wrote of his colleague's work. "Of course the opinion's showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent."

As Justice Kennedy finished announcing his opinion from the bench on Friday, several lawyers seated in the bar section of the court's gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and exchanged embraces.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010, was on hand for the decision, and many of the justices' clerks took seats in the chamber, which was nearly full as the ruling was announced. The decision made same-sex marriage a reality in the 13 states that had continued to ban it.

Outside the Supreme Court, the police allowed hundreds of people waving rainbow flags and holding signs to advance onto the court plaza as those present for the decision streamed down the steps. "Love has won," the crowd chanted as courtroom witnesses threw up their arms in victory.

In remarks in the Rose Garden, President Obama welcomed the decision, saying it "affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts."

"Today," he said, "we can say, in no uncertain terms, that we have made our union a little more perfect."

Justice Kennedy was the author of all three of the Supreme Court's previous gay rights landmarks. The latest decision came exactly two years after his majority opinion in United States v. Windsor, which struck down a federal law denying benefits to married same-sex couples, and exactly 12 years after his majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws making gay sex a crime.

In all of those decisions, Justice Kennedy embraced a vision of a living Constitution, one that evolves with societal changes.

"The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times," he wrote on Friday. "The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning."

This drew a withering response from Justice Scalia, a proponent of reading the Constitution according to the original understanding of those who adopted it. His dissent was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

"They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment," Justice Scalia wrote of the majority, "a 'fundamental right' overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since."

"These justices know," Justice Scalia said, "that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry."

Justice Kennedy rooted the ruling in a fundamental right to marriage. Of special importance to couples, he said, is raising children.

"Without the recognition, stability and predictability marriage offers," he wrote, "their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion.

In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the majority opinion was "an act of will, not legal judgment."

"The court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the states and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs," he wrote. "Just who do we think we are?"

The majority and dissenting opinions took differing views about whether the decision would harm religious liberty. Justice Kennedy said the First Amendment "ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths." He said both sides should engage in "an open and searching debate."

Chief Justice Roberts responded that "people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today."

The court decided in Obergefell v. Hodges and three related cases that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Full analysis "

Sotomayor

Kagan

Ginsburg

Breyer

Kennedy

Roberts

Scalia

Alito

Thomas

* Same-sex couples can marry in three dozen states, but federal appeals courts have been divided over whether states must allow same-sex couples to marry and recognize such marriages performed elsewhere.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in his dissent, saw a broader threat from the majority opinion. "It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy," Justice Alito wrote. "In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent."

Gay rights advocates had constructed a careful litigation and public relations strategy to build momentum and bring the issue to the Supreme Court when it appeared ready to rule in their favor. As in earlier civil rights cases, the court had responded cautiously and methodically, laying judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.

It waited for scores of lower courts to strike down bans on same-sex marriages before addressing the issue, and Justice Kennedy took the unusual step of listing those decisions in an appendix to his opinion.

Chief Justice Roberts said that only 11 states and the District of Columbia had embraced the right to same-sex marriage democratically, at voting booths and in legislatures. The rest of the 37 states that allow such unions did so because of court rulings. Gay rights advocates, the chief justice wrote, would have been better off with a victory achieved through the political process, particularly "when the winds of change were freshening at their backs."

In his own dissent, Justice Scalia took a similar view, saying that the majority's assertiveness represented a "threat to American democracy."

But Justice Kennedy rejected that idea. "It is of no moment whether advocates of same-sex marriage now enjoy or lack momentum in the democratic process," he wrote. "The issue before the court here is the legal question whether the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry."

Later in the opinion, Justice Kennedy answered the question. "The Constitution," he wrote, "grants them that right."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
same-sex marriage  civil unions and domestic partnerships

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Supreme Court Ruling Makes Same-Sex Marriage a Right Nationwide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject of same-sex marriage. "If you are among the many Americans - of whatever sexual orientation - who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision," Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is marriage? Is it a sacred rite or a civil right? What role, if any, should religious institutions, traditions or beliefs have in the legal act of marriage?
Marriage in the U.S. is both an issue of religion and of civil jurisdiction. On the one hand are the religious rituals of marriage that vary from faith to faith, and on the other is the civil recognition of those unions.

Because we as a nation have chosen to give special status to individuals who are married - tax breaks, for instance - marriage is in fact a civil right, not just a religious ceremony. To deny marriage to individuals is to deny them access to governmental bonuses and services. As such, marriage should be available equally to all American citizens, just as, say, welfare benefits are.

