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The Work Is Never Done

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Equality Virginia’s Vee Lamneck talks to GayRVA about Title VII, The Virginia Values Act, and the connections between LGBTQ and BLM.

On June 15th, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed three historic cases and came to one monumental decision: that Title VII of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Prior to the Title VII decision, it was completely lawful in quite a few states of the union for an employee of a private corporation to be fired or passed up for employment for being LGBTQ.

The Supreme Court made a statement about one of the cases, saying, “Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” – Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, June 15, 2020.

In many ways, this case was a matter of analyzing the Civil Rights Act through a modern lens and recontextualizing the age-old issue of sex discrimination to address the issues of LGBTQ people. When The Civil Rights Act was originally passed, the legislators responsible for its proposal and approval were almost certainly thinking of women, and not of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people. However, when Title VII was reviewed in today’s context, the justices found that the same laws that protected women from discrimination in ‘60’s should also protect LGBTQ people today.

One of the foremost advocacy groups for LGBTQ rights in Virginia is Equality Virginia, an organization that is dedicated to creating a truly inclusive commonwealth for all Virginians, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Equality Virginia Executive Director Vee Lamneck, who uses they/them pronouns, spoke to us about what this landmark Supreme Court decision means for LGBTQ Richmonders, Virginians, and Americans.

“LGBTQ people have been advocating for their rights for decades,” Lamneck said. “There are many states in the country that have non-discrimination protections in place at the state level, and I am very proud that Virginia is soon to be one of them.”

Lamneck is referring to The Virginia Values Act, which was passed by the General Assembly this spring and takes effect on July 1st. This bill will protect LGBTQ Virginians from discrimination in all public spaces and places of business, not just as employees but as customers and citizens as well.

“This means that LGBTQ people will be able to go about their daily lives without fear of discrimination in housing, in public spaces like restaurants and hotels, and also in employment,” Lamneck continued.

Image via Equality Virginia/Facebook

Lamneck explained that the Virginia Values Act goes farther than the recent Supreme Court decision, protecting LGBTQ people beyond the workplace. “The Virginia Values Act speaks to public accommodations protections, so that you cannot be discriminated against or denied service when you walk into a restaurant or shop or hotel on the basis of your orientation or identity,” they said. “Title VII does not speak to that, which is why there’s a lot more work to do on the federal level.”

While Lamneck is very pleased about the protections Virginians are ensured within the Commonwealth, they still consider it very important to focus on federal protections. “Once Virginians leave the Commonwealth and go to other states, depending on which state you’re in, those protections may not be in place,” they said.

The recent Supreme Court decision is important to ensure that LGBTQ people are protected against discrimination throughout the country, but it’s not the only action taking place at the federal level where LGBTQ rights are concerned. Lamneck pointed out that the Equality Act, a bill that would amend the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes throughout, passed the US House Of Representatives in 2019, and is currently under consideration by the US Senate.

“The passage of the Equality Act will ensure comprehensive protections for LGBTQ Americans,” Lamneck explained. And while there’s still hope within the LGBTQ community that it will be passed at some point, the recent Supreme Court decision does offer some much-needed relief. “This decision is so important,” they said, “especially for those individuals and their families living in states without these protections.”

Aurora Higgs, a 29 year old black transgender woman who is an LGBTQ scholar, activist, and public speaker, has worked with Lamneck and Equality Virginia on campaigns for LGBTQ equality in Virginia. Higgs is very happy to see the Virginia Values Act go into effect later this week, mentioning that previous laws intended to provide protections for LGBTQ Virginians, none of which passed, had all included disappointing limitations. “This law is so much more comprehensive and covers all of the people in the rural areas that are always going to be the most at risk,” Higgs said.

Despite living in a state that now has protections for LGBTQ people against employment discrimination, Higgs was still glad to hear about the Title VII Supreme Court decision. “It will ensure that the same protections that I enjoy in a state that already has those laws in place can be experienced anywhere in this country,” Higgs said. “Traveling for queer and trans people is incredibly daunting, because you never know what the climate of a community is until you’re in it.”

