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发帖数: 4174 | 1 Posted on Advocate.com August 15, 2011 09:40:00 AM ET
The Most Important LGBT Group You’ve Never Heard Of
By Andrew Harmon
How to conduct an accurate count of the American population — an estimate
that controls congressional seat allocation and the disbursement of billions
in federal dollars to cash-strapped states and municipalities — is a
reliable flashpoint of controversy when the U.S. Census rolls around every
10 years.
What seems to have drawn little controversy in the release of the 2010
Census over the past several months, however, is a Los Angeles–based LGBT
research organization that partnered with the federal bureau to present the
most detailed information to date on gay and lesbian households.
The data might seem humdrum without political livelihoods or budgets at
stake, but the public has now seen a clearer snapshot of the LGBT population
thanks to weekly installments over the summer from the Charles R. Williams
Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Policy at the
University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, and the final state-by
-state data set will be released next week. It’s part of a larger approach
from the group that uses research, not rhetoric, to ensure LGBT people are
visible.
The census does not inquire as to the sexual orientation or gender identity
of respondents. But it does ask whether a person’s relationship with an
adult of the same sex is described as “husband/wife” or “unmarried
partner” as well as whether same-sex couples are raising children.
Researchers have found, for instance, that 11,572 same-sex couples reside in
Kentucky, where voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2004 banning
gay marriage by a 3-1 margin. In North Carolina, 6,290 households headed by
gay couples are raising children in a state that already statutorily bars
them from marriage — showing what’s at stake if voters follow in the cruel
direction of Kentucky and another 28 states and approve an anti–marriage
equality constitutional amendment next year.
Rural counties often show higher rates of couples with children than urban
and suburban ones, and regional media have steadily reported the dramatic
increase in same-sex couples identifying their relationships, leading one
fringe lawmaker to react by calling the rise “regrettable.”
“The influence of the church plays a factor here. We have more churches
today ... that are saying homosexuality does not go against biblical truth,
” Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern told TheOklahoman last month. “
Another factor is homosexuality is being taught in our schools as a normal
and acceptable lifestyle, so when that happens, you are going to have more
young people coming out of school who have a more favorable attitude towards
homosexuality.”
But for the rest of us, numbers like LGBT Census data from a California
think tank provide a statistical weapon. The Census results further
countered long-propagated stereotypes that the LGBT population is wealthy,
white, and living in urban gay neighborhoods. Upcoming reports from the
Williams Institute will offer greater insight into some of the most pressing
and headline-grabbing LGBT issues, including a demographic portrait of
binational gay couples, who lack immigration sponsorship rights because of
the Defense of Marriage Act.
“I wanted to do something for society,” Chuck Williams says of founding
the organization in 2001 with his $2.5 million donation. Political advocacy
has its place, but “you’ve got to do effective research that won’t always
give the answer that everybody would like to have,” he says. “In time,
that makes you earn respect, whether in the legal community and legislative
community, and that’s the key to success. I wanted [Williams] to have a
practical orientation, to look at discrimination against gays and lesbians.
And I wanted it to be [housed] at a law school. If there’s one thing about
lawyers, it’s that they’re practical.”
Though perhaps unheard of by most people whom its research benefits, the
Williams Institute is no scrappy organization. Williams, a business
consultant and philanthropist in Los Angeles, has given a total of $13
million to his namesake organization, which has 20 staff members, a 19-
member founders council composed of major donors (Williams also sits on the
council), and the cachet of a preeminent think tank that has attracted
donors including the Gill Foundation, Arcus Foundation, and Ford Foundation,
among others. The group’s $20.6 million endowment remains robust, Williams
says, in part because the UCLA general endowment fund has fared better
during the financial downturn than those of other universities.
With that stability and research prowess comes significant influence for
federal studies and legal arguments against discriminatory laws. This year
the Williams Institute helped convince the Department of Labor to add a
sexual orientation question to its survey on experiences with provisions of
the Family and Medical Leave Act. It assisted the Bureau of Labor Statistics
in evaluating to what extent domestic-partner benefits are accessible
throughout the country. The Williams study of best practices for asking and
analyzing sexual orientation survey questions has aided the Department of
Health and Human Services in its recent commitment to LGBT inclusion in
major federal health surveys — a critical and enormous source of data to
health researchers.
In his 2010 decision striking down California’s Proposition 8, U.S.
district judge Vaughn R. Walker said that one purported scholar and anti–
gay marriage figure’s testimony amounted to “inadmissible opinion
testimony that should be given essentially no weight.” Meanwhile, Walker
cited Williams research more than 30 times in his 136-page opinion.
