The legal environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) astronomers in the United States has changed dramatically in recent years. In 2013, the federal government began to recognize same-sex marriages. In 2014, the Department of Justice extended the employment-discrimination protections of Title VII to transgender people, and New York extended access to medical care. Two months ago, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could establish nationwide marriage equality. In this poster, we discuss these advances and their implications for the personal and professional lives of LGBT astronomers across the United States.
In June 2015, 160 astronomers, sociologists, policy makers and community leaders convened the first Inclusive Astronomy meeting at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, TN. The goal of this meeting was to discuss the issues affecting people of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer/genderfluid, agender, intersex, queer, questioning, or asexual (LGBTIQA*) people; people with disabilities; women; and everyone who holds more than one of these underrepresented identities in the astronomical community. A key focus of this meeting was examination of issues of intersectionality: the well-established conceptualization that racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and ableism are often linked (e.g., that women of color are faced with the intersection of racism and sexism).