Five LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations are working together to host town halls across the state throughout October and November. Their goal is to educate the public about issues LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians are facing and to introduce communities to various local, statewide and national efforts for LGBTQ+ progress.
Representatives from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Pennsylvania Youth Congress, and Keystone Equality hosted the first of ten sessions at William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia on Oct. 17. Representatives from the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Equality Project will also take part in future gatherings.
Approximately 15 people were in attendance at this first gathering, including leaders from various LGBTQ+ organizations who planned to gather information at the event to help them establish programming and other goals. Here’s what you missed:
Liz Bradbury of Keystone Equality, a statewide grassroots political action organization, spoke about how she led a local council in writing a county-wide nondiscrimination ordinance — work that began four years ago.
“It’s absolutely the most progressive municipal nondiscrimination law in the state, and it triumphantly passed in February,” she said of the Lehigh Valley ordinance, which went into effect in June 2024.
Just two other counties — Erie and Allegheny — out of 67 have implemented county-wide nondiscrimination protections, and 76 out of over 2500 municipalities have passed similar laws. But those laws, Bradbury said, need to be updated — as they aren’t inclusive of the diversity that’s reflected in the Lehigh Valley ordinance.
Many, she noted, lack a broad enough scope when defining protected classes. Although some include gender identity and sexual orientation, the Lehigh Valley law expands protected classes to include other groups of people who often face discrimination — including people who face discrimination regarding height and weight, independent contractors, Green Card holders, domestic violence survivors, nursing parents and other vulnerable people.
“The most significant thing that this law includes — and [this] goes way beyond the state law and other large municipalities, including the law in Philadelphia,” she said. “It protects all workers — not just those businesses that have four employees or more.”
This is especially crucial, Bradbury explained, given that the statewide nondiscrimination law — the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act — leaves many Pennsylvania workers vulnerable because it only applies to businesses with four or more employees. In Lehigh Valley, this left 50% of workers unprotected.
Bradbury believes it will take “a long time” before the Fairness Act becomes state law, making these county-wide and municipal efforts especially impactful for local communities. She hopes leaders in other areas will use Lehigh Valley’s law as a template to enact their own versions.
“It’s ready to go. It’s up to date. It’s been vetted by the state. It’s been vetted by the federal government, folks,” she said. “The language is there, and it can be tweaked to work for any municipality.”
Despite a misconception that especially small communities cannot self-govern in this way, Bradbury emphasized that any county or municipality — no matter the size — can pass these laws.
Bradbury is especially interested in passing ordinances in Northampton County, Bucks County, and Montgomery County. She said this will increase the number of people protected from 35% to 55% of Pennsylvanians.
“A lot of this work is happening at the local level with all these local nondiscrimination protections, and it also translates to our 500 school districts,” said Jason Landau Goodman of the Pennsylvania Youth Congress.
They mentioned that while some districts and school leaders have pursued training to become more queer-competent, written policy is the only reliable means of protecting LGBTQ+ students and teachers if something goes wrong in their districts.
“You need both the education and the policy together,” said Landau Goodman, who noted that passing laws will change behaviors which inevitably shifts culture and acceptance. “That’s how we’ll get equity, inclusion and equality.”
Landau Goodman explained that much of the work happening on behalf of schools has been defensive strategies in Harrisburg and in local communities to prevent proposed laws that would negatively impact students from passing. This has included trans sports bans, book bans, Don’t Say Gay bills, and more.
They underlined that communities can take a more proactive approach instead — by passing local laws and implementing school policies that protect LGBTQ+ kids in your neighborhoods.
Even though it is a state regulation to include sexual orientation in school nondiscrimination, harassment and anti-bullying policies, some districts still fail to include those students and even more districts do not have policies that offer workplace protections to LGBTQ+ employees.
Gender identity is more significantly neglected. There isn’t a state mandate that requires schools to include that language in any policies, and Landau Goodman noted that under 10% of schools have chosen to do so.
This has a tangible effect. The South Western School District recently installed a window to a gender neutral restroom for middle schoolers so that passersby could monitor students. The school quickly boarded up the window following community outrage, but the district has been known for targeting trans students.
A 2021 GLSEN report shows that discrimination and harassment are major problems in Pennsylvania schools for LGBTQ+ students — and that trans students have had especially negative experiences. GLSEN’s data notes that 56% of trans students were not able to use bathrooms that align with their gender and 48% were prevented from using a chosen name and pronouns.
“Chances are you know stories and are really understanding how personal this is to people in our community, to your families, to your friends,” said Landau Goodman. “It is important that we are figuring out how to solve this — because it’s not just another issue. These are people’s lives.”
At multiple points throughout the meeting, one community member continued to focus on the topic of gender identity, especially as it pertains to trans girls and women in sports.
“I think — I mean, that’s a larger conversation for a whole other town hall,” said Landau Goodman, before explaining that gender and sexuality both exist on an infinite spectrum.
This became a heated conversation, as this community member continued to perpetuate problematic narratives backed by misinformation about unfair advantages linked to puberty and testosterone. Other community members noted that scholarly research doesn’t support those claims.
This highlights the importance of educating people within the queer community about those who are most marginalized within it and of figuring out together what it means to support each other since people’s experiences and struggles differ from across intersections.
Landau Goodman also explained that cisgender student athletes have spoken to Pennsylvania legislators about the issue — standing up for the trans girls on their teams and explaining that they feel empowered by inclusivity.
Another community member noted the importance of remembering the stories of trans girls who have been negatively impacted by transphobic rhetoric and of forcing leaders to answer to tragedies.
Ryan Matthews, HRC’s Pennsylvania State Director, said Americans should expect to hear guidance from the Biden administration regarding trans inclusion in sports — as this is the last of 12 items on an HRC-established to-do list of actions the administration could take without passing any laws to improve the lived experience of LGBTQ+ people.
A community member noted interest in establishing a similar to-do list for state and local governments. The HRC already offers state and municipal scorecards that community leaders can use to establish goals.
Matthews noted that the HRC is currently paying close attention to the election and is focused on trying to pass the Equality Act — which would establish nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people at the federal level and create more uniform guidelines for nondiscrimination standards across all protected classes.
Some of the work the HRC is doing is “fixing unintended consequences,” Matthews noted — explaining that previously implemented policies have had negative impacts on groups of people who weren’t considered when those regulations and standards were put in place.
He urged Pennsylvanians to pay attention to conversations that are happening at the national level but not to rely on any Supreme Court rulings and other federal protections to keep LGBTQ+ people safe.
“No national protections are a reason for not having state or local protections,” Matthews underlined.
