Bay Area Cities Rank Poorly In LGBTQ Community Support
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- San Francisco may score an A+ when it comes to government support of LGBTQ people, but many Bay Area cities receive failing grades, according to a nationwide evaluation of city laws released by a civil rights organization.
Other U.S. cities, even in states without strong protections for members of the LGBTQ community, are continuing to lead the way on matters of equality, according to the 2016 Municipal Equality Index.
Released this week by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the index shows that despite the Bay Area having the largest population of LGBTQ in the country, the Bay Area didn't score well when it came to non-discrimination laws, municipal services, law enforcement, the municipality as an employer, and cities' public position on equality.
This year's index included over 500 cities in all 50 states.
"This year, we have been confronted with vivid reminders of just how much further [we] have to go in the fight for full equality," said Human Rights Campaign Foundation president Chad Griffin. "Anti-LGBTQ lawmakers introduced more than 200 bills attacking our community across 34 states."
Griffin noted that many cities are fighting for equality at the local level despite hurdles at the state level.
Rebecca Isaacs, executive director of LGBTQ rights organization Equality Federation Institute agreed with that assessment.
"Even in states with legislatures hostile to our issues, cities and towns of every size are doing what they can to positively impact the lives of their LGBTQ residents," Isaacs said.
With the exception of San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley, Bay Area cities received poor grades for support of LGBTQ issues.
Among the worst in the state was a city that borders San Francisco to the south, Brisbane.
Other Bay Area cities didn't rank well either. Vallejo, Salinas and Hayward received failing grades. Concord, Sunnyvale and Oakland didn't do much better.
Brisbane, a city with less than 5,000 residents in 2013, scored better than a lot of cities across the nation, but it scored last in California.
Although smaller cities may have less capacity to engage on LGBTQ issues, the authors of the index say they address that concern by building flexibility into the scorecard in the form of bonus points and by providing multiple avenues toward earning points.
For instance, if the city of Brisbane provided LGBTQ youth, homeless or elderly services it would have received bonus points, but according to the index, it doesn't provide any of those services.
Among the reasons the small city scored poorly was because city employees are not offered transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits, the city lacks laws prohibiting city contractors from discrimination and the city has no human rights commission, according to the index.
Other issues that led to the poor score was that the city doesn't have an LGBTQ police liaison or task force and the city didn't report hate crimes statistics to the FBI in 2014.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation said all cities were given their scorecard in advance of publication and given an opportunity to submit revisions.
By Hannah Albarazi - Follow her on Twitter: @hannahalbarazi.
