Working Toward Equality

Equal opportunity for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered faculty remains elusive. Progress depends on strengthening antidiscrimination efforts in institutions and statehouses.

By Doug Steward

Significant obstacles stand in the way of analyzing the integration of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) faculty members into the U.S. professoriate. Whereas the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other agencies collect voluminous, valuable data on race, gender, and ethnicity, few data exist for the GLBT community.

Indeed, the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group that works to increase public understanding of GLBT issues, cautions on its Web site that the data it collects on university and governmental positions "represent its best efforts to track laws and policies that relate to sexual orientation and gender identity. Because of the proprietary nature of human-resource information, and because no centralized place exists where laws and policies must be reported, some entities that have inclusive policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans may not appear [in the data]."

Although the Human Rights Campaign frequently updates its data, GLBT protections are sometimes revoked after their passage, so the data may include some policies that are no longer in effect.1 Published online in November 1999, the final report from the American Anthropological Association's Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues in Anthropology—one of the most significant attempts to date to gauge the status of GLBT faculty members—offers similar comments on the difficulty of securing accurate information about the kinds, degree, and prevalence of discrimination against such faculty. While the commission's survey found that only 42.9 percent of GLBT respondents indicated that they had not experienced GLBT-related discrimination, 23.3 percent of the respondents were "not sure" whether or not they had experienced such discrimination. Initially, the report's authors wrote, they were surprised at the frequency of these "not sure" responses. "Then we became frightened," they continued, "as we began to identify instances of discrimination which we had previously glossed over in our own anthropological careers, and to recognize the similarities underlying what we previously dismissed as individualized, personal experiences." The report returns repeatedly to the importance of collecting and comparing narratives about GLBT faculty experiences so that significant patterns can be identified as real, albeit often subtle, discrimination rather than dismissed as the product of individuals' imaginations.

Such difficulties were demonstrated only too well by a controversy that erupted recently at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University when the faculty contract offered to a new dean's lesbian partner was rescinded by the university's Board of Visitors, or trustees. The new dean had been recruited from her previous institution where her partner also taught. Although the partner's interview went well, and the department was delighted to welcome her, the board took the unprecedented action of rejecting her appointment. Officially, the board nixed the hire for funding reasons; however, it approved eleven other appointments at the same meeting.

The November 22, 2002, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Virginia Tech faculty members "largely dismissed as a public-relations ploy" the board's financial explanation. Still, no one can point to any clear evidence that the board rejected the hire based on the woman's sexual orientation. In this case, as in many others of possible discrimination, anti-GLBT bias probably compromised a couple's livelihood in academe, but there is no certainty of it, since the board refuses to comment further on its rationale for the decision.

Instead, an atmosphere of suspicion and fear now obtains on the campus, according to a Virginia Tech associate professor of teaching and learning, who told the Chronicle that the decision severely damaged morale among professors. "People are saying to me right and left that they are looking for new jobs because this is a hostile and discriminatory environment," he reported.

The board rescinded the job offer in June 2002. According to the March 28, 2003, issue of the Chronicle, it took the further step that month of revising the university's faculty-approved non-discrimination policy, which had been in place since 1991. The effect of that action was to eliminate gay and lesbian employees as a protected category. At the same time, it extended a one-year contract to the new dean's partner. Although the board did not explain why it took these simultaneous actions, its message appears to be that GLBT employees should expect to work, or not, at the whim of trustees. In the latest development, the April 18, 2003, issue of the Chronicle reported that the board reinstated protections for gay and lesbian employees. Although this move is welcome, the board has revealed a fickle commitment to its antidiscrimination policy.