Higgs shared how she in particular has faced real concerns about discrimination in employment over the course of her life — concerns that she hopes will be diminished by the passage of the Virginia Values Act and the recent Supreme Court decision. “It’s really difficult to enforce discrimination policies in a job interview when there are so many factors that they could use as pretext to not hire you,” she said. “I worry about showing up for job interviews and being seen as a professional when I’m trans and black.”

Under the Supreme Court’s new Title VII decision, Higgs said, working conditions will improve for LGBTQ Americans in a variety of ways. “Employers will have to have a fire lit under them to ensure that insurance policies are adequate for trans people and that the workplace culture is adequate,” Higgs said. “As happy as I am I see it, [it’s] not so much a victory as getting one more hurdle out of the way to liberation, which is the final goal.”

Both Higgs and Lamneck drew parallels between LGBTQ rights and the Black Lives Matter movement that has recently swept across the nation. Lamneck explained how the human rights effort of the BLM Movement and the nationwide protests have affected the work of Equality Virginia, and how the fight for LGBTQ rights and Racial Equality are connected. They also illuminated how the discrimination and inequality that LGBTQ people are subjected to is compounded by their race. Race is the hidden, implied context of every conversation, every law and every decision. A black LGBTQ person’s struggle for equality is compounded by their blackness — which makes things harder still. “Even with the Title VII decision, black LGBTQ people are still experiencing disproportionate discrimination in their lives.” Lamneck said. “Our laws need to address systemic racism and inequality.”

Aurora Higgs. Photo via Facebook

To Higgs, it’s clear that the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ rights movement are fundamentally aligned. “The BLM movement seeks to disrupt not just racism but white supremacy,” Higgs said. “White supremacy has historically been misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic. All of those thing are still present to this day, and they compound one another.”

However, both Higgs and Lamneck agree that the effects of discrimination are magnified by those who exist within multiple marginalized groups. “My experience as a white queer person and the discrimination that I may experience is going to look different than the discrimination of the black trans person next to me because she is experiencing racism, homophobia, and sexism all at the same time,” Lamneck explained.

“There is so much joy and hardship that comes with being black and trans and queer,” said Higgs. “But when you have different dimensions of diversity and marginalization, they compound on one another.”

Higgs believes that the LGBTQ civil rights movement working alongside the Black Lives Matter movement is an ideal way to enable both groups to better understand and support one another. “Although the [Black Lives Matter] movement highlights black lives, it’s really shedding a light on oppression, and I think we all relate to oppression,” she said. “The fastest way to empathy is shared experience.”

While Lamneck is feeling positive about the recent progress in LGBTQ civil rights, they recognize that there’s still a lot more to be done. “This moment reminds us that, yes, this is a victory for the LGBT movement, but also that the work is not done”, Lamneck said. “We need to work to address systemic racism, homophobia, and transphobia. The work for LGBTQ equality must be interwoven with the work to dismantle systemic racism.”

In the future, Lamneck hopes to not only carry on with Equality Virginia’s current mission of fighting for LGBTQ civil rights in the Commonwealth, but to expand that work to encompass other marginalized groups. “I think our work here as an organization needs to continue to restructure as an anti-racist organization,” they said.

For Higgs, the main focus of civil rights activism in the coming years needs to be to increase political representation by and for marginalized groups. “We don’t have hardly any representation in the federal government,” she said. “The most sustainable solution I can think of is having more queer and trans people of color in both appointments at the state level and as elected officials nationwide. I don’t think we can really hope for anything until we have representation in politics.”

For now, though, LGBTQ people in Virginia can breathe slightly easier, knowing that the Virginia Values Act and the recent Supreme Court decision give them more protections against discrimination than they’ve ever had before.

Top Photo via Equality Virginia/Facebook

Head of Right Wing Group That Spent Millions on Gorsuch Mocked for Fury Over LGBTQ Rights Opinion

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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace, and the head of a right-wing group that fought to have him appointed is very very angry.

The head of a far right wing activist group is furious conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote Monday’s majority Supreme Court opinion that finds discriminating against LGBTQ workers is illegal.

Judicial Crisis Network, a “powerful dark money group pushing [the] court to right,” ran a $10 million campaign in 2017 to force Gorsuch onto the bench. He is President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee. The group also spent $1 million to block President Barack Obama from putting Merrick Garland on the bench.

