The TransAdvocate crew records live in Houston’s Montrose. Today’s topics include the stupidity of the Trump administration, an awesome hip-hop track the rapper MIC did for the TransAdvocate, and we talk about World AIDS Day coming up on December 1st.
On the Pod: Cristan Williams, Robin Mack, and Alexis Melvin.
Subscribe to the TransAdvocate Podcasts and Audio Essays here:
The US Commission on Civil Rights released 2017 brief titled. Working for Inclusion: Time for Congress to Enact Federal Legislation to Address Workplace Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Americans. Established in 1957 by the Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is the only independent, bipartisan federal agency charged with advising the President and Congress on civil rights matters. Their report basically repudiated the Trump Administration’s efforts to eviscerate the civil rights of LGBTQIA Americans. Key findings and recommendations from a majority of the Commission include:
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) workers have faced a long, serious, and pervasive history of official and unofficial employment discrimination by federal, state, and local governments and private employers.
Federal data sources do not effectively capture rates of LGBT employment or rates of LGBT employment discrimination.
An inconsistent and irreconcilable patchwork of state laws against anti-LGBT workplace discrimination and federal court decisions interpreting existing law render LGBT employees insufficiently protected from workplace discrimination.
Congress should immediately enact a federal law explicitly banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Federal data sources such as the Census, American Community Survey, and federal agency surveys should include sexual orientation and gender identity questions in population-based surveys of the workforce.
Federal agencies should issue or, where relevant, reaffirm specific guidance for federal and private employers outlining protections for LGBT employees, including specifically enumerating protections for transgender persons.
Chair Catherine E. Lhamon said, “Living up to the American ideal of fairness and equity demands federal statutory protection for LGBT employees, actively and consistently enforced across the federal government and lived in employees’ workplace experience. We call on Congress to act now to ensure that it leaves no gap in the fabric of federal civil rights protection for LGBT employees.”
Cristan Williams is a trans historian and pioneer in addressing the practical needs of the transgender community. She started the first trans homeless shelter in the South and co-founded the first federally funded trans-only homeless program, pioneered affordable healthcare for trans people in the Houston area, won the right for trans people to change their gender on Texas ID prior to surgery, started numerous trans social service programs and founded the Transgender Center as well as the Transgender Archives. Cristan is the editor at the social justice sites TransAdvocate.com and TheTERFs.com, is a long-term member and previous chair of the City of Houston HIV Prevention Planning Group.
