The National LGBT Legal Aid Forum is a new listserv dedicated to improving legal services for low-income LGBT clients. This listserv is a forum for members to post questions and answers related to serving LGBT clients, and to share resources and updates on new developments in LGBT-related law. Legal aid advocates who are committed to effectively advocating for LGBT people and their families are invited to apply for membership. Attorneys from national, state and regional LGBT legal organizations who wish to communicate directly with a community of LGBT-supportive legal aid advocates are also invited to apply. The Forum’s members include advocates with expertise in various aspects of LGBT-related law, including, but not limited to family, employment, health, immigration and domestic violence law. Legal aid advocates with no prior experience serving LGBT clients, but who wish to build their knowledge base and access related information, are also welcome. This listserv is administered by California Rural Legal Assistance and the National Center for Lesbian Rights with guidance and support from a committee of attorneys from New York Legal Assistance Group, Lambda Legal and Legal Services of Northern California. To apply for membership to the forum, visit www.nclrights.org/LGBTlegalaid.

The New York Times recently reported on three American evangelicals’ apparent ties to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 in Uganda. The bill, which would make certain “homosexual” acts punishable by death, has spurred condemnation by the U.S. government, among others, and galvanized the worldwide LGBT community. The Times reports that the three men participated in a conference held in March 2009 in Kampala, one month prior to the Anti-Homosexuality bill’s introduction. During the conference, the men were presented as “experts” on homosexuality and lectured to thousands of Ugandans on how to make gay people straight and how the gay movement is an “evil institution” set to replace heterosexual marriage with “a culture of promiscuity.”

Schmierer and Lively are prominent “gay conversion” proponents. Conversion is thetheory that gays and lesbians can become straight with “treatment”, counseling and other support. This theory has been discredited and deemed harmful by the American Psychiatric Association.

When it was revealed that Schmierer and Lively have connections to the greater Sacramento region (Schmierer lives near Lodi and Lively is a former Citrus Heights resident) Sacramento area LGBT leaders felt compelled to speak out. “I am outraged that this is going on,” Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center Interim Director Bill Otton told the Sacramento Bee. “I think this is tragic that this is coming from people out of our own community and carrying these beliefs to other people.” The Reverend Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian whom the Times describes as a key player in uncovering the relationship between American evangelicals and the African anti-gay movement believes that the evangelicals portrayal of members of the LGBT community as intent on corrupting children and destroying families has potentially deadly consequences for LGBT Ugandans, many of whom have been subjected to anti-gay abuse and violence. Kaoma says the evangelicals have “set a fire that can’t be quenched” given existing anti-gay norms and beliefs held by many Ugandans. Schmierer and Lively maintain that they do not condone the Anti-Homosexuality bill, but continue to promote their gay conversion beliefs.

Despite mounting pressures from Western governments and human rights and gay activists in Uganda and around the world to withdraw the bill, the Ugandan parliament is scheduled to consider passage of the bill in February or March of this year.

On October 21, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced several initiatives, including an upcoming proposed rule, to ensure in Donovan’s words that “a qualified individual and family will not be denied housing choice based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” Among other things, the proposed rule will clarify that the term “family” as used in reference to beneficiaries of the Section 8 voucher and public housing programs, includes otherwise eligible lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and couples.

In another initiative, HUD will commission the first-ever national study of the impact of discrimination against members of the LGBT community in the rental and sale of housing. HUD compares this planned study with research it undertook in 1977, 1989 and 2000 to study the impact of housing discrimination based on race and color. See HUD’s press release on these initiatives for more details and a link to a study by Michigan’s Fair Housing Centers that found that nearly one-third of same sex couples were treated differently from different sex couples when attempting to rent or buy a place to live.

On October 21, 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced plans to open a national resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender elders. The LGBT Resource Center will provide information, assistance and resources for both LGBT organizations and mainstream aging services providers at the state and community level to assist them in the development and provision of culturally sensitive supports and services. The Center will also help community-based organizations understand the unique needs and concerns of older LGBT individuals and assist them in implementing programs for local service providers, including providing help to LGBT caregivers who are providing care for an older partner with health or other challenges.

