The following article by Susan Milligan was posted on the U.S. News website October 13, 2017:
Corporate America has discovered that having LGBT-friendly policies helps the bottom line.
PHILADELPHIA — In 1991, Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel made no bones about why it fired gay and lesbian workers, saying in a company memo that the firm’s “traditional American values” could not co-exist with those “whose sexual preference fails to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society.”
This year, the restaurant and gift shop is a corporate partner at the Out & Equal Summit, an annual meeting of companies and organizations seeking to promote workplace equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. And putting its money where American consumers’ mouths are, the company handed out coupons offering a 35 percent discount on all online purchases into December, but only if buyers enter “EQUAL35” in the promo code line.
There is still no federal law against firing people for being LGBT, and the courts are still deciding if gays and lesbians are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. And President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are seeking to reverse many of the gains the LGBT right movement made during the Obama years. But corporate America, despite its conservative, buttoned-up image, is pushing back in the boardroom and the courtroom on behalf of LGBT employees, shareholders and customers.
“When [companies] provide an environment for employees to be themselves, they are more productive,” Frank Bisignano, chairman and CEO of First Data told more than 4,000 conference-goers at the Out & Equal Summit. “Workplace inclusion is not just the right thing to do. It’s good for the P/L [profit-loss] of the company. It’s good for the bottom line.”
It’s been a long evolution, says Selisse Berry, who founded Out & Equal 20 years ago. At the group’s first conference, fewer than 200 people attended and little more than a dozen companies were brave enough to declare themselves “Out & Equal” supporters. The audio-visual company workers hired to do the lights and sound for the event’s gala put down their equipment and walked out when they realized they were setting up for an LGBT rights event.
This year, the list of more than 100 corporate Out & Equal partners reads like the guest list for an exclusive business gala: Bank of America, Comcast, Dell and HSBC. As a JP Morgan Brazil executive promoted his company’s LGBT-friendly policies at a luncheon sponsored by Walt Disney, corporate exhibitors downstairs competed for the attention of job-seekers. Aetna proudly pointed out that its heath insurance covers gender reassignment therapies. Chevron noted that its commitment to equality and inclusion goes beyond its own staff, with the energy company making LGBT businesses part of its Supplier Diversity program. “Prejudice is Ugly. People Are Beautiful,” said the banner for HP, one of scores of employers handing out rainbow-colored SWAG.
In Washington, gay and transgender people are facing a sharp turnaround in administration support. Trump has re-instated a ban on transgender people in the military, and last week, Sessions issued a statement saying his department no longer believes trans people are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Justice had already filed a brief during the summer that contends sex discrimination laws do not cover bias based on someone’s sexual orientation.
Trump has assiduously courted the social conservative wing of his party. On Friday, the president is set to speak before the Values Voters Summit, a group which opposes same-sex marriage.
But while the president who ran as a sort of businessman-in-chief tries to dismantle LGBT protection rules, the business community itself is sending a message back that the administration is not going to change the way that executives, quite literally, do business.
“I think to a great extent, corporate America is leading the way” on welcoming LGBT workers and making them feel included and accepted at work, says Michelle E. Phillips, a principal at the law form Jackson Lewis in White Plains, N.Y.
Companies strive to get a perfect score on the “Corporate Equality Index” issued each year by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBT rights organization. And no longer is a mere anti-discrimination policy for gays and lesbians enough: companies now tout their same-sex partner benefits, coverage and paid time off for transgender surgeries, outreach to LGBT suppliers and creation of Employee Resource Groups for LGBT workers. According to Berry’s count, 94 percent of Fortune 500 companies have formal policies banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and three-fourths include gender identity and gender expression in their anti-bias policies.
Even under the new administration, much of the federal government is still riding the LGBT inclusion train. Several federal agencies, including the CIA, USDA and the Transportation Security Administration, had booths at the Out & Equal exhibit hall, looking for job recruits. The Environmental Protection Agency is continuing with a project to determined, by voluntary disclosure, how many LGBT people work at the agency, according to an agency presentation at the Out & Equal summit.
In a powerful short film only made public in December, the CIA tells the story of Tracey Ballard, a lesbian CIA employee who risked her security clearance and her career by coming out to her co-workers. Ballard started a group called “ANGLE” (the Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Employees and Allies) to support LGBT employees who – having once been automatically banned from hiring or fired if they were found to be LGBT – are now sought out as potential agents by the spy agency.
Decades ago, the theory was that LGBT people could be blackmailed thus should not be hired, Ballard notes. That put CIA wannabes in an untenable position: if you lied about being LGBT, you were unreliable and thus unhire-able. But if you acknowledged your sexual orientation or gender identity, you would be rejected. Ballard’s quest (followed by a 1995 order from former President Bill Clinton saying sexual orientation could not be a sole reason for denying security clearance) changed that view.
In the film, Angle of Ascent, some of the faces are pixilated and one man’s voice is mechanically altered. But it’s not because the workers want to conceal their LGBT status, a CIA employee explains. It’s because they are undercover agents. Like businesses, the CIA has determined that a diverse workforce means a bigger pool of ideas and solutions, he says.
Companies have also joined the legal fight with LGBT advocacy groups. On Thursday, more than 75 businesses signed on to an amicus (friend of the court) brief in support of a Georgia woman who contends she was harassed and driven from her job as a security guard because of her sexual orientation. Lambda Legal, which brought the case, says it’s the largest group of businesses that has ever signed onto a brief asserting that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to sexual orientation.
“You have a business community that is far more in sync with where we are as a country” than the current administration is,” says Sharon McGowan, Lambda Legal’s director of strategy.
The Sessions memo of last week (and the brief Justice filed during the summer) do not actually make discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity legal, McGowan and Phillips explain. The EEOC is actually the entity that brings such cases under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the EEOC (which is an independent agency) can still do so. But clearly, both said, the LGBT community no longer has an ally at the Department of Justice, which can choose to ignore cases of discrimination. Further, by next summer, Trump will be able to make pivotal appointments to the EEOC
Asked if the Trump administration’s policies are problematic, Bisignano demurs, gesturing to the thousands of conference-goers and saying their example “speaks for itself. It’s not taking a political position,” but making a dispassionate decision that LGBT-friendly policies work for business, Bisignano says. LGBT activists know they have a new battle on their hands. But this time, they will have corporate America in their corner.
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