Stonewall 40 years on

Queers for Justice recent arcticle Stonewall 40th and Pride Unveil NYC’s Shameful Priorities - highlights how there has always been a inherent tension in the queer communities.

The article discusses New York city spending money targetting gay tourists to New York but not providing funds to the poor and working class queers.

This isn't suprising and often I think the poor working class gays and lesbians are the ones who don't get acknowledged in the fight for queer rights. Often research highlights the spending power of gay men without acknowledging the hidden gay poor. Hopefully more research on Queer poverty will occur - and one day sexual orientation will actually appear on national census questions - without this simple change the Queer poor will always be lost.

LGB Poverty

An interesting study called "Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community" was  published by The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law this month.

"This report undertakes the first analysis of the poor and low-income lesbian, gay, and bisexual population. We find clear evidence that poverty is at least as common in the LGB population as among heterosexual people and their families."

One of the key questions they tried to answer was 

How do poverty rates for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people compare to those rates for heterosexuals?

The report makes interesting reading but the key issues they identified were that lesbian, gay and bisexual people who were in poverty were a higher percentage than the general heterosexual population. The report did identify that gay white male educated couples poverty rates were lower but amongst lower educated were worse off. 

What this study highlighted is that sexuality, race, gender and education were multiplier effects so generally people were worse off than their heterosexual counterparts.

The other issue identified was the ongoing data problem and why government Censuses should include a question about sexual orientation.

I picked up this news off the Out Front Blog where they posted it as The LGBT Money Myth?

I think what this highlights is that yes some in the LGBT communities are as well off as their heterosexual counterparts but this report highlights that some are worse off and a lot worse off. What would be even more interesting is to see the impact of HIV status and does this make the situation worse for those who are positive compared to those who are not.

The other interesting aspect which I suspect explains poverty is how connected people are to family and friends. 

This study raises lots of questions and only highlights the importance of more studies to understand what the reality is for LGBT communities and especially those on the margins.