Everybody’s Business

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Starbucks Fired a Trans Supervisor after Staff Played ‘Pig’ Prank on Cops

Starbucks fired a trans woman from her supervisor job after a police officer was given an order labelled “pig”.

Lola Rose, a trans college student, said she was “made to be a martyr” after the incident went viral and is now considering legal action,

She had been working as a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Glenpool, Oklahoma, on Thanksgiving morning, when a police officer was handed a muffin with “pig” on the label.

Rose told The New York Post that she’d noticed the label and intervened, thinking, “No, that’s not right.”

“I jumped into action, apologised, then I thanked him for his time and for his service,” she recalled.

Police officer told Starbucks manager ‘pig’ label ‘no big deal’.

Rose said that the officer told her it was “no big deal” and that he was a friend of the employee, who had written the label to prank a co-worker.

“The barista was trying to play a joke on her co-worker to see if this co-worker would call these drinks out [as ‘Pig’],” Rose said.

She was unaware that five cups handed to the officer also had “pig” written on them. These made it back to the station, after which chief of police Johnny O’Mara called to make a complaint.

Rose said she tried to rectify the situation by apologising, thanking the chief for his service and offering to buy food for the entire police department.

O’Mara reportedly declined the offer and instead shared a picture of a cup to Facebook, writing: “What irks me is the absolute and total disrespect for a police officer who, instead of being home with family and enjoying a meal and a football game, is patrolling his little town.”

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Trans manager left wondering how she’ll pay for rent and medical treatment.

After the incident Rose spoke to her direct managers and filed a report. The following day she was fired, nine months into the job.

She said that she was “hysterical” as she was reliant on the job to pay for rent and to cover the cost of her hormone therapy.

The company is renowned for giving trans employees comprehensive healthcare insurance and offering college students tuition assistance. Rose had applied more than five times before she secured her “dream job.”

“My whole world crashed in front of me,” she told the Post.

“It was supposed to be my guardian angel. They were supposed to be there for me as much as I am there for them but it’s gone because a small-town officer was offended by something and posted to Facebook.”

Starbucks told the Post that a shift supervisor is no longer working for the company following an admission of involvement in the incident.

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Queer Google Employees Give Damning Indictment after being Fired at Thanksgiving

Three LGBT+ workers who were fired by Google during Thanksgiving week are alleging that they were dismissed by the tech giant because of their employee activism, and plan to file federal charges.

Laurence Berland, Sophie Waldman and Rebecca Rivers, who all identify as LGBT+, were fired duing the same week, along with another employee, Paul Duke, who is not LGBT+.

Google told its employees that the reason for firing the four workers was “clear and repeated violations of our data security policies”.

But the former Googlers, according to The Guardian, deny any wrongdoing and are alleging their dismissal was to send a message to stop workers organising and employee activism, which they say violates federal labour laws.

Waldman, who used to be Google software engineer, told the newspaper: “Google fired us not just to target us, but to send a message to other employees in the company.”

Berland added: “It’s not about us, but intimidating everyone else. They want us afraid, they want us resigned, and they want us cynical.”

Some of the group’s activism included using employee resource groups (ERGs) for LGBT+ employees to push for changes like equal benefits for same-sex partnerships.

Waldman said: “From the beginning, queer and trans people at Google have banded together to make sure we have great benefits and a strong community.

“A lot of us feel very directly that it’s us and people like us that are on the line [when it comes to the company’s ethical decisions]… Google is a lovely place to work if you are transgender and don’t care about what is going on in the world.”

Rivers said she had been involved in protests against the tech giant’s employment of Kay Coles James, who has an anti-trans record, to its AI Ethics Council.

She alleges that when she was suspended, before being fired, Google wiped her personal phone, meaning she lost pictures documenting her gender transition.

The group say that workers at the company are calling for a union, when just last month the New York Times reported that Google had “hired an anti-union consulting firm to advise management as it deals with widespread worker unrest”.

In a statement to CNN, a Google spokesperson maintained: “We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data security policies, including systematically accessing and disseminating other employees’ materials and work.