And in a July court brief arguing why the Defense of Marriage Act should be
struck down as unconstitutional, the Justice Department cited the institute
’s exhaustive report on the history of discrimination against LGBT
individuals in state employment (Williams Institute executive director Brad
Sears presented the findings at a 2009 House hearing).
“We look forward to a time when LGBT inclusion is the norm in health and
demographic data collection efforts,” says Gary Gates, a Williams Institute
distinguished scholar who spearheaded the LGBT census efforts. In April,
Gates was able to estimate that 9 million Americans, or about 4% of the
population, are LGBT.
The partnership with the U.S. Census, Sears explains, was made possible
because Williams is a research center at an academic institution and not an
advocacy group. Also, he explains, it’s a result of “[Gates’s] consistent
work and academic publications on Census data over the past decade, which
they have cited in improving their own procedures in collecting and
reporting data about same-sex couples.”
Williams’s vision of expanding his institute’s reach over the next 10
years already includes a series of notable high-caliber hires to the
research staff this year. Among them are a Columbia University professor and
preeminent expert on health care disparities and a leading LGBT rights
attorney.
Jennifer Pizer is leaving behind litigation after a 15-year tenure as Lambda
Legal’s marriage project director. She has also previously contributed to
the LGBT body of research, including a recent study of health care cost
burdens that stem from marriage equality bans and inequities in domestic-
partner benefits. Pizer and fellow authors found last year, for example,
that partnered lesbians in California have only a 28% chance of getting
dependent health care coverage compared to married straight women; partnered
gay men are 42% less likely to receive coverage compared to married
straight men. Such poor rates add to the pool of uninsured and could lead to
greater Medicaid costs or emergency room visits when no other care is
available.
“The movement was hampered for a long time as a result of so many of us
having been invisible, and understandably so,” says Pizer, the Williams
Institute’s new legal director. “Naturally, people made a point of being
discreet. We couldn't say how many gay people there are and who we really
are, so it was harder to dispel all of these misperceptions that have caused
lots of people to feel disconnected. We’ve remained sort of this vague
concept.”
Two months into her position, Pizer has authored an amicus brief in a case
regarding interstate adoption rights appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the
first that the institute has filed with the high court since 2008 (the
Supreme Court has not yet said whether it will review the case, Adar v.
Smith). “This is exactly the type of work [Pizer] is here to do: to present
objective and insightful legal and policy research and analysis to courts,
the legislatures, and the public,” Sears says.
The gay-community-as-vague-demographic-concept creates not only barriers to
care but also a lack of knowledge as to disease prevalence among LGBT
individuals. In March a report by the Institute of Medicine, commissioned by
the National Institutes of Health, concluded that researchers simply need
more data about gay people.
“This is something we’ve done for other populations, and quite frankly, we
simply should be doing it now for this population,” Robert Garofalo, a
committee member and a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's
Feinberg School of Medicine, said in March. “And I think [the Institute of
Medicine report] goes a long way in framing it from a very scientific
perspective. It’s entirely now a matter of political will to get it done.”
Ilan Meyer, a leading scholar on minority stress syndrome who recently
joined Williams from Columbia, says that an emphasis on HIV/AIDS funding,
while certainly crucial, has led to less focus on other diseases affecting
gay men and lesbians.
One of those areas is anal cancer among gay men, resulting mainly from two
strains of the HPV virus that can be exacerbated by HIV infection. Though
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that girls receive
the HPV vaccine at age 11 or 12, there are no similar guidelines for boys.
Young men and parents of boys may elect for the Merck-manufactured Gardisil
vaccine, though the CDC maintains that “the best way to prevent the most
disease due to HPV is to vaccinate as many girls and women as possible.”
Are the current recommendations perhaps rooted in lack of understanding
about gay male health concerns as well as social stigma? “Regardless of HIV
, gay men are at higher risk for anal cancers,” Meyer says, “and there are
no major efforts yet to encourage vaccination.”
The more facts and figures churned out of the Williams Institute, the more
likely it is that problems will get needed attention. No Williams Institute
study has ever been legitimately countered or substantively criticized by
antigay groups. “There’s an enormous amount of work to be done,” Williams
says of the Institute. “Discrimination against gays and lesbians is deeply
embedded in society, and this needs to be the focus of solid institutional
research.” |
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