Religions, on the other hand, do not convey the same civil benefits as governments. They give a faith-based, social approbation of marital relationships. Obviously, many of us want the sanction and approval of a church with regards to marriage. Even people who do not regularly attend church (or other house of worship) hold their wedding in one, or have it officiated by a priest (or other religious leader). Whether this is just due to traditional customs, to human needs for approval from authority figures, the significance of rites of passage to the human psyche, or some other factors, it remains a fact that marriage and religion go hand in hand in the minds of the vast majority of Americans.

Because no one is forced to follow a particular faith, or to join a particular church, we should not require churches to sanction marriages which they believe go against their beliefs. At the same time, it is important that we do have churches who will marry people who do not fit the norm for marriage, whether that is mixed-race couples, interfaith couples or gay couples. The path to that, is not through governmental regulation, but through people of like mind coming together to celebrate marriage in the way they see fit.

Sign up for our newsletter

The latest on your timeline

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marriage: Both Civil and Religious - OnFaith

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is marriage? Is it a sacred rite or a civil right? What role, if any, should religious institutions, traditions or beliefs have in the legal act of marriage? Marriage in the U.S. is both an issue of religion and of civil jurisdiction.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Same-sex marriage has made it easier to discriminate against gay people in the U.S. In 2016, legislatures will take on this issue, but the fights may get nasty.

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

Twenty-eight. That's the number of states where it's not against the law to discriminate against a gay person who's looking for an apartment, applying for a job, or buying something from a store. Five more states have protections, but with exceptions: New York, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin don't forbid discrimination against transgender people, for example, and Massachusetts and Utah don't protect all LGBT people in all situations in which discrimination might arise. The federal government does not protect against this kind of discrimination, either, except in limited cases. Although Democrats have proposed legislation that would change that, the chances of it successfully sliding through a Republican Congress in an election year seem slim.

The irony of gay marriage becoming legal in the United States is that it has made discrimination against LBGT people easier. For example: Many newlywed couples may be asking their employers for spousal benefits for the first time. Depending on where they live, it may or may not be illegal for that employer to respond by firing them-something that happened in a number of states in 2015. Some state legislatures have tentatively taken on this issue; Pennsylvania and Idaho, for example, both saw bills introduced in 2015. But in many places, these efforts are complicated by a tangled political question: Should these laws make exceptions for religious individuals and organizations that object to employing and providing services to gay people?

This question could produce some of the biggest political fights of 2016. Gay-rights advocates are planning to push hard for discrimination protections, while religious-liberty groups continue to raise concerns about protecting people's freedom of conscience. Meanwhile, state-level legislators are caught in the middle, no longer able to avoid a contentious set of issues many would rather have ignored.

Related Story

Gay Rights May Come at the Cost of Religious Freedom
In Indiana, a draft bill outlawing discrimination, which also offers exemptions for some religious objections, is scheduled for a first reading this week in the Senate. After the state took a political beating last spring for a wide-ranging religious-freedom-protection proposal, many businesses threatened to boycott the state. LGBT organizations are preparing to invest money and advocacy resources there. A renewed political fight was coming to the state, even without the Republican proposal. "It's smart for them to initiate the discussion," said Doug NeJaime, a law professor at UCLA. "They're going to put out the first model."

Battles are also looming in other states. Matt McTighe, the executive director of the LGBT-rights organization Freedom for All Americans, said his group will be putting between $3 and $6 million toward anti-LGBT-discrimination campaigns in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania next year, as well as an effort to make LGBT protections more comprehensive in Massachusetts. (His group is modeled after Freedom to Marry, one of the organizations that successfully pushed for gay-marriage legalization in the years leading up to Obergefell.) Another LGBT-rights organization, the Gill Foundation, is specifically pushing for legislative change in Florida. Jennifer Pizer, a senior counselor at Lambda Legal, said her organization will also be investing money in similar campaigns.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gay Rights vs. Religious Freedom: The States Where Fights Will Be Fiercest in 2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Same-sex marriage has made it easier to discriminate against gay people in the U.S. In 2016, legislatures will take on this issue, but the fights may get nasty. Twenty-eight. That's the number of states where it's not against the law to discriminate against a gay person who's looking for an apartment, applying for a job, or buying something from a store.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
LZ Granderson: The myth of the gay agenda

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a humorous talk with an urgent message, LZ Granderson points out the absurdity in the idea that there's a "gay lifestyle," much less a "gay agenda." (Filmed at TEDxGrandRapids.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last week, The Huffington Post reported on a new guide issued by Third Way, an "influential centrist Democratic group," for the purpose of helping lawmakers previously opposed to marriage equality take a public stance in support of the cause without earning the dreaded "flip-flopper" moniker. (Not a bad idea, right?) The document advises these new equality supporters to share their personal stories and those of family members and friends, emphasize that marriage is about love and commitment rather than engaging in a sterile discussion about rights, and meet people -- even those who currently oppose marriage equality -- where they are, knowing that they, too, have the potential to "evolve" on the issue. So far, so good.