“No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.”

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Chick-Fil-A: No More Donations To Anti-LGBT Groups

As you surely recall, they’ve said this before:

As Chick-fil-A expands globally and into more liberal parts of the U.S., the chicken chain plans to change which charities it donates to after years of bad press and protests from the LGBT community.

Beginning next year, Chick-fil-A will move away from its current philanthropic structure, Bisnow has learned. After donating to more than 300 charitable organizations this year, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain will instead focus on three initiatives with one accompanying charity each: education, homelessness and hunger.

“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”

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Facebook Rejects a PrEP Awareness Campaign because of ‘Politics’, but Allow Politicians to Post Lies

Apicha Community Health Center wanted to run advertising on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) to promote public awareness of PrEP, a drug which can prevent HIV transmissions.

Despite Facebook’s newly-relaxed rules around political advertising, the New York-based centre – which serves people of colour and the LGBT+ community – was told that it could not run the adverts because it “hadn’t been authorised to run ads about social issues, elections or politics”.

“They said the copy was the problem but were unable to tell us what part of the copy was too political,” Phillip Miner, Apicha’s director of grants and communications, told Vice.

Since PrEP was introduced in the US in 2012, rates of HIV transmissions among white, black and Latinx men who have sex with men in New York has fallen almost consistently. But among Asian and Pacific Islanders (API) men, the number of new cases has remained stubbornly static.

In an attempt to change this, the Apicha Center’s Instagram account has been posting content created by and featuring API men which talks about PrEP.

It wanted this content to form the basis of a paid advertising campaign, which would have meant that API men who don’t follow its account would see the posts in their feeds.

Miner told Vice that Instagram offered to authorise the campaign if they could authorise every employee who uses its social media accounts through Facebook. This wasn’t possible due to privacy concerns for one member of staff.

Facebook allows lies in political adverts.

The Vice report comes days after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the site’s decision to allow political advertising that includes lies.

The company quietly withdrew a policy of banning false claims in advertising – including in political advertising – in early October, sparking concerns that it could be used to deceive voters.

Zuckerberg appeared visibly shaken on Wednesday, October 23, as Ocasio-Cortez asked him whether she would be able to “pay predominantly black zip codes advertise them he incorrect election date” or “run advertisements targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal”.

Zuckerberg said that adverts which could cause census or voter suppression would not be allowed, but did not say whether mistruths would be taken down.

“So, you won’t take down lies or you will take down lies? I think that’s just a pretty simple yes or no,” Ocasio-Cortez asked.

In response, Zuckerberg obfuscated, citing “context”.

PinkNews has contacted Facebook for comment.

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Man Sues Gay Video Site for Selling his Private Information

A man is suing a gay porn site after he received “a barrage” of junk mail because he said it sold his information without written consent and violated his privacy rights.

Dennis Chiamulera is also seeking class action status on behalf of other subscribers to the site who he thinks are in a similar situation.ADVERTISING

He said his privacy rights were violated by the site, owned by TLA Entertainment Group, under the Video Privacy Protection Act and the New York Video Consumer Privacy Act

According to Out, the New York plaintiff is asking for $5 million for “wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sales records”, including $2,500 in damages for every other plaintiff in the case if it gets class action status.

The lawsuit read: “Despite the sensitive nature of its videos, TLA sold, rented, exchanged, and/or otherwise disclosed personal information about Plaintiff’s video purchases and/or rentals to data aggregators, data appenders, data cooperatives, and list brokers, among others, which in turn disclosed his information to aggressive advertisers, nonprofit organisations, and other third-party companies.”

Chiamulera claims that the gay porn site’s “disclosure of Personal Viewing Information, and other personal, demographic, and lifestyle information is not only unlawful, but also dangerous because it allows for the targeting of particularly vulnerable members of society, including members of the LGBTQ community”.

The Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit alleges, according to the New York Post, that TLA Entertainment Group breaks down its subscribers by sexual orientation and which films they rent or buy.

The lawsuit stated: “In fact, almost any organisation could rent a list with the names and addresses of all gay TLA consumers who live in Texas; such a list would cost approximately $135 per thousand names listed.”

