lifeonq.com

UPS Delivers Inclusion to the LGBT Community

What can brown do for queers? Atlanta’s own UPS announced today that it has added lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)-owned businesses to its supplier diversity process. As an added bonus, LGBT-owned businesses can also take advantage of discounted shipping services. The package delivery giant made the move in partnership with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). The company’s supplier diversity process was started in 1992 in an effort to expand business opportunities for small businesses and those owned by minorities, women, veterans and now lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

“Partnering with the NGLCC not only helps LGBT businesses grow by conducting business with UPS, but we also gain access to excellent suppliers,” said Lisa Johnson, UPS’s procurement and supplier diversity manager, in a company press release. “Expanding our process to include LGBT-owned businesses reinforces our commitment to supplier diversity.”

To participate in UPS’s supplier diversity process, queer-owned businesses must be certified by the NGLCC.  The NGLCC is the largest LGBT business development and economic advocacy organization in the country, with an affiliate network of 45 state and local gay chambers and other business organizations. The NGLCC estimates that there are an estimated 1.4 million LGBT-owned businesses in the United States.

UPS also delivers equality to its queer employees. The company received a top rating of 100 percent, the highest in its industry, from the Human Rights Campaign’s 2008 Corporate Equality Index, which measures how LGBT employees are treated based on factors such as non-discrimination policies, diversity training, and benefits for domestic partners and transgender employees.

LGBT-owned companies interested in obtaining NGLCC certification can begin the process at www.nglcc.org. There’s more information about UPS’s supplier diversity process at community.ups.com.

Buy for Equality this Holiday Season

Just in time for your holiday shopping, the Human Rights Campaign has released its 2008 guide to gay-friendly businesses. Buy for Equality 2008 is designed to help LGBT shoppers direct their queer dollars to queer-supportive businesses. Directing your spending toward tolerant companies helps put your money where your rights are.

The guide rates businesses based on the HRC Foundation’s Corporate Equality index, an annual report card that rates corporations based on an analysis of their employment policies and business practices as they affect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors.

Buying for Equality 2008 covers more than retailers. It offers suggestions on where to gas up your car, what bank should have your money, even which pharmaceutical company manufactures the gay-friendliest medications. In addition to ratings for major retailers, there are listings of individual products.

So, for example, you will know that you should drive past the Wal-Mart (score: 40) and stop at the K-Mart instead (score: a perfect 100). If you need to stop for gas on the way, pull in at the BP or Shell stations (score: 100) rather than Exxon (score: 0). While at the K-Mart, you might want to get your nephew a Ken doll for Christmas (Mattel score: 88) rather than G.I. Joe (Hasbro score: 50). There’s no advice on what to do about Chinese lead paint, however.

In addition to HRC’s guide, I would offer a supplemental suggestion: to shop independent gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses as well. The mega-corporations have an edge in marketing, perhaps. But there’s no better way to support your community than to support the people close to home.

Human Rights Campaign Shows Its True Stripes with Transgender Exclusion

Two transgendered members of the Human Rights Campaign’s business council resigned yesterday, widening the divided between the group and the transgender community. Jamison Green and Donna Rose are both authors, speakers and consultants–internationally recognized leaders with very long lists of awards and a history of participation and support for many of the largest and most effective LGBT rights organizations. Their departure is significant, not just for the transgender community but for all supports of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

In a joint letter notifying HRC of their immediate resignation, Green and Rose were clear that the group’s decision to support a trans-exclusive version of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) was the beginning of the end of their support. But there’s more to the story behind the scenes at HRC, and it’s not a pretty one. The behind-the-scenes details, spelled out on Rose’s blog, reveal disconnects and exclusion:

One thing I’ll share that I don’t think anyone else knows yet. The day of our HRC Board Call to make a policy decision on ENDA (10/1) we held a Business Council call that afternoon to discuss the situation amongst ourselves as corporate leaders and to make an uninvited recommendation to the Sr. Staff and Board about the decision we were going to be asked to make. I have always found the fact that HRC leadership kept Daryl and the Workplace Project totally out of the loop throughout the entire ENDA debacle to be troubling. As I’ve said before, those are the people who should have been most engaged. In any event, although we hadn’t been asked to provide an opinion (something else I find odd) we felt that it was important to meet as a group and to have one. So, we met in the later part of the afternoon, we talked, and we forwarded our recommendation to Joe, David Smith, and to others.

What leap of logic did HRC President Joe Solmonese and his lieutenants have to make to rationalize excluding the business council from policy decisions on employment nondiscrimination? It seems to me to smack of nothing less than a hunger for power, and another example of HRC’s desire to control the debate on gay rights. In my view, HRC is more interested in getting invited to the table than in unifying the LGBT community to work as one force against homophobia and discrimination.

Why didn’t Green and Rose stay on and work for change within HRC? They tried. Again, from Rose’s blog:

We struggled with this for quite a while, but in the end we knew what we needed to do and we did it. I don’t feel that it’s necessary to rehash everything we’ve done and felt over these past few weeks to reconcile today’s announcement, but suffice it to say that the fact we didn’t get a response at all from Joe Solmonese to our request to meet with him personally indicated to us that our time there was up. It was that simple.

