The city of Fayetteville, Arkansas recently repealed an anti-discrimination ordinance
that protected the LGBT community from being discriminated against by local businesses.
Which means that in Fayetteville, right now, local businesses are free to refuse service
or employment to the LGBT community.
And Fayetteville isn’t the only place this sort of discrimination is happening.
So, the question is, how is this possible?
Is it legal to discriminate against gay people in the United States?
The short answer is that there is no federal law specifically protecting the LGBT community.
The overall law of the land when it comes to discrimination in America is the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.
This protects employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national
origin.
However, it does not protect people based on their sexual orientation, something that
people have been trying to amend since 1975.
So far every attempt to pass federal legislation protecting gay Americans has been unsuccessful,
including numerous failed votes for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would make LGBT
discrimination in the workplace illegal on a national level.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some laws in place.
21 states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit discrimination based on
sexual identity, 18 of those laws include gender identity protection as well, but some
are only for public employees.
Going deeper than that, over 200 cities have laws in place protecting LGBT communities
from employment discrimination.
However some of these laws do not always apply for private employers or businesses with less
than 15 employees and most religious organizations are also exempt.
That still leaves over half of the country without laws specifically prohibiting discrimination
against LGBT employees or customers.
And in many states it is still legal to discriminate against the LGBT community when it comes to
housing, public accommodations, adoption and hospital visitations.
So the answer is yes, in the majority of United States it is legal to discriminate against
LGBT individuals.
However there are people working to change this.
President Obama issued an executive order to protect LGBT federal employees from discrimination
in July of 2014 and in 2013 the Senate passed the ENDA protection bill for the first time
ever, but the bill has since stalled in the House and will most likely never pass.
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is also proposing a new bill that will prevent LGBT discrimination
in employment, housing, jury service, public accommodations and more.
And many advocates are optimistic of change, pointing at the rising number of states that
have legalized gay marriage as well as the American public’s growing support of gay
rights.
According to a Human Rights Campaign poll, over 70% of likely voters would be in favor
of a federal law banning LGBT discrimination and 87% of American’s already think there
is one.
Whether or not you support gay rights, it turns out there’s actually scientific evidence
that homophobia is harmful to everyone.
Check out this video over on DNews to learn why.
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