 One and welcome, I'm James Milan. Welcome to this episode of our series, The ABCs of LGBTQ Plus. And our topic for conversation today is going to be legal protections and discrimination for the LGBTQ Plus community. I have two guests in the studio joining me today. Andy Rubenson and Valerie Overton are here. And I'm going to ask you guys just to introduce yourselves and the work that you do and the organizations you represent. Great. Why don't you start, Andy? Sure, great. Andy Rubenson, as you mentioned, I am the vice chair of Arlington's LGBTQIA Plus Rainbow Commission and I'm somewhat new to the role. I started that in September, but I also have past experience as a member of the New England Steering Committee and the National Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign, which is the national LGBTQ rights organization. Great. I assume that that's going to allow us to expand the scope of our conversation beyond Massachusetts when it makes sense. And I think it's important to look at kind of a national perspective as well as understand how we are today here. Great. And Valerie? Great. So I'm Valerie Overton, my pronouns are she, her. And I am co-chair of Lex Pride, which is an organization based in Lexington that works to advance social justice for the LGBTQ Plus community and really everybody since we're all interrelated and connected. And I have also been an activist for civil rights and social justice for about 50 years, going through many different civil rights movements over the decades. And so I have worked in a lot of different arenas. All right. Well, thank you both for being here. Let's get right to it. We are here to talk about one of the, there are a lot of problematic sides with the way that our society treats this particular community, but we're talking about discrimination here today. And I wanted to start by just asking you, why do we need rules and laws to protect members of the LGBTQ Plus community from discrimination? So I think we've seen a variety of areas that we've faced discrimination. So you think about the workplace, think about housing, think about schools and things that, so there are a lot of different places where there's been kind of a history of discrimination in people from bullying to firing people with no other cause than just being LGBTQ. So that's, I think, kind of a key facet is it's just a look at the statistics of what's been going on out there and it still goes on today. So just plenty of evidence that we know of that this exists and it plays out in all these different contexts. Right, I mean, even if we look historically, just in my lifetime, there have been many instances from the 60s onward, which is kind of my lived experience where people would be arrested just for being gay or for being transgender or whatever the case may be. And that's not even, let alone getting to the place of being fired or not discriminated against in housing and so forth. And we still see a lot of discrimination in housing and employment with transgender people in addition to gay and lesbian and bisexual folks. In addition, in the 80s during the HIV AIDS crisis before we kind of started understanding that situation better, there would be, I knew personally people who were turned away from emergency rooms because they were HIV positive. And so we see in so many different ways from that impact on individual people's lives that the impact that discrimination has had has been pretty devastating. So the laws have really done a lot to improve those problems in our community. Right, yeah, let's talk about those laws because here in Massachusetts, of course, I think we like to think of ourselves as very progressive and as out there in the Vanguard in terms of providing these kinds of protections. What anti-discrimination laws are currently on the books here in Massachusetts and how are they playing out? Are they robust enough as far as you guys are concerned? Just talk, let's talk about that a little bit. Sure, so in Massachusetts, we have several categories of laws. We have laws that protect people from discrimination in housing and in employment and in public accommodations. And public accommodations sounds like an odd term. But it's really any setting where people, any member of the public can be served. And so that's like anything from parks to hospitals and so forth. And so we have those kinds of anti-discrimination laws. And in addition to that, we have protections for students in schools in terms of anti-bullying laws and healthcare in terms of protecting people's right to be treated, whether they're HIV positive or whether they are transgender, those kinds of things, which again was an area of a lot of discrimination historically. So there are a variety of these other settings to where there are more specific laws. Okay, just hearing that description makes me think, okay, Massachusetts is doing a decent job at least of addressing the historical discrimination you were referring to before in a number of the contexts in which it happens. Let me ask you, Andy, how does that compare? How does Massachusetts compare to nationally or to other states? Well, for employment as one example that we talked about, it's great that we have laws that protect us here in Massachusetts, but I think people fail to realize that that's not true at a federal level. There is, you know, we've had something called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that tried to get passed a while back and there just hasn't been kind of the success of getting those types of laws. So the reality is today that there are 17 states that where there's absolutely zero legal protection and the remaining... 