But the folks at Third Way lost me when I read what came next:

Lawmakers should also "exercise caution" in comparing the push for same-sex marriage to the civil rights movement and the fight for interracial marriage, the memo says. "This direct comparison can hurt more than it helps, by causing people to think about the differences between the experiences of African Americans and LGBT people, not the similarities."

Now don't get me wrong, if there's one thing I despise most about our current national discourse, it's the ridiculous abuse and ubiquitous misuse of the false equivalency meme. Both sides always share equal blame, we're told. It isn't polite to single out one person or party over another. Simple acknowledgement of a current political reality (for example, that American politics is being jolted ever further to the right by an increasingly deranged Republican Party) means the observer is biased or partisan (two terms with almost as much baggage as "flip-flopper"). The idea that it's inappropriate for media outlets to consult anti-gay hate groups about LGBT rights issues in an effort to "hear from both sides" is not a matter of common sense, it's some kind of agenda.

However, where LGBT issues and racial issues intersect, I must emphatically draw an equivalency in order to make a point that I'm particularly passionate about: people on both sides -- liberal and conservative, pro-LGBT and anti-LGBT -- actively avoid equating gay rights with civil rights. Some even go so far as to condemn those who make any association between the two. This avoidance is dishonest, insulting, and demeaning to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural identities. It must stop immediately; there are no three ways about it.

Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that race, sexual orientation, and gender identity/expression are in any way the same. I am also not attempting to equate the collective histories of racial and sexual minority groups or the personal experiences of any members of these groups. To do so would be foolish. What I am saying -- no, declaring -- is that the struggle for African-American rights and the struggle for LGBT rights are two fronts in the same battle. Both involve a minority group singled out by the majority for discrimination, unequal treatment, and persecution on the basis of an intrinsic and immutable characteristic. Both movements arose when a critical mass of courageous people decisively pushed back against bigotry and institutionalized oppression for the first time. And in both cases, the work of achieving legislative, judicial, and cultural equality is ongoing. So while the details may be different, at a fundamental level, the fight for African-American civil rights and LGBT civil rights are both part of the same civil rights movement.

I can hear the naysayers now. One might say, "How dare you? We've been taken to America against our will, enslaved, whipped, raped, attacked with fire hoses, batons, and dogs, subjected to 'separate but equal' Jim Crow laws and medical experimentation, jailed, and lynched." Another could retort, "Excuse me? We have been persecuted by religions and governments for centuries, imprisoned, castrated, lobotomized, queer-bashed, 'correctively' raped and subjected to other 'separate but equal' laws, forced into damaging 'pray away the gay' therapy, interred in concentration camps, stoned, and hanged." But playing the my-group-has-suffered-more-than-your-group game, what prominent African-American lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding aptly terms the Oppression Olympics, is both futile and tiresome. No single group has earned the exclusive right to use civil rights language. Nobody is well-served when we construct hierarchies of oppression. After all, at the end of the day, you're equally unemployed whether you're fired for being trans or for being an African American. Hate crimes are just as evil whether they're driven by the victim's gender expression or their skin color. (The bruises hurt just as much, too.) And James Byrd, Jr., murdered because he was black, is every bit as dead as Matthew Shepard, who was killed because he was gay.

I can't even begin to tell you the verbal and logistical contortions I've heard many of my liberal, progressive, pro-LGBT friends put themselves through in order to avoid the mere appearance of an acknowledgement that the civil rights battles of sexual and racial minority groups are part of the same struggle. According to Spaulding, "any challenge to [the enforced separation of the two movements] amounts to stepping on the third rail," and most people would rather spare themselves the shock, thank you very much.

In terms of the resistance to the "LGBT rights are civil rights" concept in the African-American community, I believe much of that can be attributed to the fact that homophobia remains embedded in large swaths of black culture. Last year, for example, Truth Wins Out broke the story of a violently anti-gay rant by comedian Tracy Morgan, who claimed during a stand-up routine that he'd stab his son to death if he ever came out as gay. Alveda King, a niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., compared marriage equality to genocide in 2010. And while some LGBT activists reeling from the 2008 passage of California's Proposition 8 wrongly blamed African Americans, a January 2012 poll revealed a 30-point gap in support of marriage equality between white and black voters in Maryland, illustrating the continued existence of a major racial divide on LGBT issues from coast to coast. (I also often wonder if this divide might provide at least a partial explanation for President Obama's apparent reluctance to "evolve" on marriage equality before the 2012 election, lest it cost him any support among a critically important constituent group.)

