This Doesn’t Make Sense.

Warped logic, I just can’t see it. It is like they are just trying to do as little as possible, not pushing the envelope but rather sealing the envelope.

Michigan court rules that businesses can refuse gay & bi people, but not trans people
The court ruled that discrimination because of sex legally includes discrimination against transgender people, but not discrimination based on sexual orientation.
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
December 11, 2020


A Michigan court has ruled that it’s legal for businesses to refuse to serve gay and bisexual people but not transgender people.

The state’s civil rights law includes neither sexual orientation nor gender identity, but the Michigan Civil Rights Commission voted in 2018 to interpret the state’s ban on discrimination on the basis of sex to include discrimination against LGBTQ people, an interpretation that federal courts have agreed with and that was later used by the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County this past year to rule that federal law already bans job discrimination against LGBTQ people.

State Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray issued a summary judgement in two discrimination cases, one based on anti-gay discrimination and the other on anti-trans discrimination. One case involved Rouch World, a wedding venue that refused to host weddings for same-sex couples, and the other involved Uprooted Electolysis, a hair removal service that refused to serve a transgender client. The lawsuits were combined into one.

Murray referenced a state supreme court decision in Barbour v Department of Social Services, where the court ruled that the state’s ban on discrimination because of sex does not ban discrimination against gay and bisexual people.

That is where I don’t follow the judge’s reasoning.

The U.S. Supreme Court said according to Fox News…

The court justified their inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity under Title VII by focusing on the law’s language, which prohibits discrimination “because of” sex, stating that as long as sex is a factor the discrimination, that is enough to trigger Title VII.

The majority goes on to use a hypothetical where an employer has two workers who are attracted to men, but one is a man and the other is a woman, stating that firing the man for being gay would be discriminating against him because of his sex because he has the same preference as the female employee. The court similarly discussed a potential situation where two workers identified as female but one was identified as male at birth and the other female.

So I don’t follow the Michigan court’s findings. According to the Supreme Court, that sexual orientation and gender identity are components of "sex" discriminations. 

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Down in New Jersey there is a new non-profit that seems to have a great idea.

An alliance aimed at making life better for transgender people launches in N.J. Tuesday

NJ.com

By Tennyson Donyéa 

December 15, 2020

The new Trans Affirming Alliance is set to begin operating in New Jersey on Tuesday when it hosts a Zoom webinar about the legal process of changing one’s name and gender markers.

Operating as a nonprofit corporation, the alliance will partner with existing LGBTQ centers in New Jersey to provide legal services, mental health counseling, career guidance, support groups, and targeted health and wellness services for the transgender community, such as vocal coaching, the organization announced in a release.

“The overarching goal is to improve the lives of our transgender siblings by bringing resources to community members through community partners, training of subject matter experts on the specific needs of transgender people, and broad-based education on the needs of the transgender community,” said Celeste Fiore, Trans Affirming Alliance Chairperson.

I say “seems like” because it seems like to me that these “umbrella” organizations seem to overshadow the other non-profits.