The court papers claimed that TLA “profits handsomely” from selling information, “at the expense of its consumers’ privacy and statutory rights.”

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Wide Gaps in Legal Protection of LGBTQ Workers, Analysis Finds

Rumors started circulating around the fire station in Byron, Georgia, within a year after the medical treatments began. The fire chief’s once-crewcut hair was growing longer, and other physical changes were becoming noticeable. Keeping quiet was no longer an option.

The chief said that once members of the tiny Fire Department were told, word spread “faster than a nuclear explosion” through Byron — a city of about 4,500 in a farming region outside Macon known for growing Georgia’s famous peaches. The fire chief was undergoing a gender transition and would continue to run the department as Rachel Mosby. A City Hall staffer told Mosby many were stunned because “I was the manliest man anyone had met in their lives.”

“They initially took it very well, much to my surprise,” Mosby said. “I heard a lot of comments like, ‘Chief, you don’t have anything to worry about. We’ve got your back.'”

It didn’t last. As a man, Mosby served as Byron’s fire chief for a decade until the beginning of 2018. Then Mosby started coming to work as a woman, and the city fired her less than 18 months later. Her June 4 termination letter cited “lack of performance.” Mosby insists the only thing that changed was her gender.

“They didn’t want somebody like me in that position,” she said, “or any position with the city.”

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It’s not illegal under Georgia state law to fire someone for being gay or transgender. Twenty-eight U.S. states have adopted no laws that prohibit workplace discrimination targeting LGBTQ employees. Only a small percentage of cities and counties offer protection at the local level. So Mosby, like thousands of other LGBTQ Americans, has sought recourse under the federal law that makes sex discrimination illegal at work.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has treated LGBTQ-based job discrimination cases as sex discrimination since 2013. But that could soon end, depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in cases it heard Oct. 8 that deal with the firings of gay men in Georgia and New York state and a transgender woman in Michigan.

The key question: Do firings and harassment based on a worker’s sexual orientation or gender identity qualify as sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act?

A ruling that says the federal law doesn’t protect workers targeted because they’re gay or transgender could leave millions vulnerable in more than half of U.S. states, an Associated Press analysis found.

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Only 21 states have their own laws prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Wisconsin outlaws discrimination because of sexual orientation but doesn’t protect transgender workers. And fewer than 300 cities and counties have local ordinances protecting LGBT workers, according to an advocacy group.

That patchwork of state and local laws leaves large gaps where LGBTQ workers have no job protection beyond federal claims under Title VII. About half of the nation’s estimated 8.1 million LGBTQ employees live in states where job discrimination laws don’t cover them, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.

“If the Supreme Court sides against LGBT employees, it means they have to be really cautious and careful about living their lives openly and proudly,” said Jillian Weiss, a New York attorney who focuses on LGBT discrimination cases. “They may encounter a lot of discrimination, and there may not be anything they can do about it.”

The AP found workers are particularly vulnerable in the South, home to an estimated 35 percent of LGBTQ adults. Out of 16 states the U.S. Census Bureau defines as the South, only Maryland and Delaware prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender workers. Protection at the local level is sparse, with most Southern states having five or fewer cities or counties that shield private-sector LGBTQ workers.

South Carolina offers no protection at the state or local level. And Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee each passed laws blocking local governments from having their own anti-discrimination ordinances that cover LGBTQ workers.

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Those large gaps mean only about 18 percent of adults in the South are protected against LGBTQ-based job discrimination, compared with about 89 percent in the Northeast, according to Naomi Goldberg of the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ-rights think tank that tracks anti-discrimination laws.

The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision, not expected until next year, could make or break Lonnie Billard’s discrimination lawsuit in North Carolina against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte and an affiliated high school. A federal judge put Billard’s case on hold until the high court rules.

Billard, a substitute teacher and longtime employee at Charlotte Catholic High School, was fired after announcing on Facebook in 2014 that he was marrying his male partner.

