Michael Bugbee, seeking a place to live near Shippensburg University, had an ordinary enough screening interview with a prospective landlord.
Then he mentioned his husband.
“Oh,” the landlord said — in a tone that told Bugbee he’d reached a conversational crossroads depressingly familiar to people in the LGBTQ community.
“Is everything all right?” Bugbee asked.
“Well,” the landlord said, “I’m sorry to have to say this, but your lifestyle conflicts with my morals and values and I’m not going to be able to show you the place, let alone rent it to you.”
The exchange was harsher than that — Bugbee, 29, said the woman referred to him by a slur in the course of a lecture on religion — but the outcome was the same. He moved on to search for another place.
The episode underscores the persistence of some forms of legal discrimination in Pennsylvania. The state ranks 24th out of 50 states for legal protection of the LGBTQ community and public support of LGBTQ rights in a new study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
The Shippensburg landlord’s refusal “was 100% legal,” said Bugbee, a senior majoring in communications and disabilities studies who, like others in the gay community, wants to see cohesive state and federal laws to put an end to discrimination in housing and other practices.
It’s not that the push for LGBTQ rights has been without its successes. Indeed, some have been earthshaking. In the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling of 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on same-sex marriage. In 2020, the court in Bostock vs. Clayton County ruled that federal prohibitions on sex discrimination include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
That meant federal protections from employment discrimination were extended to LGBTQ workers. The ruling pertained only to employment, but could affect future judgments about discrimination in housing and other areas.
On the employment front, Pennsylvania was ahead of the Supreme Court by two years. Since 2018, the state’s human relations commission has interpreted the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to bar discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity.
Still, the state lacks LGBTQ-inclusive laws on housing, hate crimes, bullying and conversion therapy. There are also no codified same-sex or gender-identity protections for prospective adoptive parents. While no one is barred by law from adopting, agencies can set their own criteria as to who they serve, and often give preference to married heterosexual couples.
What Pennsylvania has instead of across-the-board protection is a community-by-community patchwork. Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, for example, all have nondiscrimination ordinances. South Whitehall Township, where Eastern PA Trans Equity Project director Corinne Goodwin lives, does not.
That’s not to say the township is a hotbed of discrimination, but it allows the possibility where, advocates say, none should exist.
“The core message that the [Williams Institute study] is talking about is that when you have this sort of patchwork approach to equality, equity and opportunity, it sends mixed messages,” Goodwin said. “Those mixed messages create gaps and opportunities for discrimination. Nobody knows what the rules are. And when you don’t know what the rules are, that creates opportunity for discrimination and stigmatization.”
In some cases, a landlord’s refusal to rent to a gay person may be rooted in broad animus against the community. Others — like Bugbee’s encounter with his prospective landlord — often hinge on religious objections.
The latter cases especially rankle Adrian Shanker, founder and executive director of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown.
In the Constitution, Shanker finds what everyone else finds there: guarantees that people can practice religion as they choose without government interference. He sees nothing that allows the denial of civil rights to certain people.
“Opponents of protections sometimes argue that it comes at a cost of religious freedom,” said Shanker, who is an observant Jew. “That sets up a false paradigm of God versus gay.”
It’s not that Pennsylvania legislators haven’t tried to address the problems. The Fairness Act, which would ban discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation, has been introduced each year for over a decade. But it’s never had a vote.
Shanker said that’s not entirely the fault of legislators who oppose the act. He sees a lack of energy and commitment in many who do.
“It’s not active opposition, that’s not what we see,” he said. “How come it’s not a propulsive issue for them?”
The act would not be a cure-all — discrimination exists in hearts and minds as well as laws — but it would send a powerful message, according to Goodwin.
“When our legislators get their act together and make a statement about this stuff, it sends a message across the entire state, the entire country. And that’s what we frankly need, right?” she said.
“It won’t make discrimination go away. It won’t make the challenges with food insecurity go away. It won’t make the issues with housing discrimination, workplace discrimination go away or in public accommodation, but it will send the message and it will begin to get abated.”
‘We have a really long way to go’
The Williams report cites a number of polls and studies showing the depth and breadth of LGBTQ discrimination and the relative weakness of existing protections.
- A 2021 nationwide survey of LGBT employees found 47% of respondents from Pennsylvania reported experiencing workplace discrimination or harassment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
- The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that among respondents in Pennsylvania, 23% of transgender people who held or applied for a job within the prior year reported being fired, denied a promotion, or not being hired because of their gender identity or expression. In addition, 21% reported housing discrimination in the prior year, with 10% reporting they experienced homelessness in the prior year.
- Pennsylvania lacks protections available in other states, including a hate crimes law that expressly includes sexual orientation and gender identity; a ban on the gay and transgender “panic” defenses in criminal cases involving LGBT victims; and a ban on the use of conversion therapy on youth by professional health care providers.
For Bugbee, who has to live close to campus because he has muscular dystrophy, the lack of housing protection in particular was a special problem. It’s hard enough to find a place to live in a limited area; the problem is exacerbated when landlords are allowed to turn down applicants based on their sexuality or gender identity.
After his rejection by the first landlord, Bugbee successfully rented another apartment, but only after referring to his husband as his roommate.
The landlord quickly figured out the relationship and threatened to evict them, but in the end allowed them to stay. But the experience spurred Bugbee to act. He spoke to advocacy groups, local elected officials and state legislators and was instrumental in getting the borough of Shippensburg in 2020 to become the 59th Pennsylvania municipality to adopt an anti-discrimination ordinance.
