Syndicate and Hague

The common portrayal of gays and lesbians in the media is this: dual income, no kids; highly educated; artistic; relatively affluent; white. It’s been part of the argument some have made about gay marriage - think of all the money gay and lesbian people would bring in with their fancy weddings!

This observation is, of course, somewhat true. The only reason Megan and I are traveling out East for our wedding (along with a few friends, all of us contributing to the Massachusetts economy) is because it’s legal there and not here in Minnesota. Middle class people can travel, upper class people can travel and throw lavish affairs.

This perception was something that ran under some anti-gay sentiment during the arguments over proposition 8, and also reinforces the idea that gays are just rich, white, and privileged.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are poor gay people. It shouldn’t surprise me that gays and lesbians are poorer than our heterosexual counterparts, but it did. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law released the results of a study they did that compiled and analyzed data from the 2000 Census, the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the 2003 and 2005 California Health Interview Surveys. via Echelon

Though poverty is on the rise among all Americans, the authors of the study–entitled Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community–suggest that unique social and political aspects of LGB life play a role in contributing to higher rates of poverty in this community, including vulnerability to employment discrimination, inability to marry and higher numbers of uninsured.

Key findings include:

• After comparing families with similar characteristics, gay and lesbian couple families are significantly more likely to be poor than are heterosexual married couple families;
• In general, lesbian couples have much higher poverty rates than either different-sex couples or gay male couples;
• African-Americans in same-sex couples have poverty rates that are significantly higher than black people in different-sex married couples;
• People in same-sex couples who live in rural areas have poverty rates that are twice as high as same-sex couples who live in large metropolitan areas;
• Employment discrimination, lack of access to marriage, and a greater likelihood of being uninsured exacerbate poverty among LGB people.
• Children of gay couples are living in poverty at a rate that is twice as much as the children of straight married couples. (this one is via Pam’s House Blend)

Also, a note about the the lack of transpeople in this study:

Because no representative data exist for transgender people, the report does not analyze poverty in that community. Previous Williams Institute studies, however, found that large proportions of transgender people report very low incomes, which suggest that poverty is also a major concern for transgender people.

This seems like an important analysis, and sad. It was really amusing to both Megan and me today when we drove behind some bigot’s truck with his “Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman” bumper sticker, pulled in front of them so they would be forced to drive behind my big ol’ rainbow-stickered car.

That is what life is like when you’re comfortable. You live in a big, liberal city and the bigots are out of place driving down 28th street. You don’t feel like the people who dominate this report. You have agency. There are parts of your existence you’re powerless over, but on the whole you’re not powerless. Hell, in my case, your life is filled with people - mostly straight - who go and buy you the stones for your wedding rings because you can’t afford them right now yourself.

I think it is important to recognize that those of us who are gay and comfortable - incomes we can live on, jobs we can be out at, relationships we don’t have to hide - are like refugees who have found the safehouses. It’s not like we’re truly ignorant of our status - people feel free to slap their prejudices on their bumpers, even in Minneapolis - but that we have the privilege to pretend they don’t exist at times.

Objectively, I know the people around me are awesome. Really, the reason my life is generally amazing is because I have such wonderful people around to have fun with. I know this.

However, sometimes people do things that just floor me.

It’s my birthday next week and there’s nothing I like more than organizing a big outing full of the people who make life interesting and good so that we can go and drink beer and eat bar food - so, birthday happy hour! All I really want is for people to show up and have fun and that plan always seems to work pretty well.

That all went as planned, but…

Before coming to the party tonight, my boss rounded up all my friends who were coming on Facebook and covertly went about organizing a group gift. Which would have been really nice in and of itself. It’s always quite sweet when someone goes and rounds people up to get something for you.

The backstory on this is that Megan and I are having our wedding rings made for us. We’d wanted to have some little diamonds on the rings, but it was just out of our budget. So we compromised and had decided to get just the bands for now and save up for the cost of labor and the small diamonds and do it down the road.

So you should know where this story is going, right? My boss knew that we’d altered the plans for our rings because I’d talked about it at work a couple months ago. He orchestrated all these people together, slyly got the name of my designer from me, and they paid for the labor and diamonds that we’d wanted but couldn’t afford. With money left over, even.

Neither Megan nor I am really processing this right now. It’s incredibly overwhelming to have people do something like this for you. I’m also not very eloquent right now.

I still can’t think of much to say. I’m just fortunate and grateful and if I start forgetting how lucky I am to have this kind of a life with all of you people in it, just smack me upside the head or something.

When I moved back to Minnesota, I had my eyes on the University. I wanted a job at the U for a few reasons: I’m committed to education and enhancing education, I think the University itself is a great school overall, and I knew (despite my protestations to the contrary) that I was shopping for a PhD and a way to pay for it.

The University of Minnesota, like many other universities, provides free tuition to its staff. It’s a fundamental element of an educational organization - encouraging your workforce to be educated helps your organization and drawing smart, ambitious people into your workplace by offering free tuition also helps your organization.

So when faced with the budget problem, what does the University do? The one solid proposal that Bruininks put forth via email on Monday was to cut the tuition benefit to 75%. Other parts of the proposal were not firm and kind of wishy washy (likely a pay freeze, but they have to talk to the unions; maybe closing the U over holidays, but they’re not sure).

Some have said that we as employees shouldn’t feel so entitled to the free tuition, but when I’ve gotten that glossy, 4-color brochure from HR that tells me how much the University actually pays me because of things like tuition reimbursement and therefore justifies them paying us less than market rate for our jobs, I’m expected to view the tuition-reimbursement as compensation.

Now it’s a “gift”? Sorry. No.

The other part of that letter from Bruininks is there was no end-date on that 75%. Which means that there’s no deadline, which means if it passes the Regents, it will stay.

So you have smart, ambitious staff who are stuck (momentarily) due to the market. But I can’t imagine that people who could make more elsewhere will stay as the non-salary aspects of our compensation are stripped away. It’s a bad long-term move.

Additionally, nowhere in that email did Bruininks talk about pay equity. There are a larger number of faculty and administrators at the University who make between $150k-500k than you realize (and a few who make more). These are people who have benefited greatly from the boom times, and they are the ones who should sacrifice now. Cutting the pay of someone who makes that much money will not impact them in the same way that it impacts someone making $30K. And changing the tuition reimbursement is a pay cut that will disproportionately impact people lower on the economic ladder.

Call me a socialist if you want, but I don’t believe that the budget should be balanced on the backs of the lower and middle classes. It doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be.

I get so angry at the University sometimes. I see our follies and our waste and our disparities and I really don’t understand why other people don’t call out when the U is visibly acting contrary to its mission and obligations. People are always getting caught up in fear of being honest about things, and I think that does us a disservice. I did post-secondary option at the U, I got my BA from CLA, I taught as an adjunct here, and I’m both a staff member and a graduate student now. My parents and my brother are U alums too. I’ve worked at and studied at other schools (New York University, Brooklyn College) and there are things that the U does better than either, hands down. However, there are also things we do worse.

What I’m saying is that you don’t have to drink the kool aid to be a fierce advocate for the University. I think real advocates for the U are the people who are willing to challenge administrative decisions and who want the U to improve and serve as a model university.

What Bruininks is proposing right now? Not okay. Maybe it’s time for the Minnesota Daily to report on salary information like they have in the past. It’s public data, you know…it might put these decisions in perspective.