Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for LGBT People of Color in America documents how systemic failures to protect some students, recognize diverse families, and protect people from discrimination drive and trap LGBT people of color into a devastating cycle of poverty. The report details the ways in which a wide array of legal failures, combined with health and wealth disparities faced by people of color in general, result in higher poverty rates and increased economic insecurity for America’s 3 million LGBT people of color.
Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for LGBT People of Color in America includes recommendations to reduce the unfair financial penalties experienced by LGBT people of color because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as recommendations to address the systemic and persistent disparities that harm the economic security of people of color in the United States.
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The term “sexual orientation” is loosely defined as a person’s pattern of romantic or sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or more than one sex or gender. Laws that explicitly mention sexual orientation primarily protect or harm lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. That said, transgender people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual can be affected by laws that explicitly mention sexual orientation.
“Gender identity” is a person’s deeply-felt inner sense of being male, female, or something else or in-between. “Gender expression” refers to a person’s characteristics and behaviors such as appearance, dress, mannerisms and speech patterns that can be described as masculine, feminine, or something else. Gender identity and expression are independent of sexual orientation, and transgender people may identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bisexual. Laws that explicitly mention “gender identity” or “gender identity and expression” primarily protect or harm transgender people. These laws also can apply to people who are not transgender, but whose sense of gender or manner of dress does not adhere to gender stereotypes.
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