17, did you say? 17, yes. And the remaining 33 states have either complete... I think 21 of states have protections for both sexual orientation and gender identity, whereas the remaining states have kind of a mix of some only protect sexual orientation, some only protect only people that are public employees. So if you work for a private employer, you can be fired, you know, exactly. And the same holds true for housing and other areas. So I think one of the statistics that I've seen is there's actually, I think a majority of people that just think that there are federal protections when there aren't. So it sounds like less than half of the states, in fact, provide robust protections, let's say, for gender identity and sexual orientation. So 21, so less than half, that cover both areas for all employees, whether public or private. So let's talk about gaps in the laws. We've kind of outlined both the somewhat grim situation federally and the fact that in Massachusetts, there seemed to be a fairly broad set of protections. But there must be gaps, I imagine. And what are those here in Massachusetts that you've identified? Sure, so I would probably put them into two buckets. Like one bucket is just inadequate implementation or enforcement of the laws that we do have. So as an example, the laws that protect LGBTQ students from bullying or the anti-bullying laws that we have in Massachusetts specify that schools should provide specific information and training on each of the vulnerable populations of which LGBTQ students is one in their annual trainings to teachers and staff. And very few, if any, schools actually do that. So what we see in the schools is a lot of good intention, but a lack of awareness and knowledge. And so that's just one of many examples where the intent is there, but the implementation is not really fully done. And if I can, excuse me for one second, if I can just push on one point there. Is your sense that that lack of enforcement is it's not because, in fact, the intentions are not there, but instead there are other reasons for why these things are, they aspire to do this, but then fall short. Limited time and resources, yeah. Yeah, I was down to like the best intentions, but. Right, right, I think that's exactly right. In some cases, it's just lack of time and resources. And in other cases, it's just lack of awareness. When you think of the laws and all the fine print, I think a lot of times people are looking at kind of the high level intent of the law rather than all the details, right? So I think in some cases, it's also just lack of awareness. I think the other facet that I would add in there, we talk a little about kind of state and federal, but even from city to city municipalities, things can vary. And HRC introduced in the last few years something they call the Municipality Quality Index that basically gives a whole list of criteria of policies and things and laws and that municipalities can incorporate. And that's actually one of the things that I think helped get the Arlington Rainbow Commission established, it is a town commission appointed by the Board of Selectment. So things like that that can help drive. So it's not even always laws, but just things to help drive inclusiveness within the community that I think makes it different. So even within Massachusetts, from place to place. And even from school to school and things like that. Absolutely, absolutely. It's hugely different. It's hugely different, right. Well, I'd like to actually move, I don't feel like we've covered that comprehensively, but excuse me as I move forward, because we've been talking a lot about the law and laws that have been drafted or not in Massachusetts and other states. All those laws are meant to address discrimination. Let's talk about the discrimination itself for a couple of minutes. What are the kinds of things that, what kinds of incidents and discrimination are all too common perhaps in your view here in Massachusetts? And also, if somebody either witnesses that or experiences it, faces it, where do they turn, what do they do? Right, unfortunately, we still see a lot of discrimination even in Massachusetts with our laws. And so, some of the examples that we see are people who are discriminated against in housing and employment, even though we have those laws. We get reports of a lot of cases of, for example, transgender people or people who are gender non-binary, being not employed or not accepted into housing because of their gender identity. And we also see situations where there may be hate incidents and those kinds of things against these groups of people. So, unfortunately, we do still see a lot of that. And I don't know if you wanna give other examples, but yes. Well, in the first instance, excuse me, that you were just citing where this is happening in housing or employment, and you're saying that it's because of their gender identity, is it presented that way or is that a conclusion that you draw because there's no other reason why this person would not have gained either the position or the housing, et