In a series of tweets, Carrie Severino blasted Justice Gorsuch and the five others who sided with his opinion. She even claims they are merely trying to appeal to college students by finding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination.

Gorsuch, a textualist who replaced Justice Antonin Scalia on the bench, decided that as written, the actual words of the Civil Rights Act make clear that discriminating on the basis of sex is illegal.

Severino, who also happens to be married to Roger Severino, a far right wing religious activist who heads the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights under Trump, is furious.

President Trump and his administration oppose rights for LGBTQ workers and actively lobbied to have the Court rule discrimination is legal.

On social media many – including some conservatives – are mocking her.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

Anti-Gay ‘Hookers For Jesus’ Group Gets Major DOJ Grant

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The Department of Justice gave a grant from their anti-human trafficking program to Hookers For Jesus, which restricts what occupants of their safe houses are allowed to read and labels homosexuality immoral.

According to an exclusive report from Reuters, internal complaints are emerging from the US Justice Department’s anti-human trafficking grant program. The complaints stem from two nonprofits that were denied funds which instead went to two less established groups “whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials.”

“The awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department’s employee union to the department’s Inspector General,” Reuters reports.

Hookers for Jesus is run by born-again Christian Annie Lobert who is also a trafficking survivor. The organization runs a safe house which bars occupants from reading “secular magazines” that portray worldly views/advice on living, sex, clothing, makeup tips.” When asked if her organization is all-inclusive, Lobert replied that they are “not going to discriminate toward anyone.”

“But we are Christian. And there is an understanding before they come in here that we are Christian,” she added.

Reuters also reported that the group’s staff training manual describes homosexuality as immoral and describes drug use as “witchcraft.”

A Nevada official who reviewed a state grant in 2018 questioned whether Hookers for Jesus treated sex-trafficking victims like “prisoners.”

Read the full report here.

Written by Sky Palma of Raw Story, via The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

Hundreds of LGBTQ Advocates Lobby Lawmakers for Protections

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Equality Virginia and the Commonwealth’s LGBTQ community continue to lobby state legislators for important LGBTQ protections. Now that Democrats control the General Assembly, they’re having some success.

The day after hundreds lobbied lawmakers on behalf of LGBTQ rights during Equality Virginia’s Day of Action, two significant bills advanced in the General Assembly to further protections for the state’s LGBTQ residents. 

The House passed a bill from Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, on Wednesday to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and banking. 

A Senate bill that adds gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability as reportable hate crimes, introduced by Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, reported from committee. The bill would also guarantee that victims would be able to bring civil action to recover damages against their offender. 

Vee Lamneck, executive director of Equality Virginia, was “cautiously optimistic” at the start of the legislative session, but said Tuesday during the organization’s annual lobby event that there is much to celebrate.

Equality Virginia lobbied their lawmakers to support LGBTQ bills during their Day of Action. League of Women Voters members Lois Page and Lynn Johnston regularly attend the weekly roundtables. Photo: Vee Lamneck, Equality Virginia

Lamneck noted that most of the bills supported by Equality Virginia, a group that advocates on behalf of the LGBTQ community, are still alive and advancing. Last session, most of those bills failed to pass from Republican-led subcommittees.

“This legislation will ensure that people are not discriminated against in housing, employment, public spaces, and credit,” Lamneck said.

LGBTQ youth showed up to make their voices heard too. Side by Side, a group dedicated to creating supportive communities for LGBTQ youth, helped sponsor the event.

“We want them to see that it’s easy and accessible, and what it’s like to actually be involved in the legislative process,” said Emma Yackso, director of youth programs and services for Side by Side. “A lot of them for many, many reasons don’t feel like they belong in government, don’t feel like their voices are actually ever going to be listened to.”

Groups visited legislators to discuss LGBTQ-related causes such as conversion therapy, housing instability, religious liberty, protection from discrimination, and the vulnerability of African American transgender communities. 

“We know that people who live at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities often face the most discrimination, harassment, and, unfortunately, sometimes violence as well,” Lamneck said.

The lobbying event was followed by an afternoon of workshops at the Library of Virginia and a reception to thank lawmakers. 