Part of the defense authorization bill, the new hate crimes provision will extend federal hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

As most REP blog readers know, Matthew Shepard, a gay twenty-one year old college student, was tortured and brutally murdered in 1998 because of his sexual orientation. His death inspired a national movement to expand federal hate crimes law. Eleven years after Matthew’s death, members of his family will attend the signing ceremony at the White House tomorrow.

The Pride Foundation is a nearly quarter-century-old national philanthropic organization.  Pride Foundation’s mission is to raise and manage funds to support problem-solving efforts within the LGBT community and respective communities.  Toward this end, it has launched a Racial Equity Initiative.

The Pride Foundation’s Race Equity Initiative is an effort to consciously counteract the inequities in the allocation of resources from foundations that LGBT organizations headed by People of Color have faced.  Specifically, the Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues (FLGI) authored a report, titled, “Understanding Race Equity among LGBTQ Grantmakers,” as part of FLGI’s Race Equity Campaign, which found that it is common for organizations run by and for LGBT People of Color to operate without paid staffing; over two-thirds of these same organizations operate on an annual budget of $50,000 or less; and, on the whole, these groups receive fewer and smaller grants from all sources available.  Congratulations to Pride Foundation and FLGI for recognizing and taking head on the need for race equity in LGBT grantmaking!

Also of note, FLGI has an excellent Race Equity Resources section.  It includes, among other tools, a tool for understanding structural racism in the context of grantmaking and a tool for comparing racial equity frameworks.

If you haven’t already, please also see the recent Race Equity Project E-Newsletter 4.3 on LGBT Advocacy, Race and Poverty.  It is an excellent read!

Welcome to our third e-newsletter of 2009. This issue explores the intersection of issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and respective communities; race and poverty or low-income status. Each of the three articles references the Williams Institute’s groundbreaking study on poverty in the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities. The study serves to debunk the widely-held assumptions and stereotypes that families headed by same-sex couples have lower rates of poverty than different-sex couple families and concludes that for Latino/a and African-American same-sex couples, income levels are significantly lower than for their respective heterosexual counterparts. We hope the examples of cutting edge and innovative advocacy and practice described in the articles in this issue instruct and inspire our readers.

Legal advocates challenging stereotypes and increasing access to justice for LGBT communities, Lisa Cisneros, California Rural Legal Assistance, and Cathy Sakimura, National Center for Lesbian Rights

Economic realities in the transgender community by Matthew Wood, Transgender Law Center

Blacks and gays: Bridging the cultural divide by Joel A. Brown

Recent posts:

• Cries of “reverse racism” distract from reality of systemic racism
• The dire state of language access in state courts
• Voting Rights Act survives Supreme Court decision
• Critical race studies symposium takes on “colorblindness”
• The use of “frames” in race equity advocacy
• Can America’s urban food deserts bloom?

By Lisa Cisneros and Cathy Sakimura

Legal aid groups and national legal organizations are forging new programs to improve access to technically sound and culturally competent legal services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Access to civil legal counsel is a profound challenge for those who struggle with poverty, racial disparities, geographic isolation, and barriers associated with age, language or immigration status. Securing quality legal counsel becomes especially difficult when the matter at stake involves a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Laws impacting LGBT people have changed dramatically in recent years. Legal protections exist in a patchwork across the state and federal level. Lawyers, including legal aid attorneys, continue to climb the learning curve with respect to LGBT-related law, and the experiences of LGBT clients.

Programs That Make a Difference

One example of leadership to improve access to justice for LGBT people is the National Center for Lesbian Right’s Family Protection Project. NCLR is a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of LGBT people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. The Family Protection Project improves access to family law services for low-income LGBT families, with a focus on serving families of color.