Academic Culture

The controversy at Virginia Tech revolved around potential discrimination in hiring, but GLBT faculty also face special career challenges if they do research and teaching in GLBT studies. In "Advising About the 'Queer' Market: Some Notes for Mentors," published by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in Profession 1996, Gregory Bredbeck, an English professor at the University of California, Riverside, clarifies that "while there are now highly visible tenured gay, lesbian, and queer scholars, only a small number of them have gained that tenure by producing openly gay, lesbian, or queer work. And while many people have commented on the gay, lesbian, and queer publishing breakthrough, there is reason to view this also with some skepticism." In other words, the success of star figures in GLBT studies, which gives some observers the impression that the field is a red-hot rocket to publication and tenure, is deceptive. Because work in GLBT studies is so often viewed as insufficiently serious, Bredbeck calls the merit granted to it in hiring and promotion "supplemental."

Historian James Naylor Green echoed such thoughts in his January 10, 2000, remarks to the Chronicle: "Young scholars whose primary focus is on lesbian and gay history have difficulty finding jobs in departments where the history of sexuality is considered a footnote . . . especially when they must compete with straight scholars whose interest in lesbian, gay, or queer history is tangential." Such sobering comments describe the kind of atmosphere in which a friend of mine was congratulated by a member of his Ph.D. committee for "keeping the gay thing under control" during his orals.

Even the most supportive of institutions can exist in communities with which they have an antagonistic relationship. There may be little that colleges or universities located outside major cities can do to make life safe and comfortable for GLBT employees, and any efforts to do so may risk alienating the local community. In "The Ins and Outs of Academic Searches," published in the September 15, 2000, issue of the Chronicle, Doug Risner, a doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, remarks that geographic location further complicated an already difficult job search: "Another dilemma I faced during this year's . . . search was balancing the relatively comfortable and supportive environment we've enjoyed here for the past three years as a committed gay couple (both at the university and in the wider community), with the prospect of relocating to a new community where homophobic attitudes and anti-gay bias might flourish. This affects not just my partner and me, but our daughter as well."

This realization about potential communities represented a new twist in Risner's thinking about the job market's unequal terrain for GLBT candidates. The year before, after becoming a finalist for a position at a university in a community that would have been perfect for him and his family, he was informed that he was unsuitable for the job because of his sexual orientation. He wrote in the Chronicle that, as he wrestled with the situation, a "languishing paralysis, which I think many gay and lesbian people confront repeatedly, . . . set in. Having to confront rejection as a gay man (you're unfit for this job) in the context of affirmation as a finalist (you're perfect for this job), left me feeling empty and without recourse."

Respondents to the American Anthropological Association survey also recounted being asked questions about how "comfortable" they would be in particular departments and locales, questions that they interpreted as suggesting that the department or the community would not welcome them because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is unlikely that such subtle discrimination could be proven or that recourse would be available. Indeed, the search committee members asking such questions may have felt that they were doing the candidate a favor by hinting that anti-GLBT bias would hinder the candidate's integration.

Failures of State Protections

The incident at Virginia Tech and others like it illustrate how uncertain job security is for GLBT faculty when nondiscrimination policies are left to the discretion of individual institutions. Yet legal protections provide only scattered comfort. Job benefits and discrimination protections are regulated at the federal, state, and local levels. Widespread protections exist at all three levels against discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and other personal factors, but protections for sexual orientation and gender identity are much less common. Moreover, even where such protections have been instituted, they are subject to challenges, and some have been revoked.

Many states have not been content merely to abstain from protecting GLBT citizens but have actually formalized discrimination through legislation specifically designed to prevent GLBT people from accessing rights others take for granted. Only thirteen states—Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—have not passed some form of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, designed to prevent gay and lesbian couples from securing any of the rights associated with marriage by defining it strictly as a union between a man and a woman. (Legislators apparently have less difficulty deciding what a "man" or "woman" is than gender theorists do.)

States passed these laws because they feared that same-sex couples would invoke the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution to argue that civil unions recognized in other states—such as Vermont, which permits such unions—confer on them the rights associated with marriage in any state. These state versions of the Defense of Marriage Act may violate the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, but no legal challenge has yet overturned them; they stand as an unabashed testimony to legislators' willingness to withhold rights from a minority population in the name of "common sense" and religious tradition.

