By Audrey Cooney, news correspondent
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an organization aimed at protecting the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals, recently awarded Boston a perfect score on the 2014 Municipal Equality Index (MEI).
According to the HRC website, the MEI is calculated using data that takes into consideration how well a city’s “laws, policies, benefits, and services” protect its LGBT citizens. Workers for the HRC evaluated whether or not each city has anti-discrimination laws; recognition of same-sex relationships; equality in employment, including partner benefits, family leave and transgender-inclusive health benefits; municipal programs and positions meant to benefit the LGBT community; either a liaison to the police department on behalf of the LGBT community or a task force for the purpose of protecting these individuals; and an overall ranking of the relationship between city officials and LGBT citizens.
Cities could earn up to 100 standard points and 20 bonus points. Of the nine Massachusetts cities to be ranked, Cambridge and Worcester also achieved perfect scores.
The average for Massachusetts cities was 78 points, significantly higher than the national average of 59 points.
While the MEI is meant to evaluate a city’s laws and does not necessarily represent how welcoming a city’s atmosphere is to the LGBT community, some people do see a correlation. Rachel Tenenbaum, Resident Student Association (RSA) representative for NU Pride, believes that Boston’s unofficial stance towards LGBT individuals matches up with the one encouraged by its legislation.
“Even before I moved to Boston to attend Northeastern, I had heard really good things about its treatment of LGBTQ people, so I had pretty high expectations,” Tenenbaum said in an email to The News. “From my experiences here so far, they’ve definitely been met. I know Boston’s laws are pretty inclusive of LGBTQ people, and I’ve noticed that most people are pretty liberal and accepting, or even just tolerant – which, while I would prefer them to be outwardly accepting, is a big step from a lot of other places in America.”
Min Le, a staff member at Northeastern’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and asexual (LGBTQA) Resource Center, agrees that Boston’s atmosphere toward this specific group is a positive one.
“I definitely think, out of American cities as a whole, Boston’s probably one of the best choices, especially if you want to be out and about,” Le said, going on to add that the large number of college students living in the city, a demographic that tends to have liberal viewpoints, helps contribute to the overall sense of welcoming.
Others, however, feel that this ranking is a poor way to measure how welcome LGBT individuals are in a community. Suzanna Walters, director of Northeastern’s department of Women, Gender and Sexuality studies, spoke on the idea of measuring a city’s equality by looking at present legislation.
“Certainly those things are essential to creating an environment that is gay-friendly in some way,” Walters said. “But the idea that something as profound as feeling a sense of belonging in a place, or a sense of real citizenship, or community, the idea that those things could be measured by simple indexes of marriage rights, for example, or rights of employment, is just too thin a measure.”
Additionally, nothing in the index’s criteria measures rates of crimes against the LGBT community.
“It’s not a very gay-friendly place if there’s a culture of sexual violence and rape cultures on campuses,” Walters said.
Devon Branin, a junior sociology major and member of NU Pride, agrees that the index can be misleading and even exclusive of certain LGBT people.
“I mean, I’m all for having an ‘LGBT Liaison to City Executive,’ but what about ensuring that transgender people have the right to use a bathroom congruent with their gender identity?” Branin said in an email to The News. “In practice, how does the law actually handle reports of same-sex partner abuse?”
According to Bruce Bell, public engagement and information manager at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) Boston, the city does have protections for its LGBT citizens, but it is still lacking in some places.
“The City has a Human Rights Commission and has established protections for gay people and for transgender people, including gender identity protections in public accommodations and bathrooms (the state of Massachusetts has also established protections, but there are no explicit protections yet for gender identity in public accommodations), and recently Boston provided coverage for the treatment of gender dysphoria in all the health plans for city employees,” Bell said in an email to The News. “That said, city ordinances do not offer the same level of protection as state laws, but they do set the tone for how citizens, employers, businesses and landlords should treat people. Massachusetts has very strong LGBT anti-discrimination laws at the state level to back up the city ordinances.”
Some also criticize the HRC for its history of neglecting more marginalized members of the LGBT community. In the past, the organization has come under fire for failing to advocate for transgender individuals on the same level that it protects gays and lesbians.
“HRC is a mainstream, and in some cases fairly conservative, gay rights group,” Walters said. “It is largely run and staffed [by] and directed towards white, wealthy, male constituents.”
In 2007, the organization came under attack for supporting a version of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that would excuse employers from discrimination based on gender identity. While HRC’s official stance was that this measure would increase the bill’s likelihood of being passed, and assured those voicing concerns that additions to the bill could be made later to protect the employment rights of transgender individuals, many criticized the move as an example of transgender exclusion even from a movement supposedly meant to advocate for those with marginalized identities.
In recent years, the HRC has worked to improve its standing with the transgender community. A revision of this year’s grading standards changed transgender-inclusive health care for employers from an opportunity for bonus points to a mandatory measure in order to receive a perfect score.
The HRC’s report also fails to address the rampant issue of homelessness within the LGBT community, especially among youth and transgender individuals. According to an article published by GLAD, 40 percent of homeless youth who seek help with aid agencies identify as LGBT, largely resulting from a lack of acceptance of their identity in their homes. A disproportionate amount of homeless individuals identify as transgender, often having been rendered homeless by discrimination and rejection from their homes. Additionally, transgender individuals often also face harassment at the shelters meant to serve as a refuge and face the prospect of shelters that lack policies needed to protect their rights, according to GLAD. The HRC fails to mention this in its MEI ranking criteria.
While anti-discrimination laws are a valid measure of equality, they often fail to take into account issues of intersectionality and how it plays into the marginalization of individuals, according to Walters.
“Those things are important, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of those things aren’t very relevant for people already doubly marginalized in terms of racial inequities and gender inequities,” Walters said
Branin criticized the idea of the MEI entirely. By creating an index by which progress could be objectively scored, they think the HRC has failed to take into account deep-running systematic issues that reach beyond a simple list.
“I guess the HRC just wants to grade us on what laws we have in practice, theoretically,” Branin said. “But that’s just talk, and it kind of ignores how well these laws actually work. I don’t think it’s a good thing to make progress for equality into a checklist of laws. I can’t speak personally about what, specifically, Boston could do better, but I worry that ‘perfect scores’ lull us into a sense of false security, that makes us think as a city we’re free from systemic bias against gender nonconforming people.”
Tenenbaum agrees that such biases must be taken into account as well as issues of intersectionality: how different identities overlap and translate into privilege versus oppression.
“Everywhere, especially in America, we have a lot of work to do to make people more aware of social justice issues – not just LGBTQ issues, but those pertaining to sexism, racism, classism and the many other overlapping identities and minorities that people identify as,” Tenenbaum said. “Only when people are aware of these issues and actively working towards fixing them can we consider giving out perfect scores.”
While Boston’s perfect score on the equality index, as well as the overall national increase in points earned, point to a growing acceptance for the LGBT community, society has not yet archived full inclusion of its LGBT members.
“Hearing that some cities received perfect scores reminded me of how people think we live in a ‘post-racial’ or ‘post-gay rights’ society; people applaud themselves for thinking that we’ve moved past the horrific treatment of minorities,” Tenenbaum said. “Sadly, this is simply not true. We have a very long way to go.”
Photo courtesy Kay Rhodes, Creative Commons