Attorneys for the diocese said Billard was let go for “advocacy in favor of same-sex marriage in violation of the Catholic Church’s fundamental beliefs.” They said the school could legally fire him in part because of its religious affiliation.

Billard’s case illustrates a dilemma that advocates say more gay couples could face if the Supreme Court, which declared same-sex marriage legal in 2015, decides federal law doesn’t protect them from harassment at work for being openly married.

“You get married on Saturday and fired on Monday, and there’s no protection,” said Luke Largess, one of Billard’s attorneys.

Advocates say the EEOC’s involvement is making a difference. The commission reports it received more than 8,600 LGBTQ-based discrimination complaints in the six-year period through September 2018. More than 1,300 cases ended with the workers who filed claims receiving some benefit.

Brandi Branson, a transgender woman who was fired by a Florida eye clinic in 2011, got a $150,000 settlement from her former employer after the EEOC sued on her behalf.

“It meant a lot. It meant somebody heard me,” Branson said. “I felt validated in myself as a person and also in my claims that I was wronged.”

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Critics say the EEOC overreached by extending Title VII protections to LGBTQ workers. The federal law doesn’t mention sexual orientation or gender identity. While it prohibits job discrimination based on sex, Congress didn’t consider that to include LGBTQ discrimination when the law was passed in 1964, said attorney John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Bursch represents a Michigan funeral home that fired transgender woman Aimee Stephens in 2013 in one of the cases before the Supreme Court. Bursch argues Congress would need to change the law for it to cover LGBTQ discrimination.

“No matter what you feel about the substantive issue of LGBT employment protections, everyone should be upset that a government agency … could punish someone based on a change in law they could not have anticipated based on its plain text and its interpretation for 50 years,” Bursch said.

In Georgia, Mosby is still waiting to hear whether the EEOC will pursue her case against the city of Byron — and whether the Supreme Court’s ruling might upend it.

After making her transition public last year, Mosby said, she was ordered to start wearing a uniform the first day she came to work in a skirt. Previously, Mosby often wore suits and ties. When Mosby fired a reserve firefighter who called the chief a slur to her face, the firefighter appealed and was reinstated by the city.

Meanwhile, Byron’s City Council in January changed its personnel policy to eliminate appeals for any department heads the city fires. Still, Mosby said she was surprised when Derick Hayes, Byron’s city administrator, fired her months later.

Hayes cited three reasons for Mosby’s firing in her termination letter: that she was responsible for a backlog of business licenses awaiting approval; that she attended only five classes at a recent fire chief’s conference, wasting the city’s money; and that she failed to maintain certification as an arson investigator.

Hayes didn’t return a phone message seeking comment. Byron Mayor Lawrence Collins denied Mosby was fired because she’s transgender.

“The quick answer on that is no. I think the records reflect that,” Collins said, declining to comment further.

Mosby said being jobless left her in financial straits. The public humiliation of her firing further strained relationships with her family, already stressed following her transition.

“I’ve lost my family, I’ve lost my house,” Mosby said. “Now I’m living with friends that keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach, so I’m not having to live in my car. It’s been utterly devastating.”

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Trans Woman Subjected to ‘Demoralizing’ Abuse she Experienced in In-N-Out Bathroom

A black transgender woman has described a confrontation in the ladies bathroom of an In-N-Out restaurant that left her feeling “demoralised, devalued and powerless”.

Writing in The Guardian, LeahAnn Mitchell explains the true cost of the everyday harassment that transgender people routinely face when using public bathrooms.

The encounter happened at an In-N-Out restaurant in the Bay Area, San Francisco. Mitchell was alone in the ladies loos when a manager approached her stall.

The woman reportedly misgendered Mitchell, telling her: “Sir, sir – you’re not supposed to be in here.” Mitchell responded: “Ma’am, it’s just me in here.”

Unfortunately, Mitchell says that wasn’t enough for the manager. “I thought she would leave and that would be it. But I’m a black transgender woman, and people don’t just let us live our lives,” she said.

The manager allegedly came up to the stall door and started looking through the cracks, and appeared to be scanning Mitchell’s body up and down.