Equality Virginia hosted their Day of Action at the Library of Virginia on Tuesday to promote LGBTQ bills and rights. Photo: Maia Stanley, Capital News Service

 Some of the legislation that has advanced in the General Assembly — mostly with bipartisan support — includes two bills introduced by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax. Senate Bill 657 would make it easier to change a person’s name and gender on a birth certificate. SB 161 would make the Department of Education create and implement policies concerning the treatment of transgender students in public schools; a duplicate bill in the House also passed.

The Senate also passed SB 245, introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, which would ban the practice of conversion therapy in Virginia on patients under age 18. A similar bill introduced by Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, recently passed the House. On Tuesday, the House passed a health care bill introduced by Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity or status as a transgender individual. 

Advocates also celebrated that two bills referred to as the Virginia Values Act have made it to the floors of their respective chambers: SB 868, introduced by Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, and HB 1663, introduced by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax. Both would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, credit transactions, employment and public spaces.

“We speak with many individuals from across the Commonwealth who have shared with us their experiences of discrimination,” Lamneck said. “And not just that, but the fact that they live in fear, day to day experiencing discrimination. And so the Virginia Values Act will have a profoundly positive impact on the community.”

Deanna Bayer (left), volunteer for the Day of Action, and Dorthy Kelley (right), an employee of Equality Virginia, greet participants for workshops and events. Photo: Maia Stanley, Capital News Service

Gov. Ralph Northam and Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, attended an evening reception to wrap up the Day of Action. 

“This session we are going to ensure it is no longer legal in Virginia to discriminate against someone because of who they love,” Filler-Corn tweeted. Two House bills that add gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation as reportable hate crimes and a House bill replacing terms such as “husband and wife” with gender-neutral terms have yet to advance through their respective committees prior to crossover day on Feb. 11.

Written by Maia Stanley, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.

White House Livestreams Pastor Saying ‘Demonic Spirit’ Causes Homosexuality

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The anti-LGBTQ remarks occurred during a livestream of an event where Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a Memphis church. The White House’s YouTube channel broadcast the whole thing.

Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Tennessee this weekend to deliver a speech at a predominantly Black Memphis-area church, just one day before the nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. But it’s not Pence’s remarks that are making headlines. Instead, those of Bishop Jerry Wayne Taylor, who attacked gay people during his sermon – which the White House streamed live – are drawing criticism.

Bishop Taylor, the pastor and founder of the Holy City Church of God In Christ (COGIC), told his 800-member congregation, the Vice President, and the 67,000 people who have viewed the sermon on the White House’s YouTube channel, that homosexuality is caused by “a demonic spirit,” and is wrong because of people’s “plumbing,” while making a gay panic “joke,” as LGBTQ Nation reported.

“We got to expose what the devil is doing,” Bishop Taylor insisted, claiming the devil is “trying to destroy the foundation of marriage,” and “destroy the reproductive process.”  The references are to same-sex marriage, and presumably to contraception and abortion, all issues his church opposes.

“Two men can’t have a baby,” Taylor continued, trying to make his case, while ignoring modern medicine and that same-sex couples can and do adopt, giving children in need loving homes. “Two women can’t have a baby.”

“It’s a demonic spirit that causes another woman to want to lie with another woman,” Taylor professed. “It’s a demonic spirit that causes another man, a man to be attracted to another man.”

“And then the man gets attracted to me and he’ll get in trouble – don’t put your hands on me,” he said, mocking gay people as his congregation laughed at his gay panic “joke.”

“God didn’t make us for that. He made a man to be a man. Somebody said, ‘If you want to know what God made you, when you go to the bathroom just check your plumbing.’ What kind of plumbing are you using?”

Not only did the White House live-stream the entire sermon, it included the video in its YouTube channel.

Neither a warning nor an apology is included.

The Vice President has not made any apologies either.

Watch (relevant remarks begin around the 2:42:53 mark):

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Images via NCRM.

The Fairness For All Act: Why Does A Supposedly Pro-LGBTQ Bill Face Such Fervent LGBTQ Opposition?

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Utah Republican Chris Stewart’s new “compromise” bill, the Fairness For All Act, doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.

