Study: LGBT Inclusive Policies Good For Business

Oct20 by D Gregory Smith

Over ninety percent of the country’s largest companies state that diversity policies and generous benefits packages are good for their corporate bottom line, according to a new study from UCLA’s Williams Institute. The study finds that more than half of these companies specifically state that their policies prohibiting LGBT discrimination or extending domestic partner benefits are good for business. The study is based on a review of statements issued by the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and the top 50 federal contractors when they first put these policies in place.

“This study highlights that economic benefits are a significant incentive when companies adopt LGBT-inclusive policies,” said Christy Mallory, Williams Legal Research Fellow. “As employers consider adopting similar polices, and as legislatures consider codifying such policies into law, this research informs the economic consequences of their decisions,” stated Mallory.

The past decade has seen a large increase in the number of corporations adopting LGBT-related workplace policies. Among the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, 48 now include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies and 70% include gender identity. Additionally, 88% extend domestic partner benefits, including health insurance to the same-sex domestic partners of employees. Among the top 50 federal contractors, 81% include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies and 44% include gender identity. Over half extend domestic partner benefits, including health insurance, to the same-sex domestic partners of employees.

“The specific reasons why these companies felt their LGBT inclusive policies had a positive business impact went beyond improving their efforts to recruit and retain the most talented employees,” said Brad Sears, Roberta A. Conroy Senior Scholar of Law & Policy and Williams Institute Executive Director. “Companies linked these policies to improving employee morale and productivity, to meeting the needs of their diverse customers, and to sparking ideas and innovation through employees, including LGBT employees, who bring different perspectives and experiences.”

Beyond business justifications, the study also notes that companies adopt LGBT inclusive policies because they are consistent with their corporate values of fairness and respect and because doing so is simply “the right thing to do.”

Full study here.

A Commentary on the “Reform of the Reform” of The Catholic Church

Oct12 by D Gregory Smith

I like Vatican II- The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, which occurred in Rome between 1962 and 1965. It brought in “fresh air” and strived to create a sense of unity- and the beginning of the effort of understanding between the church and the modern world. Relevancy being no small thing back then.

It seems to be a small thing now. Especially for those in charge of the Roman Catholic Church.

The wagons are circling. And the Pope is the one drawing them in- followed closely by the fanatics who use communion as a weapon, have no (and want no) understanding of the sciences of psychology or sociology or biology and simply want to hold on to the illusory power that disappeared with the Borgias….

Over at Enlightened Catholicism is discussed Eugene Cullen Kennedy’s piece at The National Catholic Reporter:

The Reform of the Reform may be better understood not as an exaggerated exercise in nostalgia as much as the debilitating side-effect on being unable to adjust to the Space/Information Age that has ended the division between the earth and the heavens that was the theoretical basis for hierarchical structures. By healing the centuries old presumed rift between earth and the heavens the Space/Information Age also healed the separation of the human person into antagonistic elements of body and soul, flesh and spirit. It is difficult for hierarchs to adjust to the Space/Information Age because they cannot get their bearings easily unless they sit atop an hierarchical array; they fear going into free fall in the universe in which there is no center, no up and no down, and so they want to reconstruct the times and places, the Time and Again of an age before Vatican II in which they feel that they will be comfortable again.

There is something poignant about these would-be time travelers who pull back from the future that is already enveloping them. They remind one of the travelers in the desert described by Freud in explaining the difficulty many people have in letting go of the past. When the sun goes down and the air turns bitter cold, such pilgrims long to return to the remembered warmth of campfires they had left behind them. They cannot return to them because they have cooled to ashes and the winds have mixed them with the billowing waves of sand. The Reform of the Reform is built on just such understandable but misplaced longing, is bound to disappoint those who invest their hearts in its success, may generate centrifugal pressures in the heart of the Church, and one day, long after it has failed, be judged not as an inviting oasis worth a long journey but a cruel and seductive illusion of the unforgiving sands of time.

But the blogger at EC speaks for me when she says:

It’s very very sad to me, that at a time when the collective consciousness of this planet is finally choosing to see that we are all inner connected and no culture can pretend to live in a hermetically sealed vacuum, the Vatican is attempting to recreate Catholicism’s own hermetically sealed vacuum. As Kennedy says, this is a cruel and seductive illusion of the long ago shifted sands of time. It really is destined to fail.

The last gasps of social relevancy seem to be coming long and hard right now….