cetera? I mean, it can definitely, in some cases, be couched in different terms. So, you don't necessarily have, if you have multiple applicants for housing, you can only kind of look at the trends. And some of the statistics I've seen have shown, this is one example that I had that there were, I think, a 16% difference between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples, that there was a preference and 16% of those cases for others. And it's even more pronounced for transgender. In the terms of employment, people can kind of set folks up. So even though it may be gender-based, they try to couch it in terms of performance or make their tasks so challenging that they're not able to do them when other people are not treated the same or have as much discrimination against them in how they do their jobs. So it can be somewhat hidden and it can become difficult and costly for legal fees and things like that. So it's a challenge. It's not always easy to solve. For hate crime, you can say, hey, report it to the police for employment and non-discrimination. Yes, there's a way to contest it and say, hey, this is illegal, but it's kind of burden-proof that can be a challenge. It can be, because certainly there are cases where it is overt and explicit and then there are many more cases where it is implied, inferred, and so forth. We also see a lot of situations for people who are gender non-binary. For example, government forums, employment forums, housing forums typically have just the male-female option. And so either you are put in a position of having to, in effect, lie about your gender identity because the forum doesn't provide your option or trying to write something in or say something and that tends to, that often ends up badly. Right, exactly. That does not redound your benefit when you go ahead and try and assert your identity in that way. And unfortunately, we do see issues around intersectionality too, so that if you are LGBTQ and a person of color or and someone with disabilities, the problems just compound themselves. You have kind of the bias against both of those identities and kind of they multiply when they are put together. So that all of the things that we've described are only more so when you're talking about people with multiple marginalized identities. And so just to wrap up this particular topic for today, let me ask, so what are the avenues to redress these kinds of harms when one experiences it or even when one observes somebody else being suffering under that? Right, so I think locally a lot of times what people can do is to file a complaint or talk with their local human rights commission. That's a great avenue because a lot of times people feel more comfortable with a local organization and the human rights commissions can either process complaints or direct them or help you direct them to the appropriate place. Arlington has both the Human Rights Commission and the Rainbow Commission. So we do get folks contacting us about things that are happening. We have liaison with the police department and other people within the town. So that is one avenue where we can provide some additional support or make sure that it's getting the attention that it should. Obviously if there's something that's blatantly illegal that's being done, you can report to the police but I think people are sometimes hesitant to do that. They feel just from past experience with police, they don't feel that they're gonna get the support. So it's kind of like you have to have faith that the system will help you and people I think have, some people have experience that it doesn't. So better to keep my mouth shut, I mean that's certainly true with the LGBTQ community and also many other groups, whether it's immigrants or people of color and so forth. But having Lex Pride and the Rainbow Commission, I think hopefully that would make people feel more comfortable to come forward and allow us to assist in situations like that. Absolutely, because we also receive a lot of those kinds of experiences. The other thing is that at the statewide level we have the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination and some people also filed a complaint with that commission and they can be very supportive and helpful as well. Organizations like GLAAD and folks that can help, that's the gay and lesbian advocates and defenders from the legal ACLU, even the ACLU can help. So there are places that can help folks when they are experiencing this and hopefully guide them into ways to address it. Yeah, sounds then, you know, to finish this discussion with some good news in a sense, it does sounds like from the Rainbow Commission here in Arlington, Lex Pride in Lexington, out through state agencies and national organizations, there are advocates out there and folks who understand both the harm that anybody could feel in that situation and perhaps some way to address that and things better in the end, let's hope. All right, well, that will wrap up this discussion for today. I thank you very much for being here. Again, it was Andy Rubinson from the Rainbow Commission here in Arlington and Valerie Overton from Lex Pride. We appreciate you guys being here and the conversation. We appreciate your being here as well. We welcome you to our next conversation whenever you have a chance to check it out. I'm James Milan. Thanks for joining us.