(Jewish Group) LGBTQ people lack full legal protections in every state. Jews need to help

[Behind the Aegis]

LGBTQ people lack full legal protections in every state. Jews need to be part of the solution.

In the 1980s, Dennis Neill, an employee of our family business, came out as gay to my late father, Charles Schusterman. Coming out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the height of the AIDS crisis was a risky thing to do, and it could have cost Dennis his job. But my father embraced Dennis and assured him that his job was safe.

At the time, there was no law in Oklahoma to prevent Dennis from being fired or discriminated against simply for being gay. My father provided that protection on his own. Nearly 20 years later, Dennis’s story and many others like it inspired me to ensure that our company extended full benefits to LGBTQ+ people, even though no federal law and very few state laws mandated we provide such benefits.

Even today, no such laws exist in many states or at the federal level. Despite measurable achievements for LGBTQ rights, such as legalizing same-sex marriage, the federal government has never passed comprehensive legislation for fair and equal treatment of LGBTQ people.

That could change soon as the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on the Equality Act. If signed into law, the Equality Act would prohibit employers in all 50 states from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It would also protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, education, government services and public spaces.

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