This week’s PGN carries a story about a lesbian couple who was refused service at a bridal-dress shop in Pennsylvania.
It’s almost hard to fathom that, in 2017, such situations still exist — and it’s even harder to grasp that such businesses have a license to discriminate.
Pennsylvania continues to lack an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination law. Despite years of debates and lobbying, Pennsylvania’s legislature has yet to advance legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the listed of classes protected from discrimination. The Keystone State holds the unenviable distinction as the only state in the Northeast to lack an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination law.
So when this shop owner freely admitted to the lesbian couple that, essentially, she couldn’t serve their kind, she was within her right to do so. While LGBT bias continues to be challenged in court, without a statewide law explicitly stating that people cannot be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, there remains little recourse.
Supporters of the store owner applauded her on social media for her supposed refusal to compromise her religious beliefs. Would those same people have clapped her on the back a few decades ago if she shrouded her prejudice against interracial couples in religious convictions? (We don’t want to know the answer.) Race-based discrimination was rightfully prohibited by law, as was bias motivated by other factors like religion; it’s ironic that the store owner’s chosen faith is protected, while LGBT customers’ intrinsic identity is not.
While the state may not be encouraging shop owners like the one in Bloomsburg to actively discriminate against LGBT people, it’s certainly not doing anything to stop it. We have a governor who supports LGBT nondiscrimination and a sea of allies in the legislature — but the Republican majority continues to stonewall this vital legislation.
LGBT discrimination is often discussed as an intangible concept; we know it exists — some of us may have experienced it personally — but it’s somewhat of a nebulous idea. However, the bias-motivated treatment the Bloomsburg couple received when trying to go about their daily lives is anything but intangible.
Discrimination is very real — as is the need for action from our elected officials.