Unpacking “Class Warfare”

Sep23 by D Gregory Smith

Whether you believe that asking those with more to share a greater part of the public burden is socialism or simply good citizenship, you can’t deny that there are heated feelings on the topic. I am of the persuasion that greed and selfishness- if further assisted by government, will be the demise of this country.

Paul Krugman has some excellent points in today’s New York Times. Among them:

As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

….On one side, we have the claim that the rising share of taxes paid by the rich shows that their burden is rising, not falling. To point out the obvious, the rich are paying more taxes because they’re much richer than they used to be. When middle-class incomes barely grow while the incomes of the wealthiest rise by a factor of six, how could the tax share of the rich not go up, even if their tax rate is falling?

Full story here.

Taxing The (Willing) Rich

Sep10 by D Gregory Smith

I was brought up with a sense of social justice that still shapes my life. It’s a complicated sense, shaped by Catholicism, rural sensibility and an awareness of the world from the perspective of a kid who was bullied. My social justice sense says, in part, “depriving one for the excesses of another is unjust.”

It seems some “Enlightened Rich” agree. The New York Times:

Some of the world’s wealthiest people are calling for higher taxes on the rich. They seem to recognize that the burden of the economic downturn cannot be borne entirely by the poor and middle class.

After the American billionaire investor Warren Buffett urged Congress last month to raise taxes on millionaires, the call echoed across Europe. Sixteen of France’s wealthiest individualsurged the government to raise their taxes. The Italian Formula One magnate Luca di Montezemolo publicly backed Mr. Buffett’s idea “for reasons of fairness and solidarity.” About 50 of Germany’s richest people have been campaigning for a higher top tax rate since 2009.

The suggestion is motivated, no doubt, by a sense of justice — that the very rich, who have survived the financial crisis very well, should contribute more to shrinking public coffers to reduce the spending cuts that would hurt the most vulnerable.

And yet, there are those who are resisting, no doubt motivated by fear- and quite possibly prejudice. But the results could be disastrous:

Americans have been historically less inclined than Europeans to explosions of social rage, despite suffering more poverty than most other wealthy democracies. But with unemployment above 9 percent, rising poverty rates and declining family incomes, the no-taxes, all-cuts agenda that has gripped Congressional Republicans will fray our social fabric and squander human capital here as well.

My sense of social justice also says, “If I make more money than others, I have a greater responsibility to maintain the fabric of my society”. But it’s obviously not what everyone believes.

Full story here.

“You Are Loved”

Sep1 by D Gregory Smith

I’ve written about the importance of Rural Pride Celebrations before- but if you want to see it firsthand, or if you ever wondered what the 2011 Montana Pride Celebration was like- well wonder no more.

Wet Paint Studios beautifully chronicled the event with this amazing piece of film:

From the Wet Paint Studios’ description:

“You Are Loved” is a documentary chronicling Montana Pride- celebrating the diversity of all walks of life.

The documentary explores what it means to be an LGBTQI in Montana, a rural state of not even a million people. The response from the community in Bozeman, MT was overwhelming, and without it, this documentary would not be possible. Enjoy the show!

A Thought On Prop 8 and Gender

Jul22 by D Gregory Smith

My partner finds all sorts of things that he brings to my attention every day- just one of the many reasons I love him. This came up yesterday….

From Metafilter (edited for ease of reading):

“Proposition 8 Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry:

Initiative Constitutional Amendment SECTION I. Title
This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”
SECTION 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read: Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

The biggest problem is that laws like the California initiative will make the courts decide who is male and who is female — and all available decision criteria create unavoidable miscarriages of justice that will, or should, dismay initiative proponents.

You’re probably thinking, about now, that I’m going to exaggerate the sex-definitional 1 problem: Probably, you and everyone you know is unambiguously male or female — or at least has always believed himself or herself to be so, and nobody’s challenged that, and nobody’s likely to.

That’s true, absolutely: Only maybe one live birth in 100 has some non-standard sex anatomy, and genetic anomalies are slightly rarer than that.

However, let’s talk about those 1-in-100 or 1-in-1000 cases — because those could be you, or your aunt, or your best friend — and because our system of law has to deal with 1-in-1000 situations, too.

Excellent point…. Click the link above to join in the conversation.

