{"id":14061,"date":"2019-03-11T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/?p=14061"},"modified":"2019-03-11T12:30:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T17:30:20","slug":"lgbt-equality-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/realuoso\/lgbt-equality-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"LGBTQ Equality Bill heads back to Congress &#8211; with real estate industry support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Equality Bill \u2013 which aims to expand the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/civil-rights-act\/civil-rights-act-of-1964.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Civil Rights Bill of 1964<\/a> to include discrimination against sexual orientation, sex, and gender identity, was first introduced in 2015. Unfortunately, it never left committee. <\/p>\n<p>However, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2019\/03\/08\/lgbt-equality-act-back-to-congress-with-massive-company-support.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">it returns to Congress this week<\/a> with some massive corporate support \u2013 over 161 companies are supporting the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrc.org\/resources\/business-coalition-for-equality\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Human Rights Campaign coalition<\/a>. This start list includes Apple, American Airlines, KPMG, Deloitte, IKEA, and Pepsico \u2013 and many more.<\/p>\n<p>The news that it will hit the currently Democratically-held House of Representatives may spell some hope for the fifty percent of the LGBT community that lives in one of the 30 states that do not provide LGBT protections. If passed, the bill would provide protections in employment, education, housing, public accommodations, jury service, and federal funding. <\/p>\n<p>The Equality Act also amends the Equal Opportunity Credit Act to ensure equal and fair access to credit. Going forward, the act is likely to enjoy broad support in the House, but will certainly face scrutiny and resistance in the conservatively-held Senate. However, the over 3.7 trillion dollars in revenue represented in the Business Coalition for Equality are a big voice that covers over half the country. No representative should ignore or treat that lightly.<\/p>\n<p>Although federal protections are most needed, and <a href=\"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/politics\/unfairness-fair-housing-month\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the federal government has lagged behind<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s important to remember the real estate industry (NAR members (association executives, brokers, and Realtors alike) and real estate tech companies) have come out in droves to support this legislation, continuing it\u2019s great track record on LGBT equality. <\/p>\n<p>Nearly a decade ago made it against the Code of Ethics (see Article 10) for any Realtor to discriminate against an LGBT person. <a href=\"https:\/\/magazine.realtor\/news-and-commentary\/commentary\/article\/2015\/09\/real-estates-union-equality\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">NAR has long been on the side of LGBT equality<\/a>, and as a fun piece of trivia: when it came to the historic marriage ruling \u2013 the lead plaintiff, Obergefell was a Realtor.<\/p>\n<p>A lack of legal LGBTQIA+ protections is a continued vulnerability in the fight for fair and equal access to housing, and even before this bill was reintroduced, 2019 was promising to be a big year with the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals (NAGLREP) and NAR making a renewed push to end housing discrimination for LGBT populations. Things are happening!<\/p>\n<p>What can you do? Write your senator or congressional representative, <a href=\"https:\/\/act.hrc.org\/page\/37230\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">sign up<\/a> to help push the law into action and stay in the know.<\/p>\n<p>#EQUALHOUSINGFORALL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(REAL ESTATE) Many don&#8217;t know that the real estate industry has been pushing for LGBTQIA+ protections for ages, and have made moves to protect a vulnerable population whereas the federal government still has not. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337697,"featured_media":14065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1798,1234],"class_list":["post-14061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-realuoso","tag-lgbtqia","tag-real-estate-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/closer-up-person-holding-a-small-pride-flag_925x.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337697"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14061"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14068,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14061\/revisions\/14068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}