Our guest blogger is Ben Harris, intern for LGBT Progress.

Craig Parshall testifying against ENDA earlier today.

Today the Senate held a hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2011, or ENDA – a crucial piece of legislation that will finally prohibit discrimination against LGBT Americans in the workforce. The last time the Senate held a hearing on this topic was in November 2009. Until Congress passes ENDA, it will remain legal in 29 states to fire someone for being gay, and in 34 states for being transgender.

In anticipation of today’s hearing, the Center for American Progress released a report yesterday on the ways that ENDA ensures both the freedom to work and the freedom to worship. While prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, ENDA also contains a significantly broad exemption for religious organizations – such as churches, synagogues, mosques, religiously-run schools, and others – that allows them to take sexual orientation and gender identity into account when making employment decisions. In other words, this exemption gives religious organizations full license to discriminate against LGBT people. Under ENDA, a church can fire a Sunday school teacher for being lesbian or a religiously-run school can fire its janitor for being transgender.

Still, conservative opponents of workplace fairness continue to make disingenuous arguments in a blatant attempt to distract from the debate and derail ENDA. Craig Parshall, senior vice president for the National Religious Broadcasters Association, testified today that he believes ENDA subjects religious groups to a “crazy-quilt of inconsistent decisions” about what entities would be exempt. In fact, ENDA does the opposite by using the religious exemption language in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This language has been consistently upheld by the courts, which have made very clear which religious entities are exempt and which are not.

Parshall further complained that Title VII doesn’t provide an exemption for “a small, closely held manufacturing shop whose owner had a clearly Christian world view and wanted it to permeate the work place.” On this one, Parshall’s actually right – and that’s a good thing. ENDA gives a broad exemption to religious organizations, but not to business owners who have religious objections to LGBT people. To allow anyone who runs a secular business to discriminate based on personal reasons would defeat the purpose of ENDA in the first place.

The misleading and insulting arguments regarding ENDA and religious liberty didn’t stop there. Parshall ironically claimed that ENDA would subject religious organizations to “endless, expensive, and harassing litigation.” First, reality begs to differ. The Title VII exemption language is well established and well defined – by using it, ENDA actually avoids extensive litigation. Second, the real harassment is perpetrated against gay and transgender workers, not by them.  Today’s hearing included numerous stories of hard-working employees fired simply because they were gay, and a personal account of discrimination from the first-ever transgender witness to testify before the United States Senate. These workers know first-hand the endless, expensive, and harassing nature of blatant workplace discrimination.

Religious freedom is no doubt an important tenet of our constitutional system, as is equality. Conservatives falsely argue that the two are mutually exclusive, when in fact ENDA effectively protects both. The senators voting on this legislation would do well to remember that claims to the contrary are based in fiction, not fact.

A new study released last week by the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and the California Safe Schools Coalition (CSSC) examines the impact of LGBTQ-inclusive curricula on school climate. The results confirm that not only do inclusive curricula foster a safer environment, but the effect is amplified if the messages are supportive as opposed to “neutral/mixed” or not supportive. Not only did LGBTQ students feel safer, but they also performed better academically and felt more connected to the school, their teachers, and their future.

Inclusive lessons had a slightly different impact. In physical education classes, for example, “neutral/mixed” inclusion of LGBTQ lessons still had a negative impact on students’ perceptions of safety, but when there were supportive lessons, it had the most significant positive impact. Conversely, in Health and Sexuality courses, any inclusion of LGBTQ issues/people had a positive effect on school climate (click to see full size):

The study also confirmed the huge impact that gay-straight alliances (GSAs) can have. Students who benefited the most from inclusive curricula were members of their school’s GSA, including higher GPAs and a stronger sense of school belonging. Unsurprisingly, LGBTQ students with neither inclusive curricula nor a GSA had the most negative perceptions of school safety.

None of these results are new. GLSEN similarly found a significant positive impact from inclusive curricula, and the Family Acceptance Project found that GSAs mitigate depression and even help improve college academic performance. These results are important as hate groups like the Family Research Council continue to attack California’s FAIR Education Act with old debunked scare tactics, attempting to deprive LGBT youth of the opportunity to learn about their own identities and feel safe in school.

This morning, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee held a hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would extend employment protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. For the first time in the Senate’s history, a transgender witness testified on behalf of the bill. Kylar Broadus, founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, discussed his experiences coming out trans, including mistreatment by police, workplace harassment, and employment discrimination:

BROADUS: When I used female restrooms, police would accost me. I would have to strip and then they still told me, “Sir, get out of the bathroom,” when I would use the ladies’ room. It’s just humiliating and dehumanizing to say the least.[...]

Prior also to the physical transition, I was working in the financial industry, which is actually a high-paying industry. But again, when I shifted or transitioned, that’s when all the trouble began. And it’s still emotional to me, because it impacted me emotionally — I suffer from post-traumatic stress as a result of the harassment that I encountered in the workplace from my employer.[...]

To be unemployed is very devastating, also demeaning and demoralizing. And then the recovery time — there is no limit on it. I still have not financially recovered. I’m underemployed. When I do talks, I tell people I’m not employable. I was lucky to be where I am and I’m happy to be where I am, but I’m one of the fortunate people that is employed. There are many more people like me that are not employed as a result of just being who they are — being good workers, but being transgender or transsexual. So I think it’s extremely important that this bill be passed to protect workers like me.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) expressed pride in the committee for inviting Broadus to speak. Watch his full testimony:

No opponents of the bill attended the hearing, so the panel and questions were mostly positive. One witness, Craig Parshall of the National Religious Broadcasters Association, testified against ENDA, arguing that religious businesses should be able to discriminate against gay and trans employees according to their beliefs. Largely the committee ignored Parshall during the questioning, and when he did express concern, Samuel Bagenstos of the University of Michigan Law School countered the technicalities of his claims, pointing out that ENDA actually has broad religious exemptions.

ENDA has been stalled in Congress for decades. Though Republican control of the House may prevent its advance yet again in 2012, today’s Senate hearing was nonetheless historic. The fact that most of the discussion at today’s hearing was supportive and non-confrontational demonstrates how significantly overdue these employment protections are.

Minnesota priest Bob Pierson spoke out passionately on Sunday against Minnesota’s proposed marriage inequality amendment. Pierson argued that Catholics must be free to vote their conscience. He highlighted Paragraph 1782 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which acknowledges Catholics’ right to make decisions based on conscience, even when it conflicts with the official teaching of the Church.

Pierson argued that civil marriage, which is by definition outside of the Church’s jurisdiction, does not pose a threat to the Catholic definition of marriage because it does not make any requirements of the Church. Pierson also explained that the facts supporting the effectiveness of gay parenthood, further building his case for why Catholics can in good conscience vote no on the amendment. Pierson’s speech comes days after a pro-marriage equality speech by Dallas pastor Frederick Haynes went viral.

FATHER BOB PIERSON: As Catholics we must follow our own conscience in making decisions such as how to vote. My conscience tells me to vote no on the amendment because I have yet to hear a convincing reason why we need such an amendment to our state constitution. In fact, I believe the church does not have the right to force its moral teaching on others outside the fold.

Watch it:

- Ben Sherman

Few, if any, of the families in this study resembled this picture.

A new paper called the New Family Structures Study claims that the children of gays and lesbians fare worse than those raised by heterosexual couples, but nothing in the methodology supports those claims whatsoever. Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has already written hefty debunks, but because the study is now getting mainstream media attention, here are some important highlights:

• Everybody who said that one of their parents had had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex” before they were 18 counted in the sample of children of gays and lesbians.
• The study did not ask if those participants were actually raised by same-sex parents — most of them were actually the product of a “failed heterosexual union” or parents who were not even married to begin with.
• The author of the paper is Mark Regnerus, a social conservative who writes from an evangelical perspective.
• The study was funded by the Witherspoon Institute and Bradley Foundation, two conservative groups tied to anti-gay organizations like the National Organization for Marriage.
• The participants were age 18-39, which means a majority of the sample grew up in the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s, when same-sex relationships were more heavily stigmatized and not recognized in any state.
• The study was not longitudinal, relying only on the memories of participants and not actually evaluating their development over time.

Needless to say, the paper has nothing to say about same-sex couples who intentionally seek to adopt children as coherent units. The methodology is flawed and the results cannot be compared in any way to the 30 years of credible studies showing that when all other circumstances are similar, children of same-sex couples fare just as well as those raised by opposite-sex parents. Families like that of Zach Wahls and his two moms were simply not represented in this study.

Unfortunately, several prominent news outlets have chosen to elevate this study as worthy of discussion and dissection. Slate magazine even invited Regnerus to write his own column about the study, and Slate’s Will Saletan humored the paper’s results without critiquing its obvious flaws. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat chimed in that same-sex marriage is a “social experiment,” but managed to identify the one reasonable point Saletan made, which is that “we need fewer broken homes among gays, just as we do among straights.” Such a statement is a convincing argument in favor of marriage equality, but it has little to do with the anti-gay claims Regnerus and anti-gay conservatives have been making from the paper.

ABC News also ran a story about the study by free-lance contributor Carrie Gann. Though Gann highlighted the study’s obvious problems and biases, ABC initially ran the problematic headline, “Study: Kids of Parents in Same-sex Relationships Fare Worse As Adults.” After an inquiry from ThinkProgress, ABC amended the headline to the slightly more accurate “Study of Gay Parenting Draws Criticism,” but the editorial staff declined to comment on the change.

In Internet-age news cycles, journalists do not only report news, they shape public discussion. Choosing to even acknowledge this deeply-flawed “study” carries the risk of legitimizing its harmful claims, but humoring it outright without context is simply irresponsible.