Tempe and Phoenix have garnered a fair amount of attention this week for their perfect scores in the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. The MEI “examines the laws, policies, and services of municipalities and rates them on the basis of their inclusivity of LGBT people who live and work there.” Unfortunately, this prominent index regarding LGBT equality does not do a very good job of this.
HRC’s purpose is sound, as indices for the degree of tolerance and inclusion of American cities can be helpful to society in a number of ways. Measures of equality should celebrate progress compared years past, encourage lagging cities to catch up to the national average, offer a tangible standard with specific goals to be met and provide members of LGBT community some type of indication about which cities would be most welcoming to their identity.
However, for a rating on inclusivity, one would expect a score of 100 out 100 — the score of both Tempe and Phoenix — to mean “perfectly inclusive.” Both cities are very LGBT friendly, but to consider them perfectly inclusive is misleading.
In order to rate cities, Human Rights Campaign uses a scorecard which assigns points based on certain conditions being met within categories such as municipal services, law enforcement and relationship with LGBT community.
A notable omission from the scorecard is education. Arizona probably wouldn’t have fared too well in that category, considering the state’s prohibition of any discussion of sexual orientation in sex education. School-age children are not familiarized with the full spectrum of sexual orientation, leaving those who do not identify as heterosexual or those questioning their sexuality confused and uneducated. The seeds of acceptance are sown at a young age, and at present, Tempe and Phoenix are unable to capitalize on that. This is just one of the ways in which our cities cannot be considered perfectly inclusive.
However, our main complaint regards the decision to include bonus points in the MEI scorecard; that was half-witted on the part of HRC. The scorecard awards bonus points for “criteria not accessible to all cities at this time,” but the distinction of “bonus points” implies that certain important distinctions are simply superfluous. Both Phoenix and Tempe were given bonus points for having inclusive workplaces. How can inclusive workplaces be marginalized to the point of meriting gold stars? We consider the employees’ freedom to be comfortable with expressing their identity among the most important measures of equality.
Furthermore, a collection of bonus points should not somehow forgive the absence of a baseline measure. For example, Tempe has a raw score of 93; three of the seven deducted points were due to Tempe’s refusal of contractor equal benefits ordinances--laws which mandate an extension of employees’ health care and benefits to not only employees’ spouses, but also employees’ domestic partners. The three bonus points awarded for “Openly LGBT elected or appointed municipal leaders” are not a substitute for a necessary right.
Ultimately, we can be pleased that an organization has found Tempe and Phoenix to be so welcoming; but if the scoring method is poor, how much should we really care about it? There has to be a re-evaluation of the MEI.