The Family Protection Project is a source for training and technical assistance for legal aid attorneys assisting LGBT families on legal issues involving sexual orientation or gender identity. The project works in coalition with organizations serving communities of color to provide culturally competent legal services, and issues publications on legal topics of particular relevance to low-income LGBT communities. The Family Protection Project has also created a resource kit for serving LGBT clients. The kit packages tools for advocates serving LGBT clients with materials for clients, themselves, such as a plain language brochure for LGBT parents about their rights. NCLR helps improve access to justice by sharing its legal expertise with attorneys on the front lines.

Legal aid-led efforts include California Rural Legal Assistance’s Proyecto Poderoso | Project Powerful. CRLA provides no-cost legal representation to California’s rural poor in the areas of health, housing, civil rights, education, family security, and employment law. Proyecto Poderoso is increasing and improving LGBT-related legal services. The program carries out three areas of activity: professional development on LGBT-related law and cultural competency, community education, and direct assistance for low-income LGBT people, particularly LGBT farmworkers. CRLA has partnered with NCLR to implement the program, leveraging NCLR’s knowledge of LGBT legal issues to help CRLA attorneys develop expertise in this area. CRLA and NCLR have also jointly created Tips for Serving LGBT Clients, a publication for legal services and pro bono attorneys.

Since its inception, Proyecto Poderoso has trained nearly all staff members across CRLA’s 21 field offices. The program has conducted most of its community education in Spanish, reaching more than 3,000 individuals through presentations and outreach activities during the past year. The program attorney and community worker have appeared in 26 television and radio interviews, speaking out about LGBT civil rights in rural, predominantly Latino media markets. CRLA has significant increased its provision of legal services to LGBT people.

Other legal organizations, in addition to CRLA and NCLR, have launched initiatives to ensure that existing legal protections make a practical improvement in the everyday lives of LGBT people, regardless of poverty, racial disparities or other types of barriers. In Michigan, Lakeshore Legal Aid hosts a program directed towards serving LGBT survivors of domestic violence. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center hosts a general legal services program that offers assistance on a wide-range of LGBT-related legal matters. Lambda Legal’s Proyecto Igualdad extends its organizational resources and information to Spanish speakers and seeks to engage the Latino community on LGBT-related issues. These programs illustrate a growing recognition that the creation of new civil rights laws alone will not secure justice for LGBT people and their families. Rather, a robust infrastructure for justice is required. Critical to this infrastructure are legal aid attorneys with expertise in serving LGBT communities.

Overcoming Stereotypes to Recognize the Need for Affordable LGBT Legal Services

The success of the Family Protection Project, Proyecto Poderoso and similar initiatives has required confronting the widespread stereotype that LGBT people are predominantly wealthy and white. This stereotype creates a serious challenge to responding to the legal needs of low-income LGBT people and LGBT people of color. The myth feeds the mistaken belief that LGBT people are generally able to hire private attorneys to adequately handle their legal matters. These assumptions have slowed poverty and racial justice organizations’ responsiveness to the struggles faced by LGBT people within their constituencies. Similarly, LGBT organizations that neglect poverty and racial diversity within LGBT communities reinforce longstanding disparities and decrease their organization’s range of impact.

There are many reasons to dismiss the stereotype of overwhelming affluence and whiteness within LGBT communities. At the outset, the common experiences of LGBT people create challenges that could easily lead to equal if not higher rates of poverty compared to their non-LGBT counterparts. Employment discrimination, lack of access to marriage, higher rates of being uninsured, and less family support increase LGBT communities’ economic vulnerability.

Hard data also contradict conventional wisdom. The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has found clear evidence that poverty is at least as common in the LGB population as among heterosexual people and their families.1 The Institute’s report analyzed data from three surveys to compare poverty (as defined by the federal poverty line) between LGB and heterosexual people: Census 2000, the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), and the 2003 & 2005 California Health Interview Surveys (CHIS).

National data indicate higher rates of poverty for lesbian and bisexual women, compared to heterosexual women, and roughly equal poverty rates between gay and bisexual men, compared to heterosexual men. Data from the NSFG for people from ages 18-44 revealed that 24% of lesbians and bisexual women are poor, compared with only 19% of heterosexual women. At 15%, gay and bisexual men have poverty rates equal to those of heterosexual men (13%).

