The Health of the GLBTQ Community


By Special Report


On March 31, 2011, the Institute of Medicine issued its long-awaited report, The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding.

This excellent and comprehensive report on the state of research on LGBT health urges the federal government to move assertively to collect data about sexual orientation and gender identity in federally funded health surveys. It also underscores the particular need for research on subpopulations of the LGBT community, including racial and ethnic groups, adolescents, and elders. Mautner Project's Executive Director, Leslie Calman, who was one of the invited presenters to the commission's public meetings says, ''Scientifically gathered data is critical to the LGBT community's efforts to gain support for programs to improve LGBT health. This report is a tremendous resource in the struggle to build unimpeachable evidence about the health disparities experienced by LGBT people.''

In the two years since this Administration took office, the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act on several occasions in federal court. Each of those cases evaluating Section 3 was considered in jurisdictions in which binding circuit court precedents hold that laws singling out people based on sexual orientation, as DOMA does, are constitutional if there is a rational basis for their enactment. While the President opposes DOMA and believes it should be

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