Discrimination & Unequal Benefits Lead to Higher LGBT Poverty

by Leigh Graham

categories: Activism, Federal, Government, Health & Healthcare, Inequality, Jobs & Unemployment, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, Research, Social Programs, States, Women

Published July 11, 2009 @ 06:59AM PT

Actually, no surprise here, given our gender inequality in the U.S., this is really an issue of poverty among lesbians and transgendered individuals.

I hope you saw our tremendous announcement this week that Change.org together with gay rights organizations negotiated an agreement with Rockstar energy drinks that affirms the latter's commitment to LGBT equality and contributes $100,000 to LGBT rights organizations.  That $100,000 could really go a long way towards fighting the higher rates of poverty among gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgendered people* resulting from the prohibition of full benefits based on their sexual orientation.  After the jump, some critical data and policy prescriptions, and a note on the need for a more inclusive, representative leadership among gay rights advocates.

First, LGB poverty: Reading the brief, compiled by the Center for American Progress, it turns out that household or family poverty is about the same for gay men compared to hetero men or couples - married or otherwise.  But for lesbians:

• "24 percent of lesbian and bisexual women between the ages of 18-44 are living in poverty in contrast to only 19 percent of heterosexual women.
• 6.9 percent of lesbian couples, 4.0 percent of gay male couples, and 5.4 percent of married heterosexual couples are living below the federal poverty line.
• The poverty rate for families with children is 9.4 percent for lesbian families, 5.5 percent for gay male families, and 6.7 percent for heterosexual married families.
• The poverty rate for lesbian couples 65 years of age and older is particularly high, with 9.1 percent living below the poverty line compared to 4.9 percent for gay male couples 65 or older and 4.6 percent for heterosexual married couples 65 and older."

The same factors linked to poverty for straight folks - being a person of color, being a parent, lacking a college degree - make gay men slightly more likely to be poor than hetero men, and lesbians "significantly more likely" to be poor than straight women.

Reflecting, at best, our lack of recognition, and at worse, our hostility towards transgendered Americans, there is significantly less information available about their poverty rates.  But the few studies that exist point to worrisome rates of homelessness (20% of survey respondents) and low incomes.

The report issues some standard but useful policy recommendations for alleviating LGBT poverty: providing marriage equality and its associated economic benefits; reducing gender wage discrimination; fighting employment discrimination, especially for transgendered people and LGBT of color, for whom employment discrimination is part of an overall risk for social, economic and political bigotry.  The need for fully inclusive hate crime laws comes to the fore here too.

I don't know the politics of LGBTQI activism too well, but I'd venture that these findings point to a greater need for diverse leadership among gay rights advocates.  As I understand it, the movement is overly represented by gay men, whites especially, and this poverty data points (again) to how narrow our understanding of LGBTQI issues is based on the perceptions and representation of these men alone.

Lastly, the report calls for more government data collection on poverty rates among LGBT Americans - so that we can fully acknowledge and fight the issue.  As gay rights activists, we need to learn from and bridge anti-poverty efforts led by communities of color or by women's and youth advocate groups, for example.  Gender, racial/ethnic and class inequality affects us all.

*I try to use the LGBTQI acronym whenever possible, which incorporates queer, questioning and intersexed individuals, but the data here is actually limited to LGB&T, and bi-sexuals are not specifically addressed in the summary.

(Photo of "A scroll listing the 1,400 protections, benefits, and responsibilities granted to a couple upon marriage" by Jeff Nickerson)