In an effort to combat the reality that in Pennsylvania and many other states, LGBT people are not protected from discrimination, Equality Pennsylvania, along with LGBT groups from around the country, has launched a week-long education campaign to highlight these glaring legal loopholes.
Nationally, the campaign will be known as #DiscriminationExists and center around the fact that, despite recent victories in marriage equality, many states still need to update their laws to protect LGBT people from discrimination.
Locally, Equality PA launched the Campaign for Fairness Tuesday to raise awareness that Pennsylvania’s nondiscrimination law does not include protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
A press conference to announce the effort at the National Constitution Center was cancelled because of this week’s threat of snow. Campaign organizers hosted a press event Tuesday afternoon in Scranton focusing on the efforts small business owners planned to undertake this year to get a nondiscrimination bill passed and a business networking breakfast in Harrisburg on Wednesday. Gov. Tom Wolf attended the breakfast, calling for lawmakers to bring the legislation up for a vote and pledging to sign it if it reached his desk.
A prayer breakfast for nondiscrimination is scheduled for Monday in Pittsburgh.
“Really and truly the campaign for fairness has been going on for a while,” said Equality PA executive director Ted Martin. “We have been working hard to educate the public and elected officials on where Pennsylvania stands. This week marks the renewal of our efforts in 2015.”
Martin noted that his organization had signed up 400 small businesses and 700 clergy to demonstrate their support for including LGBT people in the state’s nondiscrimination law.
“We are making sure the public is aware of the issue,” said Martin. “The problem is many people think it is already taken care of.”
And that assumption, Martin said, is a problem statewide.
“It is really everywhere. Perhaps the people that live in areas that do have protections think that, of course, everyone is protected.”
Gaps in state discrimination laws leave LGBT people vulnerable to being fired from a job, turned away from a business or evicted from a home — just for sexual orientation or gender identity. In Pennsylvania, that gap is exacerbated by the state’s lack of hate-crimes protection for LGBT individuals, anti-bullying laws and more.
Pennsylvania ranked in HRC’s lowest category, “High priority to achieve basic equality,” which adds the Keystone State to the ranks of other behind-the-curve states that have laws that undermine LGBT equality, criminalize HIV and sodomy and sanction religious-based discrimination.
“It is troubling,” Martin said about the rating, “but not unexpected. I don’t think it is something that I walk away from disgusted, rather I see it as an opportunity.”
Martin joked that his goal is to work himself out of business.
“People are understanding these issues more, and LGBT people are emerging in the public view in a much greater way,” he said. “But my job will not be over until there is real, complete and clear equality across the state.”
For more information on the Campaign for Fairness, visit CampaignforFairnessPA.org. Learn more about the national effort at DiscriminationExists.org.