Texas Less LGBTQ+ Friendly Than Most States

According to the LGBTQ+ 2022 business climate scores (by state), Texas falls behind most of them regarding the creation of an inclusive climate for gender and sexuality diversity.

The report emitted by Out Leadership placed the state on the 42nd spot for best business climates for the LGBTQ+ community, located as below average. The state with the best score was New York, and other states similar to Texas include South Carolina (the worst, at the spot 50), Alabama and Oklahoma.

This is important since the political climate surrounding the promotion of diversity has been severely stumped by current Governor Greg Abbott, who has spread messages of discrimination since he started office. 

He promotes Texas as a low-regulation and business-friendly state, but he has had a campaign to remove transgender rights for children and teenagers, pursuing their parents for child abuse for allowing them to pursue gender-affirming healthcare.

Abbott received 1 out of 5 in his leadership on the report. Apart from his personal feud with transgender children, he has also been sued by ACLU, an LGBTQ+ mental health support group, and has been asked by The Human Rights Campaign and over 60 companies to stop anti-LGBTQ+ actions.

Out Leadership takes into account multiple things to elaborate their report and overall score for each state:

• State laws regarding LGBTQ+ people (housing, healthcare, work conditions, etc).
• Religious exemption laws that could allow workplaces to discriminate LGBTQ+ people and deny them a position.
• How difficult it is for the transgender community to change their official documents.
• The overall workplace environment, considering harassment, discrimination, assault and mistreatment.

The report also showed that those states with higher scores are getting better gradually, whilst most states with the lowest scores are stumped or getting even worse. It doesn’t look good for Texas, specially if Greg Abbott is reelected for a second term as Governor or if the Don’t Say Gay legislation is approved.