But so much has yet to be done, Bugbee added. Since the high court rulings on same-sex marriage and employment discrimination, many people assume all legal discrimination has gone away.
“Education is really needed that discrimination is still happening,” Bugbee said. “I’m hopeful, but I still think we have a really long way to go.”
‘Equality for some makes it better for all’
Kylin Camburn, a case manager at Project Silk — an LGBTQ youth program that is a collaboration between the Bradbury-Sullivan center and Valley Youth House — said she found nothing surprising in the Williams report, which was published in November.
“This is what we’ve been anecdotally talking about as a community for — gosh, years, generations,” Camburn said. “I felt very much like it does make sense that we’re kind of like 50/50 on protections for LGBT people in Pennsylvania, because we’re very purple.”
By purple, Camburn means Pennsylvania is a mix of Democratic blue and Republican red, with many protections in place in the state’s more progressive areas, such as Philadelphia, and lagging in conservative precincts.
“So, it’s always been an uphill battle to get things,” she said.
The document, however, signals that the funding and impetus for change is available to the long-marginalized community.
“Because you never know if people are going to be totally honest about how they identify or what their past is because of shame and fear,” Camburn said. “That’s why getting statistics on specifically like LGBTQ youth homelessness has always been so difficult, because the reason why that youth might be homeless is because they are queer, and then therefore they don’t want to admit it to a researcher or even maybe to themselves.”
Researchers might be playing catch-up, but it’s necessary to have the study to make legislative change, she said.
“I think people fail to recognize that equality for everyone bolsters everyone and equality for one small group of people can really change the landscape of the whole country,” she said. “It’s really important to note that when we talk about these communities and we talk about the effect on the economy, and just their everyday living situation that also affects everyone around them and everyone in their jobs and everything.
“Equality for some makes it better for all.”
And leveraging the benefits to the economy through equal protections for LGBTQ people is a good way to get laws on the books.
“I feel like at the end of the day, what we really should be focusing on is the benefit to humanity and the humanist side of it,” she said. “I think sometimes people are more focused on numbers, but hey, whatever works at the end of the day, in my opinion, to bring about equality and bring about protections for people.”
Protections through state laws create a sense of legitimacy for marginalized groups.
“Putting laws on the book says that not only is this group worth protecting, but it’s also a group that is now protected and you have recourse to fight back against it,” she said. “You have the legal precedent to say this is something that needs to be enforced. I have a pathway to fight against injustice or discrimination.”
For decades, a big part of the community has been activism and working with younger generations to protect themselves and to navigate around barriers, like housing discrimination, she said.
“It truly could, with a lot of these protections in place, free up the LGBT community to not have to fear these things all the time and spend our energy and our mental resources on things that are less fundamental to our existence and more fundamental to thriving as a community as people,” she said. “I feel like the culture of the LGBTQ community for so long has been that you need to tiptoe around society in order to exist and putting protections in place for the whole community would really, I think, change that culture of trepidation.”
While writing to local legislators to demand change is a good way to support the community, there are other ways to boost morale, too, she said. One way would be to reach out to a local high school with a GSA and send over cards letting youth know they are supported and loved.
“I feel like of all the people in the community, the young people are the ones that are the most hurting and struggling,” she said. “Because when you’re young, you really don’t have the chance to build that chosen family that older LGBT people often get the chance to do, and you also don’t have a lot of outlets to express or get help for your mental health issues as a result of the rejection and shame and fear and repression, all of those things.”
Local data show the situation for the LGBTQ community is worse in the Lehigh Valley than statewide. Here, more than six out of 10 respondents — 61.1% — have experienced discrimination based on their LGBTQ status, according to Bradbury-Sullivan’s 2020 LGBTQ Health Needs Assessment.
“The Lehigh Valley generally fares worse than the data from the Williams Institute, particularly for people of transgender experience,” Goodwin said. “My sense is that some of this is due to the fact that LGBTQ people do not trust many polling organizations but are more forth coming when reporting issues to an LGBTQ-led organization — especially one that is based in-state or locally.”
Employment discrimination happens to trans people often, Goodwin said. She recalled a trans woman she’s working with whose legal identification doesn’t match her gender identity or presentation. She can’t find a job, even though she’s an experienced and well-qualified web developer.
“Every time she applies for a job, she outs herself,” she explained. “And in an economy that this type of profession is highly in demand right now, she has for some reason been unable to find employment.”
“My view and her view is that because of the mismatch and identification, that she’s immediately outed as a trans individual.”
During job interviews, employers have asked her how the company would “handle” her being trans in the workplace, which “is totally wrong and frankly illegal,” she said.
“One of the challenges is that if you were to want to bring a complaint against these employers, you have to hire an attorney, [but] you have no money to hire an attorney,” Goodwin said. “And, the fact of the matter is while you know the Supreme Court has ruled that discrimination based on gender identity is wrong and illegal, it’s a court ruling versus a legislative law. And so that, again, sends a message.”
Obstacles facing LGBTQ adults also affect young people, who deal with issues with bathroom access, bullying and unsupportive school administrators.
“When you go to a website of a local school, chances are they have a mission statement, and that mission statement usually says something along the lines of, ‘The mission of school district X, is to create an environment that nurtures kids to be to set them up for success down the road,” Goodwin said.
“And unfortunately, many of them don’t do that for LGBT youth as a whole and for trans kids in particular.”
From The Morning Call
