After Pride: We have much to celebrate but the party’s not over

I had the privilege of being in the Manhattan Pride Parade this weekend. My friend who worked there invited me to stand on the JP Morgan float with him. It was exhilarating to stand up there as a swarm of rainbow greeted us. My friend remarked, “I think I’ve seen more people today than I’ve seen in my life before.” Cheers deafened us as we turned from Fifth Avenue into the West Village. To see this much pride expressed in one’s own dignity and identity was a truly humbling experience.

The timing is uncanny, like puzzle pieces coming. The Supreme Court released its decision for Obergefell v. Hodges on Friday, June 26, almost perfect timing before Pride. It was here, at Stonewall Inn, that riots against police harassment launched the start of the gay rights movement.

For the crowd celebrating outside Stonewall, history must have seem full circle. Civil rights have just achieved a monumental victory, one that so many have struggled and suffered years for.

It is an achievement worth celebration, no doubt, but we still have ways to go before reaching the end of the road. The landscape can be constantly changing and the milestones might change, but the path to true equality hasn’t even been fully paved.

Just recently, at a White House event celebrating Pride, President Obama was interrupted by Jennicet Gutiérrez, a transgender Latina activist. While she might be wrong in heckling the President at what was supposed to be a celebration of progress, the incident does point out that further progress remains to be made.

Equality can’t be thought of as a single track; entwined with the struggle for socio-political recognition is the struggle for economic parity. Marriage equality means nothing if one lives on the streets hungry and cold. While equality and acceptance for LGBT rights have made progress, so much still remains to do.

Here are some sobering statistics: According to a 2009 National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs report, 50 percent of deaths in violent hate crimes against LGBTQ are transgender women. Only 21 states have workplace protections for LGBT employees. And LGBT employees routinely make 68 cents to every dollar their straight co-workers make.

In more than half of US states, you can still be fired for being gay. And roughly 21 percent of LGBT employees have reported some type of workplace discrimination as well as 47 percent of transgendered employees, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute. At the national level, a coherent policy regarding workplace protections remains lacking. Although President Obama has issued an executive order prohibiting federal contractors allowing LGBT discrimination, it is not law.

According to the same report from the Williams Institute, almost all top 50 Fortune 500 companies and the top 50 federal contractors say that diversity policies are good business practice. The majority of these companies explicitly connect policies prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination with improvements in their bottom line. Yet the Employee Non-Discrimination Act languishes in Congress right now. Why such a common sense policy has not been passed boggles the mind.

Without a coherent anti-discrimination policy, the most vulnerable without a doubt are transgendered employees. The most vulnerable in all areas, actually, remain the transgendered population. On social media in particular, there has been an outcry for the mainstream LGBT community to acknowledge the privilege that cisgendered people have vis a vis the transgendered population. To be able to access the bathroom without hostile stares or, at worse, violence, is a privilege that I as cisgendered take for granted, and quite frankly, had not realized before.

Though recent news and the media have celebrated the transition of Caitlyn Jenner and popular culture has welcomed the emergence of transgendered stars like Laverne Cox, reality remains stark for everyday trans people. Trans people are almost four times more likely than cisgendered people to have a household income of less than $10,000 per year. They are more likely to be victims of hate violence. More often than not, they are the “T” left out of LGBT initiatives. The issue of trans rights is one that needs to be addressed.

Similarly, the intersectionality of race and sexual identity is an issue that should be faced. True diversity and equality is when all facets of one’s identity is accepted and celebrated, not just one. Yet visibility of these LGBT persons of color in the media and in general representation is lacking.

All the meanwhile, the precious rights that we have gained must be protected. Even as the courts and legislatures codify into law our rights, religious conservatives have sought under the guise of “religious freedom” to deny them. We’ve made history, but the end of history is not quite yet upon us.