Suchergebnisse

The California Fair Employment Practices and Housing Act (―FEHA‖) prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, in both public and private employment as well as housing. Despite having strong state laws in place, discrimination against LGBT state and local government employees has been well documented.

In 2001, Maryland enacted legislation that prohibits discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in employment, housing, and public accommodations.1 The laws of Montgomery County and Baltimore City also include gender identity as a protected class. Similar legislation has been proposed in the Maryland legislature, but has not passed.

Hawaii Revised Statutes Section 378, the Fair Employment Practices Act (the "Act"), prohibits public and private employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, color, ancestry, sexual orientation, disability, genetic information, marital status or arrest and court record. Legislation that would have added gender identity to the Act's list of protected categories passed in the Legislature but was vetoed by Governor Linda Lingle.

Approximately 159,000 LGBT workers in North Carolina are not expressly protected from discrimination under state or federal laws. At least 14 localities in the state offer some protections for LGBT workers through local ordinances or personnel policies, however, these laws apply only to local government employees. As a result, 98% of North Carolina's workforce has no explicit legal protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Public opinion in the state supports the passage of statewide legal protections for LGBT people. Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to existing statewide non-discrimination laws would result in 58 additional complaints being filed in the state each year; 50 filed by private sector workers in the courts, and eight filed administratively by government workers. The cost of enforcing the additional complaints would be negligible, and would not require additional court or administrative staff.

In 2006, the Washington legislature enacted a bill adding protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to its state civil rights law, initially passed in 1949. Advocates had been trying to pass this legislation for 30 years, but were consistently met with strong opposition in the legislature. The first bill protecting individuals from sexual orientation discrimination was introduced in Washington in 1977. In 1986, gay rights opponents in Washington introduced proposals that would ban gays and lesbians from working in schools and government offices. These proposals were defeated in committee.

There is no state-wide statute in Arizona that protects its LGBT citizens from employment discrimination in either the public or private sectors. Five municipalities have extended such protection through local ordinances. Those ordinances are inconsistent, however, with regard to inclusion of gender identity protection. In recent years there has been considerable debate in Arizona about the extension of partner benefits to public sector employees, but there is currently no such protection for state government employees. Indicia of hostility and animus toward gay people have surfaced during legislative consideration of these proposals.

Oklahoma has no state legislation that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. As late as 1990, Oklahoma laws included a statute prohibiting employment of openly gay teachers in public schools. One state agency and one county in Oklahoma have instituted policies prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation: the state Attorney General's office and Oklahoma County. In 2005, a bill was introduced in the Oklahoma legislature to rescind both of these policies. Although the bill failed, Oklahoma County removed sexual orientation from its published employment non-discrimination policy.

While, in 1998, New Orleans became one of the earliest cities in the United States to pass a local ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination, repeated attempts to pass state legislation that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression have all failed. For example, in 2008, the most recent attempt to protect LGBT rights in the employment context failed to make it out of its first committee in the state House of Representatives and the effort to pass the legislation was subsequently abandoned. In 2008, a bill was also introduced that would have just protected state employees from sexual orientation discrimination. That bill too failed to make it out of its first committee.

Efforts to enact a law banning workplace discrimination against gay men and lesbians in Oregon began in 1973, and such legislation was introduced in every one of the 17 regular legislative sessions between 1973 and 2007. In 2005, the Senate passed an omnibus anti-discrimination bill, but the bill died in the House. Finally, in 2007, a comprehensive anti-discrimination law was enacted. The new law, which defines sexual orientation to include gender identity, took effect January 1, 2008. Oregon Ballot Measure 145, which was meant to overturn the Oregon Equality Act, was withdrawn before November 2008. Its proponents stated they would not have enough time to gather the signatures required by the deadline. It was the most recent of dozens of attempts to repeal or prevent anti-discrimination laws to protect LGBT people in Oregon.

On July 2, 2009, Delaware added the term "sexual orientation" to the already-existing list of protected categories; the statute now prohibits discrimination against a person on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, public works contracting, public accommodations, and insurance. It does not include gender identity, although an executive order does. Prior to 2009, the Delaware legislature repeatedly attempted and failed to enact legislation aimed at ending discrimination against gays in employment, public housing, public accommodation, insurance and public contracts. Despite the fact that the Delaware Division of Industrial Affairs had received more than 500 complaints of employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or association with an individual based on sexual orientation by 1999, bills to prevent such discrimination failed each year between 1998 and 2009.

