The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a well-known organization for LGBTQ rights, announced on Thursday that it will host a town hall for LGBTQ issues next month. The event will be broadcast on CNN.
LGBTQ stakeholders told ThinkProgress that they knew exactly what ideas they wanted to discuss at City Hall on October 10, the National Coming Out Day. Many said that they primarily want candidates to recognize the struggles of the most marginalized communities in the community, including LGBTQ-colored people, and that they propose strategies to address LGBTQ bias in criminal justice.
“LGBTQ people are more likely than non-LGBTQ people to come into contact with the police, be detained, and experience violence while detained due to discriminatory policing. Black and Latin American LGBTQ people are most affected, ”Tyrone Hanley, senior policy counsel at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told ThinkProgress.
Hanley said White House aspirants must include criminal law reform as one of the issues on their list. "Candidates must demonstrate that racial, gender and class discrimination and violence against LGBTQ are affected as much as for other communities," he said.
City Hall comes at a critical time as the Trump administration has cut back on health protection for transgender people and protection for transgender students, introduced a ban on transgender people in the military, and proposed a rule that allows wide religious exemptions for companies with federal contracts.
Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA); former vice president Joe Biden; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Julian Castro, have accepted the invitation to the town hall and others can join.
HRC has invited candidates who achieve at least 2% in four national polls selected by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and who have reached the DNC threshold of 130,000 individual donors.
The candidates will answer questions from CNN journalists and viewers in successive town halls during the evening. LGBTQ supporters have a wide range of topics on their list to discuss.
Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said he would like to see how each candidate stands to lift the president's ban on military service by transgender troops. Minter said he wants candidates to recognize that health care, poverty, and food insecurity are all LGBTQ issues.
Candidates should also demonstrate how they would continue the Obama administration's progress in addressing conversion therapy, programs that tell young people that they can and should change their sexual orientation, and in some cases, theirs Gender. The American Medical Association has said that conversion therapy, especially at a young age, can cause significant psychological stress.
"While states are primarily responsible for addressing this issue, President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has released a groundbreaking report on the harm done to minors through conversion therapy in 2015, which has played a key role in supporting the played state legislation, "said Minter.
“We would very much appreciate it if the candidates committed to continue and expand such educational efforts. The President's voice is powerful and we urgently need national leadership on this issue that is so critical to the health and well-being of LGBTQ youth. "
Stacey Long Simmons, Attorney General and Measures Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, repeated the views of others by saying that the presidential candidates should focus on the most vulnerable communities in the community.
"When we talk to policymakers, we typically ask about issues that affect the most marginalized members of our community, and we particularly think of people with identities that may be multi-marginalized," said Long Simmons.
“They can be undocumented, transgender, or gender-neutral. They can be racial or religious minorities. We tend to highlight all of these things when we talk to people, ”she said.
She added that candidates must understand how all issues are related to the LGBTQ community, and withdraw many of the Trump Administration's anti-LGBTQ guidelines, which do much of the Obama administration's work to strengthen LGBTQ rights undone.
"There is no issue discussed that does not directly affect the members of our community," she said.
“We want to participate in policy-making in as many ways as possible because we know that given the structure of society, be it climate change, health policy or criminal justice policy, all of the things that decision-makers do is ours Politics affect community, so we want to make sure that they don't worsen some of the conditions we are currently struggling with. "
In a statement to ThinkProgress, Sharon McGowan, Lambda Legal's chief strategy officer and legal director, stated that candidates must explain how they would use “all the tools at their disposal”, including the bullying pulpit, the executive and the legislative where possible to address and reverse the Trump administration guidelines.
McGowan said of these guidelines: “This damage includes the government arming religion as an enemy of protecting civil rights for LGBTQ people (among others) and the way this government is targeting the most vulnerable in our community targets, including transgender people, adolescents and LGBTQ-colored people. "
She said Lambda Legal would also like the candidates to “talk about the damage federal justice has done to appointing dozens of anti-LGBTQ ideologists to lifelong positions at the Bundesbank and how they are tackling this crisis want. "
As other organizations have said, candidates, McGowan's words, must understand that all political issues, be it safe schools, misconduct by the police, or treatment in governmental care, are all LGBTQ issues.
In his statement to City Hall, HRC President Alphonso David said that despite the huge growth in the past decade, there are still a number of areas where LGBTQ people face discrimination and disadvantage "because we are".
“Today, 30 states are at risk of being dismissed, driven out, or refused LGBTQ because we are. 35 states have not yet banned the dangerous and exposed practice of “conversion therapy” that harms our young people. Hate crimes have increased and more than 100 transgender people – most of them transgender women with skin color – have been killed in the United States in the past five years, ”said David.
Many democratic candidates honored the LGBTQ community during the first presidential debate in June. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said violence against transgendered people is a serious issue for the country to address. At least 16 transgender people were killed this year, according to the HRC, and the vast majority of these murders were black trans women. At least 26 transgender people were killed in the past year.
Castro called for health care for transsexuals to be included, although he wrongly said which transsexuals should be considered when speaking about reproductive justice. Warren spoke inclusive to discuss why the economy doesn't work for Latinx people. Klobuchar also mentioned changes in attitudes towards equality between women and men.
Several candidates for the Democratic nomination have released plans in the past few months to address political issues affecting the LGBTQ community.
Warren published proposals and guidelines for promoting LGBTQ rights. Her ideas included supporting the Gender Equality Act, lifting President Donald Trump's ban on military transportation, pledging to "protect civil rights for transgender people", banning conversion therapy, lifting denied family visas to same-sex domestic diplomatic partners, and ending discrimination queer men who are currently prohibited from donating blood.
In August Warren tweeted about a colored trans woman who died isolated on Rikers Island: "Let us be clear: Layleen Cubilette-Polanco should still be alive. Solitary confinement is cruel and inhumane. We have to end this practice, strict standards for medical Enforce care and create additional layers of protection for LGBTQ + people. "
Former MP Beto O & # 39; Rourke (D-TX) has released his plan to fight for LGBTQ rights, which includes lifting the trans-military ban, instructing the Department of Justice to investigate crimes against transgender people, especially skin-colored trans women, and Ensuring security precautions included LGBTQ people participating in federal data collection efforts.
Last month, some candidates spoke about the needs of transgender Americans at the National Transgender Equality Action Fund (NCTE) for the Transform the White House initiative.
Booker and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke extensively about their approach to promoting transgender equality. They talked about issues such as the resignation of the Trump administration's policies, which undermined much of the Obama administration's progress in transgender equality, violence against transgenders, and the criminal justice system, and economic policies that improve transgender lives would.
In later interviews, Castro and Klobuchar spoke to the National Center for the Transgender Equality Action Fund. Castro mentioned discrimination against transgender people in homes, the large proportion of homeless youth who are LGBTQ, and the detention of transgender immigrants.
Klobuchar said she would lift the transmilitarian ban in her first 100 days and praise her support for national non-discrimination protection for LGBTQ people over the years.
