What You Can Do for Health Care Fairness

Take Lambda LEgals’c health care fairness survey today. LGBT people and those with HIV encounter prejudice and discrimination from health care providers and institutions, including being denied necessary treatments, services or insurance coverage, or being forced to receive care from health care providers who are poorly trained or even hostile. We need your help to make sure that all of our concerns are heard. As part of Lambda Legal’s health care fairness campaign, we are conducting a national survey (available in both English and Spanish) to document the unique health care experiences and needs of LGBT people and people living with HIV. Information from this survey will be used to educate elected officials and other decisionmakers about the specific problems health care reform must address. Make your voice count for health care fairness.

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McDonald’s Agrees To Training and Settlement After Staff Called Gay Customers “Faggots,” Super-Size Training For Management Offered After Kentucky Incident

LOUISVILLE, KY – Nine months after an employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in downtown Louisville called a group of gay customers a series of anti-gay slurs, the American Civil Liberties Union announced today that McDonald’s has agreed to a cash settlement and diversity training for management at 30 of its Louisville-area restaurants.

Ryan Marlatt, Teddy Eggers, and three other friends had stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant on East Market Street on July 26, 2008 while visiting Louisville for the weekend. While they waited for their food to be prepared, an employee behind the counter referred to them as “faggots” to another employee. When Marlatt and Eggers objected to the slur and asked to speak with a manager, the employee who had called them “faggots” started arguing with them, repeatedly calling them “faggots” in front of other customers and calling one of them a “cocksucker” and “bitch.”

“The reason we made such a big deal out of this to begin with was because we didn’t want it happening to anyone else, so I’m very glad McDonald’s management is going to be having these trainings,” said Eggers of Indianapolis, Indiana. “We were hurt and upset, but at least we’re adults and can handle being called names. We hated thinking that this kind of harassment might also happen to someone young and vulnerable who would really take it to heart.”

The supervisor on duty refused to refund the group’s purchase, so Marlatt attempted several times in the following weeks to contact both the general manager of the McDonald’s and the corporate offices, with no results. Louisville law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, so the ACLU filed a complaint in September on behalf of Marlatt and Eggers with the Louisville Human Relations Commission. In October, representatives of a variety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups as well as other civil rights organizations protested at the downtown Louisville McDonald’s where the incident took place.

Although Marlatt and Eggers only asked for $28, McDonald’s offered them $2000 each on its own, which they accepted, Sun said. The Louisville Human Relations Commission has been thoroughly investigating Eggers and Marlatt’s complaint since it was filed last September and helped negotiate the settlement between the parties.

“We’re really grateful to the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission for its investigation, as well as to our friends at the Fairness Campaign, and commonGround at the University of Louisville, for keeping the pressure on McDonald’s to do the right thing,” said Michael Aldridge, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kentucky. “While we’re fortunate to have a law banning sexual orientation discrimination in Louisville, this goes to show that it’s still important to speak out and do something about it when your rights are violated.”

“McDonald’s could have saved itself a lot of embarrassment if they’d just done the right thing from the start and done something about this, but it’s great that so many people stood up for us and came forward to say treating people the way we were treated is wrong,” said Marlatt. “We just hope the trainings keep McDonald’s from letting this happen to any of their customers from now on.”

When their Louisville Human Relations Commission complaint was filed, Marlatt and Eggers asked for a refund of the money they spent on the McDonald’s meal, and asked that one employee – the cashier who objected to the other employee’s name-calling – be commended. “She was the only employee in the whole place who tried to help us,” said Eggers. “I hope she hears about this and knows how much we appreciated her sticking up for us.”

“While we wish Ryan, Teddy, and their friends hadn’t had to go through this whole experience to begin with, we’re glad that at least McDonald’s is taking steps to prevent anything like this from happening again in the future,” said Christine Sun, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project who is representing Marlatt and Eggers. “Businesses should treat all of their customers with respect regardless of their sexual orientation.”

A video of Marlatt and Eggers telling the story of what happened to them as well as their complaint to the Human Relations Commission can be found at http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/discrim/36781res20080916.html.

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KY’s Fairness Campaign Hires First Director

(Louisville, KY) Following a period of strategic planning and organizational renewal, along with the establishment of an endowment, the Fairness Campaign has hired its first Director, Chris Hartman, (left) who will oversee fundraising, communications, leadership development, and legislative strategy for the almost two-decade old civil-rights organization.
A Louisville native and graduate of Bellarmine University and St. Xavier High School, Hartman most recently worked as Congressman John Yarmuth’s 2008 campaign Press Secretary. He served in 2005 as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer In Service To America) in St. Louis, Director of Philadelphia’s Grassroots Fundraising for the Democratic National Committee in 2004′s Presidential Election, and as Producer and Founder of performance companies Project Improv * St. Louis and Louisville. Hartman holds a Master’s degree in Drama from Washington University in St. Louis, where his thesis, Stage Families of Choice: Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the American Gay Male Family on Stage, focused on American gay male family history and analysis.

The role of Director is the second to be filled by Fairness in under a year. Last July, the organization hired Administrative Coordinator Erica Dolinky, who manages the office, constituent communications and works to foster volunteer engagement and membership recruitment. Dolinky recently mentored at-risk college students in southern Colorado and worked for over a decade with Boys and Girls Clubs of Scottsdale, Arizona. She holds a degree in Fine Arts and a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Arizona State University.

The Fairness Campaign celebrates this year the 10th anniversary of the landmark passage of Louisville’s first Fairness Amendment by the Board of Aldermen on January 26, 1999. Currently, Fairness is teaming with Kentucky Fairness Alliance and other ally organizations to promote the passage of a statewide Fairness law, prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. A statewide Fairness lobby day in Frankfort is planned for February 25; more information will follow.* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual