Our educational tool provides up-to-date statistics and information about historic and current events, all surrounding LGBT Pride Month.
For June, which is LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Pride Month, we’re providing a valuable tool to share with all your employees as you continue their education in cultural competence.
This Meeting in a Box tool is designed for distribution to all employees. You may use portions of it or all of it. Each section is available as a separate PDF; you can forward the entire document or link to it on Fair360 Enterprise; or you can print it out for employees who do not have Internet access.
• Below is a Timeline of barriers that have been broken, major legislation and legal decisions, protests and landmark events impacting LGBT people and their allies.
• Facts & Figures on demographics of open LGBT people; income/buying power/customer loyalty; and major LGBT people in business, sports, entertainment and politics.
• And our cultural-competence series, “Things NOT to Say,” focuses on LGBT people this month. This information should be distributed to your entire workforce and used by your LGBT/allies resource group, internally and externally, as a year-round educational tool.
[CLICK HERE to download a PDF of the full Meeting in a Box]
1. TIMELINE
The landscape for LGBT rights and being open has changed dramatically over the past few years, perhaps most notably with the legalization of same-gender marriage in June 2015. It’s more vital than ever for your workforce to be culturally competent and to understand what LGBT equality means. We recommend you start your employees’ cultural-competence lesson by using this Timeline, which documents LGBT organizations, important “firsts,” fights against discrimination and significant political and legal changes in the United States. It’s important to discuss how rapidly rights for the whole LGBT community are evolving and what that means for corporations, schools, religious institutions and government.
Discussion Questions for Employees
How can we build an atmosphere of inclusion, regardless of our personal or religious views?
Have you ever heard people at work making homophobic comments? What did you do? Do you know what your corporate policies are on hate speech at work? Discuss what it’s like for companies located in states like North Carolina and Mississippi and what your company would do in those circumstances.
Why are “firsts” important to note? What other barrier breakers have you witnessed in your lifetime?
This is a personal discussion designed to help employees note other barrier breakers historically. How does someone prominently in the news, like Caitlyn Jenner, impact others in the LGBT community? This discussion can be further explored after the Facts & Figures section below is discussed.
