Just How Many LGBT Americans Are There? – The Daily Beast

2017/01/16 Leave a comment

Noteworthy generational change:

Estimates of the size of the LGBT population have always been murky, bordering on mythological. The 1-in-10 figure first emerged out of post-World War II studies by the pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who reported that 10 percent of men were “more or less exclusively homosexual.” That number wasn’t perfect—and it’s been continuously revised—but it became a politically expedient tool in the Stonewall era.

Now, over 60 years after Kinsey’s death, new Gallup data shows that the estimated size of the U.S. LGBT population as a whole is getting closer than ever to the legendary “1-in-10” number—among millennials, at least.

Using Gallup data taken from interviews with over 1.6 million adults, demographer Gary J. Gates reported that 10 million Americans—4 percent of the population—now identify as LGBT.

That includes a record-high 7.3 percent of people born between 1980 and 1998 who now identify as LGBT—up from 5.8 percent in 2012. (This new data reinforces a 2015 conclusion from the Public Religion Research Institute—first highlighted by The Daily Beast—that “7 percent of millennials identify either as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,” based on a survey of 2,000 adults.)

But will that number ever reach 10 percent in the population at large?

“It’s not a completely unrealistic figure,” Gates told The Daily Beast. “Certainly it appears as if—given a little more time—it might, in fact, be [the case] that close to 10 percent identify as LGBT.”

Gates is one of the top demographers of the LGBT population in the United States, and the author of a widely-cited 2011 Williams Institute meta-analysis on the subject, which estimated that 3.5 percent of adults identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and 0.3 percent identify as transgender. He told The Daily Beast that the increasing size of the LGBT population estimate can largely be attributed to “people feeling more comfortable and more willing to identify [as LGBT].”

Source: Just How Many LGBT Americans Are There? – The Daily Beast

Filed under Other Tagged with ,

Despite uproar over Trinity Western, many B.C. Christian school policies bar LGBTQ teachers | National Post

2016/12/07 Leave a comment

Open question whether this form of discrimination in religious schools is compatible with continuing to receive public funding:

While the debate over Trinity Western University’s community covenant rages on through the courts and the media, many Christian elementary and high schools that receive B.C. government funding are quietly operating with similar policies that essentially bar gay and lesbian teachers from employment.

The independent schools all belong to the Society of Christian Schools in B.C. (SCSBC), which requires each of its 31 member schools to draft “community standards policies” for employees to follow. The suggested language includes refraining from all sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage.

Several members of the society have posted policies that include these restrictions online, including schools in Abbotsford, Surrey, Langley, Nanaimo, and Houston. These policies also tend to include prohibitions on things like public drunkenness and watching porn.

“What a terrible message,” said former Vancouver school trustee Patti Bacchus. “Something like that, it just goes backwards. It’s flat-out discrimination and a violation of someone’s human rights.”

Ed Noot, the executive director of the SCSBC, is overseas and declined to answer questions by email.

Canadian legal precedent largely falls on the side of protecting the rights of religious schools to set their own policies, as long as they’re made in good faith and based on honestly-held religious beliefs. The defining Supreme Court of Canada case dates back to 1984, when the justices ruled in favour of a Vancouver Catholic school that fired a teacher after she married a divorced man.

The B.C. Court of Appeal followed that line of thinking when its panel of five judges ruled in favour of TWU establishing a law school, calling the B.C. Law Society’s attempt to deny the school accreditation on the basis of its discriminatory covenant a well-intentioned act carried out in an “intolerant and illiberal” manner.

That case will likely end up in the country’s highest court, and there are those who say it’s time for a change in direction.

Vancouver lawyer and queer activist Barbara Findlay believes that freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination are both essential rights, but she has strong feelings about how these rights should be balanced.

“I say that your right to freedom of religion ends where you want me to do something. My right to be free from discrimination can only exist if your right to freedom of religion is not allowed to trump it,” findlay said.

“I’m hoping that this question will be definitively settled in the Trinity Western case when it heads to the Supreme Court.”

This fall, Education Minister Mike Bernier announced that all public and private schools in B.C. would have to include protections for LGBTQ students in their anti-bullying policies, and choked up as he remembered the difficulties his lesbian daughter faced in school. Meanwhile, the province’s new curriculum asks teachers to ensure their lessons support inclusion and diversity, including “diversity in family compositions and gender orientation.”

In an emailed statement, the education ministry stressed that “We believe in safe, respecting and inclusive schools.” But the statement also pointed out that Canada’s Human Rights Act allows certain schools to discriminate if their primary purpose is promoting the interest of a religious group. Most independent school authorities in B.C. meet the requirements for that, according to the ministry.

Source: Despite uproar over Trinity Western, many B.C. Christian school policies bar LGBTQ teachers | National Post

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

L.G.B.T. People Are More Likely to Be Targets of Hate Crimes Than Any Other Minority Group – The New York Times

2016/06/17 Leave a comment

L_G_B_T__People_Are_More_Likely_to_Be_Targets_of_Hate_Crimes_Than_Any_Other_Minority_Group_-_The_New_York_TimesIn Canada (2013), 51 percent of hate crimes were motivated by race or ethnicity, 28 percent by religion , and 16 percent by sexual orientation.

So while the focus of this article is correct following Orlando, the data is presented in a manner that over-emphasizes the storyline – racial and ethnicity hate crimes are 59 percent, religious 19 percent and sexual orientation 19 percent:

FBI hate crimes

Even before the shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were already the most likely targets of hate crimes in America, according to an analysis of data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

L.G.B.T. people are twice as likely to be targeted as African-Americans, and the rate of hate crimes against them has surpassed that of crimes against Jews.

