NEW YORK – Even as they celebrate epic victories in the push for marriage equality, gay-rights activists acknowledge that other difficult issues remain on their agenda. There’s the persistent high rate of HIV infections, the struggles to expand transgender rights and the striking fact that, even in some states allowing same-sex marriage, people can lose their job for being gay.
“There’s absolutely no good reason – if you can get married – why you should be denied a hotel room or a job,” said Fred Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign. “There will be a fair number of states where you can get married and be fired the same day for having gotten married.”
Anti-LGBT discrimination is among several issues likely to gain more attention following the Supreme Court’s Oct. 6 decision to turn away appeals by five states seeking to preserve their bans on same-sex marriage.
As a whole, the LGBT population is elated by the expansion of gay marriage. Yet, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, nearly 40 percent of the LGBT respondents said the marriage issue had drawn too much attention away from other concerns.
A look at some of the challenges that remain:
HIV/AIDS
While marriage developments have kindled joy in the gay community, news regarding HIV and AIDS is sobering.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gay and bisexual men, who represent about 2 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for 62 percent of new HIV infections. Each year, about 50,000 new infections are tallied.
Many AIDS activists and health professionals hope the infection rate can be slashed through wider use of Truvada, a drug that has proven effective in protecting uninfected men who engage in gay sex. The CDC has endorsed the preventive use of Truvada; so have many big-city health departments.
Nondiscrimination
For all their advances, activists remain deeply frustrated by the lack of federal legislation barring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
A long-sought bill called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act finally passed the Senate last November, with 10 Republicans joining majority Democrats in a 64-32 vote. But GOP leaders in the House have not taken up the measure.
Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has been trying to orchestrate a “discharge petition” that would force the bill to the floor for a vote. It would need nearly 20 GOP votes as well as solid Democratic backing.
“We should have a federal statute,” said Polis, who is gay. “You shouldn’t be able to be fired based on who you love.”
Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign said there will be an aggressive push for a national, comprehensive LGBT civil-rights bill that would seek anti-bias protections even beyond the workplace – in realms such as housing and access to credit.
Transgender rights
Transgender-rights activists view their own array of causes in a good-news, bad-news context.
There’s relief over some recent legal victories for people who lost jobs because they were transgender. And there’s encouragement over the positive portrayals of transgender characters on TV shows such as “Orange is the New Black” and “Transparent.”
“There’s definitely more visibility than ever, and that’s wonderful,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the California-based Transgender Law Center. “But, a minority of Americans know a transgender person, and that makes us somewhat vulnerable.”
Davis said negative stereotypes are still widespread, and violence persists – notably attacks on black and Hispanic transgender women. Another problem, he said, is that many transgender people have difficulty getting needed health care.
