A coalition of local and national agencies launched this week to organize business support for legislation to ban LGBT discrimination in Pennsylvania.
PA Competes is a new effort spearheaded by Equality Pennsylvania, the state and national chapters of American Civil Liberties Union, American Unity Fund, Gill Action and Human Rights Campaign. The campaign is designed to mobilize support from businesses large and small across the state in favor of adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s nondiscrimination law.
“The bottom line is that in order to be prosperous, our state has to appeal to as large an audience as possible, in terms of customers and employees,” said PA Competes board president and Equality PA executive director Ted Martin, who noted that all 23 of the Fortune 500 companies located in Pennsylvania have already enacted LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination policies. “They made that leap to say that they don’t discriminate a long time ago, long before the legislature, because they know this makes good business sense. That’s the message PA Competes is trying to get across.”
The website includes information about the current state of LGBT nondiscrimination in Pennsylvania, including a review of the 34 municipalities that have enacted their own ordinances and statistics about the overwhelming public support for such measures. It lists the 31 businesses that signed on to support the campaign as it launched and encourages businesses and individuals to sign a pledge in support of amending the state law.
Martin said coalition partners will also work on the ground to get the message out.
“We’re going to focus on winning business support but also on working closely with Republicans so we can get as broad a coalition as possible of people looking to win nondiscrimination,” he said. “We’re going to have a large field presence and Equality PA will also be using our efforts and our work to move both the legislature and the public on this issue.”
LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination legislation, led by state Rep. Dan Frankel (D-23rd Dist.) and state Sen. Larry Farnese (D-First Dist.), has long been stalled in both houses of the legislature. The bills’ reintroduction is expected shortly.