According to Census 2000 data, poverty rates for people in same-sex couples are comparable to or higher than rates for married couples. When poverty rates are calculated for all members of the family, that is two adults and their children, the poverty rate for lesbian families is 9.4% compared to 6.7% for those in different-sex married couples and 5.5% for those in gay male coupled families.

Subsets of the LGB population face even higher poverty rates. African Americans in same-sex couples have poverty rates that are significantly higher than black people in different-sex married couples and are roughly three times higher than those of white people in same-sex couples. Latino and Latina same-sex parents have fewer financial resources to raise their children than those Latinos in married couples, with an average household income of $49,385 compared to $63,017.2 People in same-sex couples who live in rural areas have poverty rates that are twice as high as same-sex couples who live in large metropolitan areas. The rural same-sex couples are also poorer than people in different-sex married couples who live in rural areas.

The data sets analyzed by the Williams Institute do not include information about poverty rates within transgender communities, however a recent study indicates that transgender people face profound economic challenges. The Transgender Law Center commissioned a survey to gauge the well being of transgender people in California. In this survey transgender respondents were twice as likely to be living below the poverty line of $10,400 as compared to the general population.3 One in five respondents reported having been homeless since they first identified as transgender.

Contrary to stereotypes, the context of LGBT lives and demographic data confirm that many LGBT people face economic hardship. Advocates who wish to marshal organizational resources to serve low-income LGBT people or LGBT people of color may need to battle the assumption that LGBT people do not need no-cost legal services. The data and reports cited above provide useful information to dispel those myths, replacing them with a more realistic understanding of LGBT communities.

Conclusion: Ways to Support LGBT Communities

Legal aid attorneys play a critical role in ensuring that expanded legal protections have a real positive impact on diverse LGBT communities. There are a number of steps that legal advocates can take to make a difference. Those actions include participating in trainings to become knowledgeable about laws protecting LGBT people and ways to work effectively with LGBT clients. Legal aid organizations can make their office spaces friendly to LGBT people with visual cues such as posters, stickers or displayed resources that positively reflect LGBT people. It is also helpful for legal aid organizations to forge relationships with local LGBT organizations and activists to inform the larger community that the organization is a resource for LGBT people. Legal aid attorneys are also encouraged to reach out to LGBT legal groups to identify the most effective ways to address LGBT-related legal issues.

Lisa Cisneros is a Pride Law Fellow and attorney for Proyecto Poderoso, a joint project with California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. and NCLR. Cathy Sakimura is a staff attorney and Family Protection Project Coordinator with NCLR.

____________________________________
1 Randy Albelda, et al., Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community, May 2008, http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/pdf/LGBPovertyReport.pdf. Other demographic studies can be accessed at http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/Policy-index.html.

2 Williams Institute – University of California, Los Angeles, Census Snapshot: California’s Latino/Latina LGB Population, http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/CASnapshotLatino.pdf

3 View the full report, The State of Transgender California, March 2009, at http://transgenderlawcenter.org/pdf/StateofTransCAFINAL.pdf.

By Joel A. Brown

In the wake of Proposition 8 in California, much has been made about the growing polarity between the African-American population and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. The problem, however, is that most of the commentary has been sensational and divisive, rote and myopic. The importance of this topic goes beyond the social need for Blacks and Gays – and presumably, the entire country – to “just get along.” Within this dynamic lies the opportunity for both communities to help frame civil rights discourse in a way that is befitting of the 21st century.

To elevate the discussion regarding the cultural disconnect between the African-American and LGBT communities requires a bilateral approach, which looks at each group’s “cultural baseline,” or social, philosophical, and cultural pre-disposition to matters involving diversity and civil rights. The study of diversity and civil rights in this context is important because these are the two spheres in which disadvantaged groups have been able to argue effectively for social equality. The dialogue also requires a level of candor and intellectual discernment that is rarely offered when discussing inter-cultural dynamics, especially those between two “out groups,” or disadvantaged communities in the American socio-political landscape.