HRC, GLAAD, Montana and Lady Gaga

Jun13 by D Gregory Smith

Some clarifications about yesterday’s post– especially addressing the concerns and comments from the same post on LGBTQ Nation:

They do some great things, but HRC did not do its homework. The Montana GOP was first in it’s criminalization plank, back in the mid-90′s according to Bowen Greenwood on Brian Kahn’s Home Ground (Yellowstone Public Radio, Sept 2010). According to its press release, HRC thinks Montana copied Texas. The reality is that Texas either copied Montana or sadly, came up with it on its own.

http://www.ypradio.org/programs/local/home_ground.html

GLAAD did not report on the this issue until September 20, 2010 when the Montana AP went national with this issue.

http://www.glaad.org/page.aspx?pid=1871

They knew about it in mid June 2010 , when the Montana 2010 GOP Plank was issued.

If Lady Gaga knew that Montana, Wyoming and Idaho were not on the radar of the national gay rights agenda, I wonder how fast the shit would hit the fan…. The fact is, there is a priority system in favor of numbers- not ideology, among the big gay rights organizations. And sexy publicity that makes noise and press gets the action- not oppressive legislation or codified bigotry affecting only a fraction of the population.

It’s not right. All persecuted human beings in the USA deserve equal support- even in the less populous states.

That’s all my post was supposed to say. That’s all I want- equal treatment for all by the equal rights organizations to which I belong. Not third-class citizenship based on where someone happens to be born, work or live.

I am a member of HRC. I have been for years. I am not ready to give up on them- or GLAAD, not yet- but I do want them to know that we are paying attention out here.

And, hopefully, you are, too.

States Of Union: A Project Worth Supporting

Jun9 by D Gregory Smith

Have you ever thought of an idea that would make a good project, but maybe just didn’t have the wherewithal, the resources or the drive to see it through? Or have you ever seen something totally engaging that you knew you could wholeheartedly support?

Recently I’ve come across something that I love, both in idea and in practice, and I would like you to take a look with me….

Alix Smith is a brilliant photographer who has received recognition for her art. But she has recently decided to change things up. More specifically, she has chosen to document non-traditional, same-sex families in traditional, beautiful ways. “I wanted to show people the beauty of all families, that there’s nothing to be afraid of,” she told me.

And she does it beautifully. Not only that, she has a vision.

I asked her to share it with you:

“States of Union is a photographic project that documents gay and lesbian couples and families in the style of the classic masterpieces. As a lesbian I conceived of this project to fill the void I experienced in my own coming out process – I had no paradigms, no role models, no historical examples, and no contemporary exemplars of what my family might look like.

In order to truly do justice to the subject matter and show the diversity represented in our community I am currently raising funds to facilitate travel to photograph families from states that are not traditionally perceived as gay-friendly (e.g, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Georgia, Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington)

The more the world is permeated with images of loving and committed same-sex couples and families, the harder it will be for same-sex relationships to be considered “other.

Your donation will help give these families a voice. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing site, meaning if I don’t reach my entire goal before the deadline on JUNE 14TH AT 8PM I will not receive any of the funding.

To support this project go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alixsmith/states-of-union-portraits-of-same-sex-families

Please email, blog or tweet this! Each donation level has an accompanying reward No amount is insignificant – even $5 will bring me closer to the kickstarter goal.”

I am so in. Made a pledge, in fact.

I’d like you to consider it, too. If nothing else, to help erase fear and bring a greater awareness of truth and beauty to our country- and to the world.

Wake Up Call- Or Not?

Jun3 by D Gregory Smith

Depends on who you ask.

Moody’s Investor’s Service issued a warning that The U.S. credit rating could be in jeopardy if the debt ceiling is not raised, according to the NYT. And still, Republicans and Democrats can’t seem to reach a deal. Excerpt:

The treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, met on Capitol Hill with House freshmen, including Republicans who have suggested that they see little or no risk in a showdown over the debt limit. Citing the Moody’s statement, Mr. Geithner urged them to support raising it or risk an economic crisis.

“We didn’t create this mess,” one Republican told Mr. Geithner, according to a person in the room.

Independent analyses have shown that more than half of the $14.3 trillion debt is from policies enacted during the past decade when Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress, and much of the rest from lost revenues and stimulus spending and tax cuts since Mr. Obama took office at the height of the financial crisis and recession. (empases mine)

So… they did create this mess. And they have refused to learn the lesson, just keep digging in the same deep hole. Another Republican out-of-touch story.

Read the full article here.