Lesbian? No Apartment for You!
That’s legal. Surprised?
With the midterm elections coming up, LGBTQ people all over the United States are holding their collective breath. Donald Trump and the Republicans have been rolling back LGBTQ rights at a staggering pace. Anti-LGBTQ violence levels are up sharply and rising rapidly.
The New York Times has revealed that the Trump Administration is planning to define transgender people out of legal existence, erasing any possibility of equal treatment.
Many measures that Trump and the Republicans are taking to keep LGBTQ people from being free and equal are wrapped up in ideas about religious liberty.
The “liberty” religious organizations seem to want the most? The right to exclude LGBTQ people from services provided with taxpayer money. I’ve already written about how religious organizations administer taxpayer-funded child-services contracts while excluding LGBTQ people.
That’s not liberty. It’s discrimination. And the Republicans are fighting to keep it legal.
They Took Brent Because We Were Gay
Federal court appointments make that even more likely
medium.com
Discrimination doesn’t stop there —
Mary Walsh, 72, and Bev Nance, 68 are a legally married lesbian couple who were turned away from a retirement community for being gay. They were denied housing largely paid for with federal retirement funds. Administrators told them explicitly that their marital status disqualified them from living in Friendship Village.
Friendship Village —
Doesn’t that sound bucolic? Peaceful? Friendly, obviously?
Maybe if you’re straight.
If you live in the St. Louis area and you’re a lesbian or a gay man in a committed relationship or legal marriage, Friendship Village wants you to know something.
You’re not welcome.
Here’s a quote from their website.
Carefree and accommodating, Friendship Village Sunset Hills brings out the best in you. Our conveniently-located senior living community keeps you happily near your friends, family and everything you love about the South County area. You’ll also appreciate how we honor your independence and individualized preferences.
But here’s what wrote they wrote to Mary Walsh and Bev Nance, a married couple who put down a $2,000.00 deposit for a room at the assisted living center.
Your request to share a single unit does not fall within the categories permitted by the long-standing policy of Friendship Village Sunset Hills.
Further, the couple told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that staff said that living together would violate the Friendship Village cohabitation policy that defines marriage as “the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible.”
This kind of discrimination is legal —
The couple are suing in federal court, but they probably don’t have a case. Does that surprise you? I find that a lot of my fellow Americans assume that it’s against the law to discriminate against LGBTQ people in public accommodation like housing.
It isn’t, though, in most places. A few states have made such discrimination illegal, but the federal government hasn’t. The Republican Party opposes including LGBTQ people in civil rights laws, and no such laws have ever made it out of Congress.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights is representing the women in federal court, attempting to leverage the Fair Housing Act and some questionable case law, but legal experts are pretty sure they won’t win.
That’s the sad reality.
LGBTQ people are denied housing all over the United States every day just because they happen to be a minority variant of human being. In most of the United States, when that happens to us, all we can do is suck it up and go somewhere else.
Mary and Bev can’t easily do that, unfortunately. Because of certain medical needs, Friendship Village represented the only affordable option for them in the St. Louis area. In order to make different arrangements, they’ll have to either find a large chunk of money somewhere or move a long distance away from family and friends.
This is just one example —
Discrimination against LGBTQ people is common and ordinary in the United States. While some states have passed laws to protect LGBTQ people in employment and housing, according to the LGBTQ Movement Advancement Project only 41% of the LGBT population live in such states.
May and Bev clearly don’t.
If Trump and the Republicans have their way, things will get worse —
The Republican Party has proposed legislation in Congress that would make legal protection even for this minority of LGBTQ people very questionable. They want religious people broadly exempted from anti-discrimination laws.
On the Executive Branch side of things, the US Justice Department’s new “Religious Liberty Task Force,” is charged with enforcing 20 principles announced in a 2017 Department of Justice memorandum. The move appears to prioritize religious freedom over civil liberties.
The Department is arguing in federal court that it’s legal for employers to fire gay people for being gay. Just two days ago, the Justice Department argued before the Supreme Court that it’s legal to fire transgender people just for being transgender.
Employment and housing are basic civil rights —
People who aren’t free to hold down jobs and have a place to live aren’t free at all. They’re certainly not equal. Just ask Mary and Bev. They can’t afford a place that meets their needs because they live in a state where discrimination against lesbians is legal.
Please remember them when you go to the polls.
We LGBTQ people can’t do this on our own. We’re a tiny minority, and we’ll never be able to secure equal rights on our own. Most people don’t know about the precarious state of civil rights for LGBTQ people in the United States. Some people aren’t aware of how hard the Republicans are working to deny us the most basic of rights.
Please, when you vote, remember something —
We need your help!