(Tim Mossholder/Pexels)

“I got very scared. I clenched my purse to cover myself. I felt she was trying to look at my genitals, attempting to determine my gender. I asked her to leave while she continued to ask whether I was a man,” she said.

Eventually, the manager gave up and left Mitchell in peace. When Mitchell left the toilets she approached the woman and reminded her that she is “a human that deserves privacy in the bathroom”.

But the In-N-Out manager refused to explain her behaviour and just dismissed Mitchell: “I don’t have time for this.”

It was a crushing blow to her confidence. “I drove home to Oakland in a fog. I told my partner what happened and broke down crying angrily,” she recalled.

The “demoralising” encounter exacerbated her anxiety, stress and paranoia, and she grew increasingly depressed at a time when she was trying to focus on her career.

Afterwards she didn’t leave the house as she feared being harassed. When she felt able to go out again, she waited until she got home to use the bathroom as felt like “the safest thing to do”.

“I had regressed and had to rebuild my strength just to walk in and use a bathroom,” she said. “The smell of In-N-Out still bothers me.”

Mitchell filed a discrimination complaint against In-N-Out, as California’s laws clearly state that people can use bathrooms that match their gender identity.

But In-N-Out’s lawyers “made it clear that they do not feel the company did anything wrong”. A spokesperson told The Guardian that In-N-Out did not harass or discriminate against Mitchell and that the manager was not aware she was transgender.

A company report stated that a customer repeatedly raised the concern of a man in the women’s restroom. The manager claims she went to investigate, called out “Sir?” and when Mitchell answered “Excuse me?” she exited the bathroom after saying: “I’m sorry – we had a customer let us know there was a gentleman in here so I was just checking.”

Mitchell rejects this explanation, saying: “It felt as if they told me I was worth nothing. They offered me a settlement that I found offensive. I said no.”

She was encouraged to speak out ahead of an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide if anti-LGBT+ employment discrimination qualifies as discrimination.

“I won’t be silent,” she insisted. “When it comes to black and brown trans folks, it feels like we don’t matter.

“Why can’t we exist in peace and have the same rights other people have? Why should somebody else’s opinion of what I should be get to dictate what my existence is?

“I’m asking that we are able to go about our lives and use the bathroom, without you kicking open the door and dragging us out.”

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Facebook has Earned $500,000 Promoting Anti-LGBT Hate Groups since 2018

Facebook has made more than half a million dollars in advertising revenue from listed anti-LGBT+ hate groups in just over a year, according to reports.

Analysis of Facebook’s advert transparency data by Sludge revealed that the social media giant took a total of $1.6 million from groups defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center extremism watchdog as hate groups.

A total of $541,977, just under a third of the total hate group ad spend, came from organisations designated as anti-LGBT+ hate groups.

The spending only covers the period from May 2018 when the company began to publish some data on ad spending, meaning the total spent by the groups could be far higher.

One advert from anti-LGBT+ Christian group The American Vision, shown to thousands of people, linked to a blog post that referred to gay people as “evil”.

Anti-LGBT+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has advocated for the criminalisation of homosexuality and led efforts to unpick state anti-discrimination laws, accounted for a massive $392,000 of the spending.

The group is currently running ads in support of business owners who have refused to serve LGBT+ people, claiming they “face punishment for living out their faith”.

Other ADF ads target transgender people, claiming: “Men don’t belong in women’s sports”, while one shown to at least 50,000 people asks: “Should government bureaucrats and judges have the power to redefine ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ in federal law?”

Anti-LGBT+ hate group Family Research Council, which has spent $107,000 on Facebook ads, has openly conflated gay people with paedophiles, claiming: “While activists like to claim that paedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. It is a homosexual problem.”

Another video advert from FRC’s lobbying PAC, shown to more than a million people, features an “ultimate social justice warrior” dressed in a gender fluid outfit, tackling conservatives and yelling “this is a safe space!”

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LGBTQ and Black Passengers Face more Rideshare Cancellations, Study Finds

Though rideshare apps were intended to be a more egalitarian transportation option than traditional cab services, they have a demonstrated history of bias against minority passengers before pickup. Numerous studies have established that black passengers, for instance, faced longer wait times and were subject to more frequent cancellations than white riders.

