A university and a civil-rights museum announced Thursday they are teaming up to research lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender southerners.
“Although the South is home to more LGBT adults than any other region in the country, more than half of all anti-LGBT bills proposed in the United States this year were born in the South, including the infamous ‘bathroom laws’ currently being challenged in North Carolina and beyond,” notes Heather Hughes, a spokeswoman for the joint project.
The partnership is between Georgia State University and the LGBT Institute at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, all based in Atlanta.
The Supreme Court decision last June that legalized gay marriage opened the door to a host of policy issues rather than settling them. The question of biological males claiming a female gender and using women’s restrooms is one of them getting the most attention.
“Equality requires policies that reflect and support LGBT people as equal citizens. The problem, especially in the South, is that the research needed to secure these policies is not often funded,” stated Eric Wright, chair of the Sociology Department at GSU. “In fact, only 2 percent of national LGBT funding went to research in the South compared to 9 percent nationally. That’s a real opportunity for progress considering more than three in 10 LGBT adults live in the South.” The project will focus on education and employment, public health and criminal justice.
“By fostering this research, we will gain a more complete understanding of the systemic challenges facing LGBT communities and
opportunities to create lived equality among LGBT Southerners,” said Ryan Roemerman, executive director of the LGBT Institute.