Politicians have been divided on how to define the Orlando tragedy. President Obama called it both “an act of terror and and an act of hate.” But some Republican officials have refused to acknowledge that it could be considered a hate crime.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has omitted any mention of gays when talking about the massacre, and Representative Pete Sessions of Texas has said the site of the shooting was not a gay club.

According to a CBS News poll released on Wednesday, however, most Americans call the attack both a hate crime and terrorism. And the nightclub, Pulse, on its Twitter account, billed itself as “Orlando’s premier gay ultra lounge, nightclub and bar.”

As the Country Becomes More Accepting, Some Become More Radical

Nearly a fifth of the 5,462 so-called single-bias hate crimes reported to the F.B.I. in 2014 were because of the target’s sexual orientation, or, in some cases, their perceived orientation.

Ironically, part of the reason for violence against L.G.B.T. people might have to do with a more accepting attitude toward gays and lesbians in recent decades, say people who study hate crimes.

As the majority of society becomes more tolerant of L.G.B.T. people, some of those who are opposed to them become more radical, said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The flip side of marriage equality is that people who strongly oppose it find the shifting culture extremely disturbing, said Gregory M. Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on anti-gay violence.

“They may feel that the way they see the world is threatened, which motivates them to strike out in some way, and for some people, that way could be in violent attacks,” Mr. Herek said.

Source: L.G.B.T. People Are More Likely to Be Targets of Hate Crimes Than Any Other Minority Group – The New York Times

Filed under Hate crimes Tagged with ,

How Talking To People Can Reduce Prejudice

2016/04/12 Leave a comment

Interesting example of how face-to-face conversations that help people understand the other’s experiences, and identify some commonalities, can make a difference:

After the dust settled [from a previously falsified study], Broockman and Kalla went on with their experiment on transgender prejudices. LaCour’s misconduct only made them more determined to do the study for real. “There were all these volunteers who gave their Saturdays [to do the experiment],” Broockman says. “We had a certain sense of responsibility.”

They sent out surveys to thousands of homes in Miami, asking people to answer questions that included how they felt about transgender people and if they would support legal protection against discrimination for transgender people. Then volunteers from SAVE, an LGBT advocacy organization based in Florida, visited half of the 501 people who responded and canvassed them about an unrelated topic, recycling. Volunteers went to the other half and started the conversations that Fleischer thinks can help change minds.

After the canvass, the study participants answered the same questions about transgender people that they had answered before the study, including how positively or negatively they felt towards transgender people on a scale of 0 to 100. Those who had discussed prejudice they’d experienced felt about 10 points more positively toward transgender people, on average.

Broockman says that public opinion about gay people has improved by 8.5 points between 1998 and 2012. “So it’s about 15 years of progress that we’ve experienced in 10 minutes at the door,” he says.

Three months after the canvass, Broockman asked participants to fill out the survey again. They still felt more positively about transgender people than those who had gotten the unrelated canvass. “[That’s] the moment I backed away from my monitor and said, ‘Wow, something’s really unique here,’ ” he says. If the effect persists, Broockman says, the technique could be used to reduce prejudice across society.

That doesn’t mean everybody came away feeling more positive about transgender rights. Kalla says some people came away from the canvasser feeling very differently and some people not so much at all. And an uptick in 10 points on a feeling scale of 0 to 100 doesn’t sound like an epiphany. There wasn’t, however, any indication that those who started out with very negative feelings about transgender people were particularly resistant to the conversation. Broockman and Kalla published the results in Science on Thursday.

It is a landmark study, according to Elizabeth Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work. “They were very transparent about all the statistics,” she says. “It was a really ingenious test of the change. If the change was at all fragile, we should have seen people change their minds back [after three months].” There are very few tests of prejudice reduction methods, and Paluck says this suggests the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s approach is actually far more effective than previous efforts, like TV ads.

There might be a couple of reasons for that. Broockman, now an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University, says asking someone questions face-to-face like, “What are the reasons you wouldn’t support protections for transgender people, or what does this make you think about?” gets them to begin thinking hard about the issue. “Burning the mental calories to do effortful thinking about it, that leaves a lasting imprint on your attitudes,” he says.

Empathy may also be a factor. “Canvassers asked people to talk about a time they were treated differently. Most people have been judged because of gender, race or some other issue. For many voters, they reflect on it and they realize that’s a terrible feeling they don’t want anyone to have,” Broockman says.

The study’s conclusions differ from the conclusions of the LaCour’s falsified study from 2014 in one crucial way, Broockman says. LaCour claimed that there was only an effect from the deep canvass if it came from someone who was LGBT. “We found non-trans allies had a lasting effect as well,” Broockman says. That means canvassing is much more about conversational skill rather than identity.

It will take more studies and replications of this study before scientists know exactly what is influencing people’s opinions. But for now, the findings are a relief to David Fleischer. “To go into it with high hopes and then get this really bad piece of news, then to go forward anyway and have the accurate results? What a roller coaster of emotions,” he says.

The technique might be used to target any societal prejudice — or be used to increase prejudice, Broockman acknowledges. But even if that happens, he says, it at least will encourage people to think deeply about the issues they’re going to vote on.

Source: How Talking To People Can Reduce Prejudice : Shots – Health News : NPR

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,