In recent years, platforms responded to reports of the bias by removing information about riders’ gender and race from the ride requests presented to drivers. Yet, a recent study shows that these adjustments have not diminished bias across the board and that black riders, riders perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, and riders who are perceived to be LGBTQ supporters are canceled on more frequently before pickup than white and perceptibly straight passengers.

“By removing the ability to see information before the drivers accepted a ride request, the hope was that all of the bias we were observing would cease to exist,” Chris Parker, an assistant professor of information technology and analytics at American University and the co-author of the study, “When Transparency Fails: Bias and Financial Incentives in Ridesharing Platforms,” told NBC News. “But after the change was instituted, we suspected that there’s still the problem of some drivers not wanting to pick up certain passengers.”

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In order to test their hypothesis, Parker and co-author Jorge Meija, an assistant professor of operations and decision technologies at Indiana University, created an account with multiple rideshareprofiles. Though each passenger had a 4.8 rating (out of a 5.0 maximum), the profiles differed in passenger names and pictures. The researchers used four pictures to create the profiles: one for a black woman named Keisha or Latoya, one for a black male named Rasheed or Jamal, one for a white female named Emily or Allison and one for a white male named Brad or Greg. At least 92 percent of people perceive Emily, Allison, Brad and Greg as Caucasian names and Keisha, Latoya, Rasheed and Jamal to be black names, according to a 2004 study, which is why the researchers used these names.

Parker and Meija also added a rainbow filter on some of the profiles — using the same names and pictures — to denote that a potential passenger was LGBTQ or supported the LGBTQ community.

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From early October to mid-November of last year, the researchers ordered rides from a major and unnamed ride-sharing platform in Washington, D.C., at a fixed central Metro stop. Throughout the experiment, they altered the gender, race, rainbow filer and timing of the ride requests. After calling each ride, the researchers waited three minutes to allow a driver to cancel if they no longer wanted to accept a ride — enough time for them to determine the riders’ race, gender and perceived sexuality or LGBTQ support. If the driver has not canceled at this point, Parker and Meija would cancel the rides themselves so that the driver could receive compensation in the form of a cancellation fee.

After 3,200 observations during both peak and nonpeak hours of the day, the researchers determined that while there was no significant evidence of bias against women riders compared to male riders of both races, both black men and black women were nearly three times more likely to be canceled on than their white peers. Their tests also showed that signaling support for the LGBTQ community with a rainbow filter resulted in the passenger nearly doubling their chance of being canceled on across races.

“We know that LGBTQ riders face discrimination with these rideshare apps, but we thought that it was an interesting little twist, that even just signaling your support for the LGBTQ community could result in a canceled ride,” Parker said.

The research did not show that riders who were both black and signaled support for the LGBTQ community faced greater cancellations.

One especially instructive aspect of the research, according to Parker, was that black riders were less likely to get canceled on during peak hours — likely because drivers view the heightened cost of such rush-hour trips as increased incentive. Yet signaling support for the LGBTQ community with the rainbow filter resulted in similar cancellation rates during peak and nonpeak hours.

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Based on this evidence, Parker said it appears that providing information about customer demographics may enable drivers’ biases. He recommends platforms and policymakers reflect on the type and timing of information they give to rideshare drivers and suggests that platforms might consider penalizing drivers by moving them down the priority list when they exhibit biased cancellation behavior or rewarding them when they exhibit especially low cancellation rates for minority riders.

“There’s a lot of next-step actions platforms might consider to ensure a good outcome and that everybody has a safe, comfortable, noncombative ride,” Parker said.

Though this study looks at bias that occurs before an LGBTQ passenger or ally enters a car, instances of discrimination in the backseat of rideshares have been well-documented.