In fairness, I believe HRC’s strategy is rooted in the necessity for political compromise. It is extraordinarily difficult to diffuse hate and discrimination in one fell swoop. But I can’t help but think that in an effort to get a seat closer to the front of the bus, they’re willing to throw some members of the community under the wheels. You can compromise on timing perhaps, or on wording. How can you compromise on principle? And what’s worse, how can you not even include subsets of the community in the discussion? And Solmonese is apparently unwillingly to even extend a hand to those he’s pushed aside, making no effort to bring the community back together.

HRC’s actions on ENDA are more than a transgender issue. Lest we think it doesn’t affect the rest of us, we should think again. HRC has shown us its true stripes: positions, strategy and tactics are controlled by Joe Solmonese and others at the highest levels. Dissenting opinion and unity be damned. Have you noticed that comments are not allowed on HRC’s blog? In fact the blog is damn hard to find from their Website. That tells me that the organization is not interested in and/or will not allow discussion or input on their decisions.

Visit Life on Q’s Transgender Resource Page.

More »

Frustration about ENDA

On our daily conference call about ENDA today, one of the members of our community expressed a frustration that I’ve been feeling for some time. We hear from members of Congress that transgender people have not yet done as much work educating them and their colleagues on issues of gender identity as gay and lesbian people have around sexual orientation. Therefore, they argue, they just aren’t ready to vote for civil rights for transgender people. This seems to me to be a way of passing the buck, of blaming the disenfranchised for their lack of rights.

Those of us who have called our legislators, who have met with them and who have worked hard on educating them are rightfully frustrated. It may feel like our best efforts have been in vain. We’ve told our stories of friends and loved ones killed, of jobs we didn’t get or being fired for no other reason than who we are. It is incredibly painful to think it hasn’t been enough. Yet.

However, we need to remember that our work to educate members of Congress—and members of the LGBT community—have actually made an enormous difference. I truly believe that we would not be having this conversation at all, that we wouldn’t be on anyone’s agenda, if we had not been diligent in the work we have done so far. Nor would the House of Representatives passed a transgender inclusive hate crimes bill this session without the work we’ve done to educate them.

Thinking about this today has led to two conclusions. First, we absolutely must continue to do the work we are doing. We need to redouble our efforts to get people to Washington for our annual lobby day. We must continue to visit our legislators when they are in the home offices, sharing our stories, letting them know exactly why we need civil rights protections and what the stakes are for transgender people, our loved ones and families. We have to encourage each other to come out and speak up for our rights. We need each and every voice to be heard.

Second, we also need to remember that role of Congress isn’t to award rights to those who make the most noise, have the largest cadre of lobbyists or are the biggest group. Their job is to enact laws in keeping with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For transgender people, that means working for a country where we too have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to achieve that, we need to be free of violence and discrimination. Passing a transgender-inclusive ENDA wouldn’t fix that overnight, but it would be a step along the way.

UPS Delivers Reality Check on Same-Sex Civil Unions

When United Parcel Service (UPS) denied health care coverage to a New Jersey lesbian couple, what brown did for the queer community was deliver a reality check on civil unions. In a July 8 article in The Star-Ledger of Newark, NJ reported that UPS sent a letter to employee Gabriael “Nickie” Brazier denying health care coverage to her domestic partner Heather Aurand. The reason? The letter reportedly explained that New Jersey’s decision to recognize same-sex relationships as civil unions, not marriage, tied the company’s hands.

The Star-Ledger article quoted several New Jersey state legislators and lawyers as surprised by the company’s actions, indicating that the issue may come back up in the 2008 legislative session. In fact, it is their surprise that is surprising.

Whether an excuse or a reason, the UPS decision points to the crux of the problem for those tempted to veer onto a path of compromise to accept the term “civil union” rather than “marriage.” The benefits UPS and others offer are governed by federal law. Thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, federal law specifically defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

According to a report issued by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) in January of 1997 (shortly after the Defense of Marriage Act became law in 1996), there were 1,049 federal laws classified to the United States Code in which marital status is a factor. And that’s not even the whole story. In explaining their findings to Rep. Henry Hyde (who had requested the report), the GAO noted that “the Code is a compendium of “general and permanent” laws. Although appropriations and annual authorizations, for example, might contain references to marital status, they are typically in effect for a single year, and therefore do not appear in the Code.”

Seven years later, the GAO found 120 new references to marriage rights in an updated report in January 2004, bringing the number to 1,138.

What that creates is an on-going shell game for queers: find the discrimination under the moving shells of rules and regulations that move around regularly. When states like New Jersey enact legislation allowing civil unions, the effort is moot in any situation where federal law may apply.

State-by-state hate

And yes, it is even worse than that seems. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), individual states pile on more discrimination in their varying interpretation of the rights and responsibilities of marriage. GLAAD lists the state rights denied to same-sex couples as including:

• automatic inheritance
• child custody/parenting/adoption rights
• hospital visitation
• medical decision-making power
• standing to sue for wrongful death of a spouse
• divorce protections
• spousal/child support
• access to family insurance policies
• exemption from property tax upon death of a spouse
• immunity from being forced to testify against one’s spouse
• domestic violence protections and more.

More »