BY BTL STAFF
WASHINGTON D.C. – A national group dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through ideas and action launched an online campaign today to raise awareness of the financial penalties of being LGBT in America.
The Center for American Progress heads the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), an independent think tank that provides rigorous research, insight and analysis that helps to speed equality for LGBT people.
MAP released a promo-video today that discusses the financial burdens placed on an LGBT couple. The video explains how national, state and local laws contribute to significantly higher rates of poverty among LGBT Americans and create unfair financial penalties in the form of higher taxes, reduced wages and Social Security income, increased healthcare costs and much more.
A report released in September called "Paying An Unfair Price, The Financial Penalty for Being LGBT in America" explains that LGBT Americans have the same worries as other Americans when it comes to how they will cover the needs of their families. However, the LGBT population – which includes parents, workers, retirees, people of color and people with disabilities – faces another set of challenges on top of that.
For example, the legal inequality experienced by LGBT people results in lower incomes in an economy that is establishing higher costs for living in needs like housing, healthcare, health insurance and education.
MAP outlines three primary failures of law that financially penalize LGBT people.
1. Lack of protection from discrimination, which means that LGBT people can be fired, denied housing and refused medically-necessary healthcare because they are LGBT. The transgender community experiences difficulties obtaining accurate identity documents which could make it more difficult to secure employment, housing and much more.
2. Refusal to recognize LGBT families means that LGBT people are denied many of the same benefits granted to non-LGBT families when it comes to health insurance, taxes, safety-net programs and retirement planning.
3. Failure to adequately protect LGBT students means that LGBT people and families often face hostile, unsafe and unwelcoming environments in local schools as well as discrimination in accessing financial aid and other support.
The financial penalty for all three of these points is that LGBT are more likely to struggle to find work, make less on the job, have higher housing and medical costs, pay more for legal assistance and protections for families in a time of crisis, perform more poorly in school and face more challenges in pursuing postsecondary educational opportunities than their non-LGBT counterparts.
MAP does offer a solution. They ask that policymakers at all levels update laws to prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in areas of hiring to housing and credit, update how the laws and regulations define family so that LGBT families have access to the same protections and benefits that are allotted to non-LGBT families and take action in schools to make them safer and more welcoming for LGBT students and the children of LGBT parents.