Unless these laws are overturned, gay and lesbian couples will continue to be denied countless rights that are automatically granted to married couples, including the right to make decisions for a partner in a medical emergency. Many legal rights, including those related to inheritance and retirement, are tied to the job benefits of GLBT faculty. Given women faculty's relatively lower pay compared with that of their male colleagues, lesbian couples may find that an already-low salary is further depreciated by the denial of certain benefits to partners and "unrelated" children.2

State protections are also undermined by the existence of sodomy laws and a failure to include the transgendered in most legislation protecting gay and lesbian people from discrimination. Of the thirteen states that have laws barring sodomy, nine are in the South (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia).3 The others are in the Midwest (Kansas and Missouri) and the Rocky Mountain region (Idaho and Utah).

Defenders of sodomy laws sometimes point out that they are rarely enforced. Still, such laws could provide legal justification for firing GLBT educators. There is, assuredly, less public hysteria over GLBT educators at the university level than at the K-12 level, but GLBT university faculty in the thirteen antisodomy states work under the threat of criminal prosecution, which could justify their being fired for failing to uphold university ethics standards.

Existing sodomy laws have also been used to justify the denial or revocation of discrimination protections, since the presumed sexual acts of GLBT citizens define them in states with such laws as criminals. In addition, faculty members who teach GLBT material could be accused of "promoting" criminal activity. Only the District of Columbia and seven states—Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island-have legislated protections for the transgendered. Transgendered employees who experience job discrimination outside this handful of states may have no legal recourse.

States' records on GLBT adoption are not cheering, either, although they are less dismal than state history on transgendered issues. The Human Rights Campaign rates thirteen states as "bad" for their records on authorizing gay and lesbian people to adopt children. Another sixteen have "unclear" records, and twenty-three have "good" ones.4 Forty states have bad records of allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt as couples, leaving only eleven (including Washington, D.C.) with good records. Often, one member of a same-sex couple has already adopted a child, whom the other partner wishes to adopt. Twenty-three states have bad records in authorizing such second-parent adoptions, eighteen have "mixed" records, and only ten have good records.

Such discrimination affects gay and lesbian families in many ways, including the denial of tuition benefits to children whom university employees have been barred from adopting legally. Of course, it is the child who suffers from this particular form of discrimination, especially as universities across the country raise tuition to compensate for falling state revenues. Institutions can take it upon themselves to remedy such discrimination by enacting policies that circumvent the state's refusal to grant second-parent status to GLBT parents, but they are under little pressure to do so.

Institutional Protection

Since most states and municipalities do not have nondiscrimination protections, university administrations and governing boards have discretion to determine whether or not to shield GLBT employees from harassment and firing on the basis of sexual orientation. The good news is that the Human Rights Campaign reports that only three states—Alabama, Hawaii, and Montana—have no university or college that offers nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation. Still, eighteen states have three or fewer such institutions, and only six states have more than twenty institutions that offer nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation—Illinois has thirty-seven, Pennsylvania thirty-one, New York thirty, Massachusetts twenty-four, California twenty-three, and Ohio twenty-two. That means that more than 40 percent of the institutions offering nondiscrimination protection are in six states.

The situation is worse regarding protections for transgendered people. The Human Rights Campaign reports only four institutions in the country that include gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies: Brown University (Rhode Island), Knox College (Illinois), the State University of New York system (sixty-four campuses), and the University of Iowa. Thus most universities have failed to remedy at the institutional level states' refusal to protect transgendered employees.

Domestic Partners

Individual institutions also have the prerogative whether to provide same-sex domestic-partner benefits. The Human Rights Campaign reports that 181 institutions of higher learning offer such benefits. Given that the United States has more than 4,000 colleges and universities, this number is extremely low and underscores the disenfranchisement of GLBT faculty. In this area, too, state policy affects job benefits: even when individual institutions take it upon themselves to offer same-sex domestic-partner health insurance, the value of the institutional contribution to the partner's (or the partner's children's) health insurance is taxed as part of the employee's income. Health benefits for married partners are not taxed. The result is that gay and lesbian employees necessarily benefit less from their employers' health insurance policies than do married heterosexual couples.

