For LGBT people, no day is routine
Routine activities can be daunting
Community faces discrimination around every corner, study shows
Hopping a city bus on the way to work. Meeting a pal for coffee on a sleepy Saturday morning. Hitting the gym for kickboxing class. Catching the latest blockbuster at the cineplex.
The daily drill that punctuates our lives.
For the LGBT community, it is those everyday activities that can leave people feeling the barbs of bias, a new study shows — and many are forced to rethink routines.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect people from discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the report released Tuesday by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a think tank that researches and analyzes laws with LGBT implications.
Fifty-four years after passage of the Civil Rights Act and 28 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act, there is no federal law that offers similar protections for LGBT people.
“People don’t understand the breadth of what public accommodations are and what they cover,” said Ineke Mushovic, MAP executive director. “It’s all our activities and daily lives when not at home, at work, at school.”
The inaction at the state and federal level, the MAP report says, shows a disconnect. There is broad public support for non-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation and gender identity:
72% of Americans back protections for LGBT people for jobs, housing and public accommodations, according to nonpartisan research group PRRI.
The report makes clear how discrimination can disrupt daily behavior others take for granted and leave people feeling unsafe and unwelcome:
34% of LGBT people who experienced discrimination avoided public places such as stores and restaurants.
47% made specific decisions about where to shop.
18% avoided doctors’ offices.
10% avoided public transit. The report comes amid high-profile legal skirmishes over LGBT rights.
Last Monday, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a battle over a Mississippi law that lets government workers and private businesses cite religious beliefs to deny services to LGBT people.
A high court decision is likely in the spring in another notable case: a Colorado baker’s refusal to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Supporters of religious exemptions said LGBT people are not being singled out. “Religious bakers, florists, photographers and others ... have not denied services to LGBT people because of their status as LGBT,” said Bruce Hausknecht, judicial spokesperson at the socially conservative group Focus on the Family, “but because the services being asked of them forced them to violate their conscience by promoting or participating in something contrary to their religious beliefs.”
LGBT people who have felt the sting of discrimination see it differently.
Randall Magill, 28, and fiancé Jose Chavez, 26, were returning home in an Uber from a holiday gathering on the raw morning of Dec. 31 when they shared “a little kiss.”
What happened next rattled the couple. “I’m going to have to ask you to stop that. We at Uber don’t allow any kissing,” Magill said the driver told them.
The driver told Magill he had given a straight couple the same warning, but Magill said it seemed obvious the two were being targeted.
“He was in such a rush to get us out of the car, he didn’t wait to get to a stoplight,” Chavez said. They were dropped on a feeder road off the interstate. It was raining, one of their phones had died, it was 4 a.m.
The two were able to get another Uber home. They logged a complaint and were told what they experienced was not the ride-hailing service’s policy.
Uber told USA TODAY it does not tolerate discrimination and has been in touch with the riders and driver.
For the couple, the incident haunts. “It’s in the back of our heads,” Magill said.
Aryah Lester, a transgender woman of color, arrived in Miami in 2005. She said she and a friend went to about a dozen hotels along the sunny shores of South Beach and were told there were no vacancies. It hit home what was happening, Lester said, when they watched another couple stroll up to one hotel and “they didn’t have a reservation — and were immediately given a room.”
“I had money,” Lester said. “But being visibly transgender, we couldn’t find anywhere to stay.”
Lester, 38, is the founder of TransMiami and a prominent activist. Thirteen years later, she can still feel unsettled. “Even being a national advocate and a locally known leader, I can get anxiety just walking out my front door.”
Paula Sophia Schonauer, a 22-year veteran of the Oklahoma City Police Department and the agency’s first openly transgender officer, recounts an incident shortly after she was transitioning in 2001.
Schonauer had her daughter and son, 3 and 11 at the time, with her at a local restaurant when she was off-duty. When her little girl had to use the women’s room, Schonauer went with her. When she walked out she says she could feel the burn of “the staff talking, people looking at me. I felt uncomfortable.”
And when she returned to work, she learned someone had reported the incident to her precinct supervisors. The next time she visited a local mall she realized security was keeping close tabs on her. “They were waiting to see what restroom I used,” Schonauer said.
Schonauer started “scoping out” places where she could use the restroom and avoiding others where she didn’t feel safe. The result: She soon developed a urinary tract infection.
It is these everyday activities that can leave people the most at risk, MAP’s Mushovic said. And there is a “lingering effect” once you experience discrimination that can force retrenching of routines. “It’s not just about a cake shop or a florist,” she said. “Are you comfortable stopping by the pizza shop on the way home from work?”