Thankfully this divide, along with the very idea that LGBT rights are unworthy of the term "civil rights," is being increasingly challenged. Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald pointed out as early as 2004 that "this stinginess about the [civil rights] movement only arises when gays seek to embrace it." The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart has written and spoken extensively on LGBT rights as civil rights, recently tangling with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the issue. Leaders like Pam Spaulding, Melissa Harris-Perry, Rev. Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Abp. Desmond Tutu, Dr. Sylvia Rhue, Ben Jealous, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, and Rev. Irene Monroe constantly challenge homophobia wherever they encounter it, including within African-American culture. Many of them also make consistent use of civil rights language when speaking about LGBT equality. But perhaps it was the late Coretta Scott King, who devoted her life to the same civil rights causes for which her husband gave his life, who said it best when she famously remarked in 2003:

I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people ... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

So I respectfully but emphatically dissent with the well-meaning people at Third Way. We not only should compare the movement for African-American civil rights with the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights, but we must do so, because at the root, they are the same movement. Refusing to acknowledge this reality only serves to unjustly accommodate homophobic bigotry, reinforce artificially constructed hierarchies of oppression, and distract us from our fundamental obligation to defend the rights of all our fellow human beings. Rather than dividing ourselves along lines of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity, we must stand up for one another, whether gay, straight, black, or white. After all, as my parents have reminded me since the days when I was small, "Who will speak if we don't?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last week, The Huffington Post reported on a new guide issued by Third Way, an "influential centrist Democratic group," for the purpose of helping lawmakers previously opposed to marriage equality take a public stance in support of the cause without earning the dreaded "flip-flopper" moniker. (Not a bad idea, right?)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Being Gay in High School Today - Metro Parent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gay teens are one of the most targeted groups for bullying, with suicide rates higher than any other youth group. But local students hope it can get better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Visage/Stockbyte/Getty Images

A safe work and learning environment is critical to building strong self-esteem and encouraging productivity for LGBT people. In 2015, the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey revealed that 34 percent of LGBT students were bullied on school property. Similarly, Out & Equal reports that one in four LGBT employees face discriminatory treatment in the workplace. There isn't one magic remedy to LGBT discrimination, but specific initiatives can make a difference. Providing education, reviewing policies and intentionally creating a positive working and learning environment are essential to the inclusion of all.

Training

Often, discrimination occurs unintentionally. A derogatory comment may not be meant to intimidate an LGBT person or make them feel marginalized. Training is key to helping employees and students gain understanding and empathy. For example, an activity that examines common stereotypes provides an awareness of misconceptions about the LGBT community and how misguided remarks can poison a working and learning environment. On a larger scale, instituting a Safe Zone training that teaches students and employees about hurtful language, how to intervene, when discrimination occurs and how to provide intentional support to LGBT community members signals expectations in an environment that is free of hate speech and disrespectful behavior.

Protective Policies

In 28 states, employment can be terminated if you publicly identify as LGBT. Developing organizational policies that ban this type of discrimination deters negative behavior and encourages an open and inclusive workplace climate. On February 26, 2018, the Manassas Park City School Board added LGBT to their general discrimination policy. Protective policies in schools allow students and staff to feel comfortable expressing their individual identity and provide assurance that they'll have a safe learning environment. Moreover, involving the organization in the process of developing anti-discrimination policies create deeper understanding and ownership.

Support Organizations

Encouraging the development of LGBT support groups sends a clear message that the organization is supportive of everyone and that LGBT discrimination won't be tolerated. In some cases, youth has experienced resistance from school administration to the establishment of gay-straight alliances (GSAs). GSAs give LGBT students the opportunity to have a dialogue about bullying and find support from one another. Similarly, corporations that support LGBT employee resource groups communicate that diversity is a priority and discrimination isn't an organizational value. Employees find community, support and reassurance from affinity groups that focus on LGBT issues.

Inclusive Messaging

Supporting anti-discrimination for LGBT people is predicated upon messaging that is woven into the fabric of the organization. For schools, this can be an uphill battle. LGBT students are looking for relevant resources in libraries, curriculum that addresses LGBT history and teachers that add LGBT issues to their content. Combatting LGBT discrimination in schools includes more than just a peripheral approach, but going deeper may mean facing opposition. School boards, curriculum committees and administration must provide support to make transformative change.

About the Author

Dr. Kelly S. Meier is a professor and college administrator for a large public institution in Minnesota. She received her undergraduate degree from Western Illinois University and her master's degree and doctorate from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has published more than 15 books on education, group development and diversity.

Photo Credits

Visage/Stockbyte/Getty Images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solutions for LGBT Discrimination in the Workplace and in School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A safe work and learning environment is critical to building strong self-esteem and encouraging productivity for LGBT people. In 2015, the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey revealed that 34 percent of LGBT students were bullied on school property. Similarly, Out & Equal reports that one in four LGBT employees face discriminatory treatment in the workplace.