Work Ahead

As Esther Newton, a pioneering researcher in the field of GLBT studies, cogently observed in the March 11, 1987, issue of the Chronicle:

Homophobia in the academic world is not a violent shove in the back. It occurs in a privileged context where hostility is rarely so crudely expressed. But it does break spirits, damage careers, and ruin lives. . . . It strikes in closed-door meetings of tenure-review and promotion committees and in secret letters of recommendation. Rejection and denial are almost always attributed to the victim's alleged personal and intellectual shortcomings. In twenty-eight years in higher education, the fact that I am a lesbian has never been given as the reason why this or that shove knocked me down.

Newton's observation probably stands true today. As Shelton Waldrep, an assistant professor of English at the University of Southern Maine, remarked in "The Job Market and Under-graduate Queer Instruction," published by the MLA in Profession 1996, "Rumor and personal testimonies can provide any job seeker who asks with numerous stories of candidates who suspect or even know that their chances at a job at various institutions were scuttled because of their identification as queer—in whatever form—in their vitae, abstracts, writing samples, transcripts, or job letters." The evidence is mostly anecdotal, passed on by word of mouth from one GLBT graduate student or faculty member to another. But the American Anthropological Association report represents an important step toward documenting the uncertainty and fear under which many GLBT academics continue to work. The Human Rights Campaign's collection of data from across the country represents, too, an important step toward centralizing knowledge about institutionalized, structural discrimination against GLBT people and the progress being made in some quarters to prevent or circumvent it. We will need much more work of this kind before a clear analysis can be made of the status of GLBT faculty in academe.

Postscript

As I complete revisions to this article, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has just published online its new study, Campus Climate for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered People: A National Perspective. Based on interviews with more than a thousand students, faculty, and staff from around the country, the report concludes that the "campus community has not been an empowering place for GLBT people and that anti-GLBT intolerance and harassment [have] been prevalent." Most disturbingly, a fifth of respondents reported fearing for their physical safety within the past year. Fifty percent of faculty respondents declined to say whether or not they had been denied employment or promotion based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Together with the high number of respondents who were not sure whether they had been discriminated against in the American Anthropological Association survey, this finding underscores the doubt that GLBT faculty must live with. We will need much more work like that presented in Campus Climate before a clear picture of the status of GLBT faculty in academe emerges.

Notes

1. In addition, Daryl Herrschaft, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign's WorkNet, indicates that the "data are more used to track those policies of which we are aware, rather than to provide a representative sample of the universe of colleges." Although the campaign's work in compiling these data is pioneering, it cannot be considered comprehensive. Back to text

2. The 2002-03 edition of the American Association of University Professors' Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, published in the March-April issue of Academe, describes a persistent gap between men's and women's salaries. Back to text

3. Bearing out the famous observation by French theorist Michel Foucault that sodomy is an "utterly confused category," states across the country have defined the term in various ways. It can refer to both same-sex and heterosexual couples, only to same-sex couples, or to everyone except a married heterosexual couple. It may apply only to anal intercourse, or it may apply also to anal-oral or oral-genital contact. Florida shows particular flair and breadth in its mixture of legal and biblical language: "A person who commits any unnatural and lascivious act with another person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree" (Fla. Stat. § 800.02 [2001]). Thankfully, the statute clarifies that "a mother's breastfeeding of her baby does not under any circumstance violate this section. Back to text

4. The Human Rights Campaign provides the following information, available on its Web site <www.hrc.org> about its rating system: "First, we examined state laws that address adoption and second-parent adoption by gay and lesbian adults. Second, we analyzed judges' rulings in court adoption proceedings involving a gay or lesbian adult. And, finally, where there were no reported cases of gay and lesbian parents adopting children, we looked at rulings on custody and visitation disputes involving a gay or lesbian parent as a possible indication of the courts' views on the role of sexual orientation in parenting. Back to text

At the Modern Language Association of America, Doug Steward is assistant director of English programs and the Association of Departments of English. He has taught literature at the University of Kansas, Truman State University, and Franklin and Marshall College and has served as president of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus for the Modern Languages.

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