America — politically at least — has been making huge strides forward when it comes to LGBT rights and same-sex marriage issues. Same-sex marriage is now legal in 37 states. However, some states have decided to take a few steps back on a different issue.
In August 2014, Fayetteville, Arkansas passed a law that protected LGBT people from being discriminated against in the workplace. It was repealed in December, but the city wanted to reintroduce it.
In response, Arkansas state legislature passed a bill on Friday that blocks cities and towns in Arkansas from creating laws that protect LGBT people and others from discrimination in the workplace. Basically, they don’t want anyone deviating from the statewide policy.
Back in 2011, Tennessee created a similar law as Arkansas, banning individual local governments from enacting protections for LGBT people in the workplace.
According to the ACLU, only 17 states currently have non-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace, and three states have protections for only sexual orientation. Without these protections, perfectly qualified LGBT people can be fired or not hired from jobs on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity alone.
Arkansas tried to rationalize their law by saying it’s good for business. This law creates uniformity in workplace discrimination standards, although I wouldn’t say uniformity in being allowed to discriminate is a good thing.
Arkansas Sen. Bart Hester, who proposed the bill, acknowledged that while LGBT people do get discriminated against, so does everyone else. He gets discriminated against for being a politician and for being married to one woman and that no one should have rights that he doesn’t have. Too bad Hester will never have to worry that the reason he was fired from his job was because of the fact that he was a politician or that he was married to one woman.
Protections in the workplace are not giving special rights to people. Protections are there to equalize the playing field. The legislation that Arkansas and Tennessee passed not only hurts LGBT groups, but also any other group that might need protection, such as students or veterans.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about navigating the professional workplace as a queer person. Teachers have it especially difficult because they are highly visible. Not only do they have to worry about backlash from administrators, but also from students and parents.
As a heterosexual teacher, you don’t need to worry about mentioning your spouse or children in the classroom. Teachers do it all the time. Telling anecdotes about your life outside of school is a good way to build relationships with students.
As a queer teacher, you have to worry about revealing your personal life. Choosing to be out may make some students disrespect you or not take you seriously. If a parent finds out about your sexual orientation or gender identity, they may be disgruntled and start backlash, even though you mentioned your personal life in the same way as your heterosexual or cisgender counterpart.
For some reason, though, when queer people mention their same-sex relationships or gender identities, it’s somehow misconstrued that we are throwing our sex lives in others’ faces and flaunting our love. It’s a double standard we’ve had to learn to live with.
You are always walking on eggshells. This not only harms the teacher, but also their students. Not only will a queer teacher’s restrictions — self-imposed or not — distract a teacher from their job (teaching). Students will also lose out on opportunities of enrichment.
This is not the teacher’s fault. The answer is not to fire the teacher for something that they don’t have control over, especially because they could be a great teacher otherwise. Having protections in place will hopefully help relieve the teacher of some worry. When the social climate changes, the classroom climate will also improve.
The Arkansas House of Representatives also passed a bill on Friday that protects religious freedom. It still has to go to the Arkansas Senate, but it would prevent any individual from being forced to act against their religious beliefs.
So Arkansas doesn’t want to protect LGBT people from discrimination because that would be giving them special treatment, but then passes a bill that gives people with religious beliefs special treatment?
I can almost understand the plight of the Christian baker who doesn’t want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. Almost. And honestly, if I were getting married, I probably wouldn’t want that baker to make my cake anyways. But something about giving people the right to refuse service to certain groups of people is reminiscent of a time in history we are trying to move forward from.
Adding religion into the mix gets messy. But until the climate changes and religions become more accepting of LGBT people — as some have already done — then we have to find a way to manage both. The answer though, is not to continue discriminating against LGBT people.