The purpose of my project is to foster critical discussions of the on-line social networking site Facebook by analyzing gender politics as mechanisms used on Facebook to include or restrict acceptance of users. I implement a gender-queer methodology in my work. This methodology complicates traditional understandings of sex and gender, and views them as a fluid continuum where one might exist anywhere between male and female, and beyond. In lieu of a traditional academic paper, I have made the conscious choice to execute my methods, methodology, and critique into an art piece. This serves an important purpose of making my work more accessible. Often in the field of women's and gender studies, feminist work, is unreadable by non-feminists. By making this project visual and interactive, I hope to inspire fellow feminists to work in similar ways. I have constructed my artwork on two large pieces of foam board. I chose this medium because it allowed me to manipulate the canvas using clear transparencies and metal hoops. I have used the transparency sheets in many ways. The first allows the viewer to see the sum of my project and critiques of Facebook at a distance. The second makes my artwork a living and interactional piece. The viewer can interact with my work and lift up different transparencies and define various layers of the work. This allows my work to change constantly as people interact with it. I made the first art board with multiple collages. By using a collage technique, I was able to show, through a barrage of pictures and words, what it means to be either male or female in our culture. The line drawn between the two collages represents the social restriction on an individual's gender identity, forcing them to be either male or female. I have colored this line gray because I believe there is so much more that exists within and beyond this binary. If you follow the line down the board, I have attached a smaller board, which is also a collage. This collage defines the transliberation movement and its 'definition' of gender. This is what inspires my research, trying to complicate Facebook as a site, that merely reinforces a traditional gender binary, while marginalizing anyone else. It is also an important board because it allows most users to understand how they too are limited by a dual-gender system. I have framed all of my boards with the theory, that explains why I chose to display the images or content. This bases my decisions in theory, rather than personal choice. The content of the second art board focuses directly on my critique of Facebook as it exists currently. On the profile mounted to the left of the board I have highlighted and provided a corresponding key of the spaces on Facebook which are problematic. Using data I collected from over 160 survey respondents, the critique of the profile on the right explains what types of insight I gained from my survey. Attached to the bottom of this board is the conceptualization of a profile, that is inclusive of gender difference, or the entire conclusion to the project. This work is not intended to espouse criticism of existing gender theory, but rather to use those theories in a new way, applying them to the emerging social world of Facebook, the most popular social networking website. Using this applied theory I created what I feel is an artistic approach to both theory and critique. My capstone attempts to change how we think about participation on social networking websites such as Facebook and offer concrete changes which could be implemented towards social justice and gender inclusivity.

Idaho is the only state to have reinstated its felony sodomy law after it was taken off the books; public outcry about the 1971 elimination of the state's law making homosexual conduct subject to felony conviction led the Idaho legislature to reinstate the old criminal code in 1972. Despite Lawrence v. Texas, Idaho has not repealed its sodomy law. Thus, Idaho's public code continues to characterize sodomy as "the infamous crime against nature," punishable by imprisonment of not less than five years. Idaho does not include LGBT persons in any protected category for the purpose of employment discrimination. A bill that would have prohibited employers with more that five employees (including the State of Idaho but excepting certain religious organizations) from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity was proposed in the Idaho Senate on January 21, 2008. The bill was defeated in February of 2009. Similar bills have failed in the past.

Gender identity discrimination protections in Maryland are extended through four local ordinances that are inconsistent, and provide more limited remedies than Maryland's state non-discrimination laws. A gubernatorial executive order that applies only to state employees also exists. The four local laws all provide gender identity discrimination protections in the same areas covered by state law, including employment, housing and public accommodation, though Baltimore City and Howard County also expressly prohibit discrimination in some types of government services. Baltimore City prohibits discrimination in public education and by its health and welfare agencies, and Howard County prohibits law enforcement officers from harassing and discriminating against citizens based on protected characteristics. Notably, the remedies available under the local ordinances are generally more limited than those provided by state law, especially as it relates to monetary relief available through administrative proceedings, and state case law may further limit those remedies.

Approximately 66,000 LGBT workers in South Carolina are vulnerable to employment discrimination absent state legal protections. Four localities in South Carolina prohibit public sector employment discrimination against LGBT people. Only 18% of the state's labor force works in those localities, and only a small proportion of those workers are employed by their local governments. Currently none of South Carolina's LGBT-inclusive local ordinances prohibit discrimination in private employment. Findings from the South Carolina report are consistent with national data. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 21 percent of LGBT respondents had been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay, or promotions. In 2010, 78 percent of respondents to the largest national survey of transgender people to date reported having experienced harassment or mistreatment at work, and 47 percent reported having been discriminated against in hiring, promotion, or job retention because of their gender identity.

New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination ("LAD") protects against discrimination based on marital status, domestic partnership status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and mental or physical disability, including AIDS and HIV related illnesses.1 In addition to the LAD, New Jersey's Administrative Code includes an anti-discrimination policy for state government employees.2 This policy also prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.