Last Friday, Utah Republican Congressman Chris Stewart introduced a new bill in the House Of Representatives. Entitled the Fairness For All Act, the bill seeks to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people in employment, housing, education, and public accomodations. However, the same day it was released, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) posted an article on their blog entitled “The Fairness For All Act is an Affront to Existing Civil Rights Protections.” If your first thought is, “Wait, what?” you’re certainly not alone.

However, examination of the fine print contained in the Fairness For All Act, as well as the context in which was introduced, starts to make all of this much clearer. And as it turns out, HRC is right, as they so often are.

Rep. Stewart’s bill is a response to the Equality Act, a bill that passed in the Democratic-majority House Of Congress mainly along party lines (five Republicans also voted for it). That bill’s purpose was straightforward: end the ongoing confusion over whether or not the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of discrimination on basis of “sex” did or did not cover LGBTQ people facing discrimination on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The Equality Act would add discrimination on basis of gender identity and sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act’s list of prohibited discriminations, and also ensure that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not be used as a justification for such discriminations.

The Equality Act, which enjoys widespread popular support as well as the support of LGBTQ advocates, has not been able to gain traction in the Republican-controlled US Senate. And now Stewart’s Fairness For All Act is being presented as a more acceptable alternative, one that could potentially gain bipartisan support and enshrine LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections into our country’s law.

However, the Fairness For All Act, while adding the same sort of protections to federal law that the Equality Act would ensure, carves out a significant exception for religious organizations, as well as allowing small businesses like the infamous anti-LGBTQ wedding cake bakers to engage in discrimination against LGBTQ people on the basis of religious freedom. The act would not curtail any aspect of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and would allow religious higher education facilities like Brigham Young University to retain tax-exempt status despite vocally opposing marriage equality.

Another way in which the act would allow for anti-LGBTQ discrimination, according to the Washington Blade, is its requirement that a business must have “15 or more employees for each working day in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year” before anti-LGBTQ discrimination prohibitions apply. That means you can still be discriminated against legally in any business that has 14 or less employees; for example, if you need your car repaired, the fact that the average repair shop has around five full-time employees means that you’re likely to be at the mercy of the notoriously right-wing car industry, which would be well within its rights to offer you higher rates or substandard repair due to your sexual orientation or gender identity.

Car repair. Photo by Maxime Agnelli on Unsplash

Yet another way is in its exemption of religiously-affiliated adoption agencies, thereby allowing organizations who only wish to allow adoption by hetero couples to continue refusing adoptions by same-sex couples.

Backers of the Fairness For All Act include the Mormon church, as well as several other religious organizations and the editorial page of the conservative Washington Examiner. “I’m excited about the solutions that are embodied in the legislation, because I think that those are the exact ideas that we’re going to need to pass federal civil rights for LGBTQ people,” Tyler Deaton, senior adviser at the American Unity Fund, told Vox.

However, LGBTQ advocacy organizations like HRC, GLAAD, and Lambda Legal, as well as other advocacy organizations including the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the National Partnership For Women and Families, and several others released a joint statement on Friday, December 6 condemning the Fairness For All Act.

In the statement, the groups called the Fairness For All Act “an affront to existing civil rights protections that protect people on the basis of race, sex, and religion and creates new, substandard protections for LGBTQ people with massive loopholes and carve-outs, and upends critical federal programs that serve children in need.” They also argued that “Our nation’s existing civil rights framework already strikes the right balance when it comes to the government’s interest in protecting religious freedom and advancing nondiscrimination, and it is wrong to put into law a different system of protections for LGBTQ people and their families. This legislation would create a “double whammy” for anyone at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities: a Black lesbian or Transgender Jewish woman, for example, could see many of her existing rights erased or rolled back, ostensibly to protect her.”

Of course, quite a few conservative groups hate the Fairness For All Act too, including the Heritage Foundation, who say the bill does not “promote the common good,” according to Vox. If anything, this proves that weakening our own rights in order to placate the conservatives of the country will gain us little in the eyes of many who are dead set on opposing our civil rights. Therefore, if we’re going to push for anything, it seems worthwhile to push for legislation that protects LGBTQ people in as many situations as possible, rather than accepting a watered-down compromise that will leave us open to quite a bit of discrimination even if it is signed into law by Donald Trump.

Top Photo: Chris Stewart’s press conference announcing the Fairness For All Act, via the Seventh Day Adventist Church of America/Twitter