Diversity, in its earliest form, arose out of the cognitive need to make sense of our increasing heterogeneous society. As more and more groups became visible and actualized, the unifying concept for these particular groups was the idea of “culture” – something that was unequivocal, definable, and beyond biological.

Due to the compelling history and experience of Blacks in America, the very ideas of diversity and civil rights have been largely defined by African-Americans. African-Americans, specifically in relation to food, music, dance, and affect, are viewed as quintessentially emotional, exotic, and “cultural” while Europeans, often positioned at the other end of the cultural spectrum, are seen as being “a-cultural.” Given that the earliest precepts about diversity were spawned by the Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, African-Americans are seen as having been the first group to really introduce some tangible aspect to the America’s fluid concept of culture. As a result, any group seeking political efficacy in the wake of the 1960s Civil Right Movement has had to contend with an idea of culture that is tied rigidly to Blackness, and more specifically, ethnicity. Moreover, any group which wants to be thought of in terms of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” has had to align itself with a “cultural” definition that mirrors some bio-logically-determinative factor or ethnicity.

Additionally, the African-American experience has also been instructive for how we as a nation view civil rights jurisprudence. Case law interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment has established that any law that on its face treats people differently using the classification of race must be reviewed with “strict scrutiny.” In order to pass constitutional muster, the law must be narrowly tailored, serve a compelling governmental interest, and there must be no less-restrictive alternative available. The fact that race is given special treatment is by no accident. The theoretical underpinnings for Equal Protection Clause interpretation were created in response to the discrimination faced by African-Americans after the Civil War.1 As such, race has been accorded special legal significance because, as defined in the African-American context, it suggests immutability, relative powerlessness, and a profound vulnerability to discrimination.

This is not to say that civil rights laws are focused exclusively on race, or that civil rights claims based on other suspect classifications such as gender or age are not reviewed critically or skeptically. What it does suggest is that in any discussion of civil rights, the notion of race creates an enduring and sometimes imposing intellectual backdrop. Race acts as the gold standard for how we as a nation perceive civil rights and how we perceive the validity of any group’s claim to civil rights. Rightly or wrongly, African-Americans are seen as the shepherds of civil rights and the guardians of all things cultural. As a result, any group seeking legal and political enfranchisement will have their journey compared and contrasted to that of African-Americans.

Logically, the LGBT community, like many marginalized groups, has tried to adopt the political sensibilities of and associate itself politically with the African-American community. The conventional thought is that if African-Americans support civil rights for LGBT Americans, then the LGBT community will enjoy a type of cultural cache that it has not previously possessed. In other words, the hope is that mainstream America will come to view the lives of LGBT people in terms that truly reflect their everyday experience. Further, the hope of many LGBT activists is that if African-Americans act as guarantors for any LGBT civil rights agenda, then the success of LGBT civil rights initiatives will be a foregone conclusion.

My concern, however, is that a lot of well-intentioned LGBT activists have put the “horse before the cart,” and have failed to recognize the prevailing notions around “culture” and “civil rights,” before crafting and shaping their political campaigns. This also explains, in part, why neither the African-American nor LGBT community has fully ingratiated itself with the other. As a result, I offer the following short-list of best practices, with the unremitting goal of bridging the gaps in understanding between these two communities.

1) (more…)

On March 20, 2009, the Williams Institute of UCLA Law released a study demonstrating  that gay, lesbian, and bisexual (LGB) couples of color experience markedly higher rates of poverty then heterosexual and White LGB couples. “For example, white gay men in same-sex couples have poverty rates of 2.7%, compared to 4.5% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 14.4% of black and 19.1% of Native American gay men. While just under 6% (5.7%) of non-Hispanic lesbians are poor, that rate is more than tripled (19.1%) for Hispanic lesbians in couples.” Take a look at the complete study.