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In December 2018, a gay couple in Houston said they were kickedout of an Uber ride after sharing a quick kiss. Then in May of this year, a gay couple in Indianapolis claimed they were booted from a Lyft ride for sharing a “short kiss on the lips.” In June, a gay man said a New York City taxi driver told him, “I don’t drive gays,” and that same month, a lesbian couple claimed they were thrown out of an Uber ride for sharing a “peck.” In perhaps the most frightening incident, a gay man last November claimed a Lyft driver in Miami pulled a gun on him after exclaiming, “I want to kill everyone that’s gay.”

And the discrimination is not only limited to riders; LGBTQ drivers face bias as well. Earlier this month, a transgender woman quit driving for Lyft after an intoxicated passenger allegedly hit her head and told her she was “nothing but a man.”

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‘Lesbian’ ban: Ad Blacklists Deprive LGBTQ News of Revenue, Study Says

Across the internet, companies buy ad space that appears alongside news, entertainment and sports articles. These purchasing decisions are made, in part, with ad verification partners that compare the articles’ content with “block lists” of thousands of terms that advertisers want to avoid associating their brand with, like “shooting,” “kill” and “attack.”

It doesn’t matter if the article is positive (“City’s murder rate down to historic low”) or negative (“Gruesome murder shocks city”), because both articles would be banned by a keyword block list.

But a new study from CHEQ, which runs a competing ad verification service, found that nearly two thirds of all nonpornographic and nonexplicit LGBTQ news content is banned by these lists, because the lists often contain neutral LGBTQ terms like “lesbian” and “bisexual.” Both PinkNews, a U.K.-based LGBTQ news site, and The Advocate, a U.S.-based LGBTQ news site, saw 73 percent of their positive or neutral content blocked by these lists.

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The result, according to CHEQ, is that for LGBTQ news sites, the majority of their content may be unavailable for mainstream advertising. “This is severely damaging publishers’ ability to monetize premium content,” the report states, “making minority news and opinion unviable.”

“In the end, blocked words/blacklists hurt us all,” Orlando Reece, CEO of The Advocate’s parent company, Pride Media, told NBC News in an email. “We create content from an LGBTQ+ lens and use words that our community (as the general community) do not find offensive, such as ‘lesbian,’ ‘queer,’ etc. These words are part of our lives and how we communicate and identify with one another. Brand safety needs to be a conversation involving people, not technology that is ill-equipped for today’s digital publishing landscape.”

Reece also said the ad-blocking appears to be worsening. He said Pride Media sometimes works with ad-buying agencies and brands to clean up these “blacklists” before something is published, but they don’t always have the opportunity.

“Some agencies’ blacklists are agency-wide and they cannot be adjusted,” Reece explained. “In those instances we request a switch from blocking tags to monitoring tags, and this helps clean up the situation.”

The CHEQ report comes amidst a crisis in LGBTQ news content. Just this past year, LGBTQ-dedicated news sites GayStarNews and Into shut down, and other mainstream sites that consistently shone a light on LGBTQ issues laid off staff.

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Daniel Avital, CHEQ’s chief strategy officer, said these advertisers are often progressive and seek to reach LGBTQ consumers, but a “technology deficit” is to blame.

“Companies struggle to determine the good stuff from the bad stuff, then the only recourse you have is to blacklist all of it,” Avital told NBC News.

Avital said he spoke to the founders of GayStarNews, who confirmed that declining ad revenue “was one of the key reasons” they shut down this year.

“If you’re an LGBTQ content creator, then you seem to be having a much harder time over the past two years to get ad dollars,” he said.

Surprisingly, the report notes, these block lists even affect sports sites, because they often use words like “shoot” for basketball. Sports site Bleacher Report had 67 percent of its neutral or positive stories blocked by these lists, according to CHEQ’s report.

Avital said the majority of major U.S. advertisers use these “crude” block lists, which range in size from a few hundred to thousands of blacklisted terms. But since the bidding for internet ads is automated and happens nearly instantaneously, smaller brands still bid for ads to appear in the space that larger brands pass on.

“What happens is the price of this inventory just goes down, because the big advertisers aren’t bidding for it, so the next in line gets it,” Avital explained. “So, if you’re able to monetize the content, you’re monetizing it for a much lower price than you would otherwise.”

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