Tag: Ohio

The fight for equality is personal for millions of Americans, including Sheena Barnes. She’s Black and she’s bisexual — two identities that she says aren’t separate from each other and two that she advocates for every day.

“When I walk in the room, I’m Black first,” Barnes said. “They’re going to see my skin tone, my race before, you know, my sexual orientation.”

Barnes, who’s the director of people and culture at Equality Ohio, made history in 2019 as both the first Black and first openly queer woman elected to the Toledo Board of Education. In her life, she said she’s dealt with both racism and homophobia.

“I’m too black for this space in the LGBTQ space, and I’m too gay in the Black space and trying to navigate that world where you have to fight for both because they’re part of your whole liberation,” Barnes said.

The modern Civil Rights Movement took shape in the 1950s — ending legal segregation and expanding protections under the law.

The LGBTQ+ rights movement gained national momentum in the late 1960s — leading to nationwide marriage equality in 2015.

They were different eras and different fights, but Barnes said they shared the same goal.

“Martin Luther King Jr. stood for equality,” Barnes said. “He wanted everyone, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, to have the freedom to, to live and thrive together.”

Historically, to achieve this, she said people protest, they rally and they show up in court.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized same-sex marriage, drew directly from another case, Loving v. Virginia from 1967, that struck down bans on interracial marriage.

And Black LGBTQ+ leaders have long been central to both movements. Bayard Rustin, a Black gay man, helped organize the March on Washington, and Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, helped spark the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

But Barnes said while progress has been made, discrimination hasn’t disappeared — it’s shifted.

“When you’re looking at what’s happening right now, especially in Ohio and other states, red states, they’re attacking our trans siblings because it’s easy, it’s an easy target,” Barnes said. “White supremacy doesn’t change the narrative, it just changes the people that it’s trying to oppress… the core of it is to make someone less than. So that way, you know, white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied males who have higher income can always be on top.”

According to national tracking groups, hundreds of anti-transgender bills have been introduced across the country in recent years. Advocates also report Black transgender women face disproportionately high rates of violence in the U.S.

UCLA’s Williams Institute reports that transgender people are four times as likely to be victims of crime than cisgender people.

“We’re losing too many people,” Barnes said. “I think the new unfortunate trauma of this time is we’re losing a lot of young people to suicide completion to, you know, substance abuse. And so we need to get real, real fast because the impact and devastation just from community rhetoric to legislation wise, they’re harming folks mentally and physically as we lose health care for those who need it.”

At the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, Angela Phelps-White, the executive director, said protections matter because they make people feel valued. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission investigates thousands of discrimination complaints each year, most involving employment, housing and public accommodations. The most common bases, she said, are retaliation, disability and then race.

“Everyone’s just fighting to be the true, authentic selves and to be able to live the life as they choose. That pursuit of happiness,” Phelps-White said. “We need to be able to live where we want to live, how we want to live. We should be the navigator of our own lives and not have other people dictate what we can and cannot have, simply because of how we identify.”

Since 2020, the number of complaints filed has increased significantly — from a little more than 3,000 in 2020 to just under 8,000 in 2025. She said a significant increase in charges arose for the Commission from the passing of Ohio House Bill 352, also known as the Employment Uniform Law Act (EULA). So the Commission believes the increase in charges might be attributed to people having a better understanding of their rights, how to utilize the services of the Commission and knowing that the Commission is here for them.

“Our mission is to promote positive human relations among the highest diverse population through enforcement of the anti-discrimination laws,” Phelps-White said. “The goal is to eradicate discrimination in any way possible.”

The Commission enforces Ohio’s civil rights laws as they’re written, and Phelps-White said the state has more protections than people realize.

“Ohio created its Civil Rights Act in 1959, five years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Phelps-White said. “Federally, we protect more classes than the federal government does… Ohio sort of leads the federal government in that we have many bases for which someone can allege discrimination. So it’s not just race, sex, ethnicity, it’s age, it’s gender, military status, marital status, familial status, retaliation and we cover many areas. We cover housing and employment, housing, public accommodation, credit and higher education as it relates to disability.”

For people who live at the intersection of identities, Barnes said those protections are essential. She said even if you don’t like the difference, it doesn’t mean you can’t respect the difference.

“Injustice is connected, just like freedom and liberation is,” Barnes said.

But still, the two movements and even people within their own movement, sometimes resist one another. Some Black churches don’t accept LGBTQ+ people, and there are people in the LGB+ community who don’t support trans people.

“I think it comes down to a simple formula,” Phelps-White said. “We have to embrace and respect each other’s differences. And once we do that and we quit trying to rank one cause over the other cause and realize that we all equally have the same goal and we come together, there is strength in numbers.”

Both women said history makes one lesson clear: lasting change happens when movements learn from one another and when people stand together.

“And this is why we need accomplices… for the movement of true equality for all and liberation for all,” Barnes said. “From the civil rights movement that we saw, a lot of our white, you know, sisters and brothers and siblings doing the groundwork with us because they knew that less harm would come to them just because of their appearance. And this is what we have to do in the LGBT community for our trans siblings, right now, because they are under attack more so than my rights are under attack as a bisexual, queer woman.”

From the streets to the courts, the path to equality has followed familiar steps — and advocates say understanding that history may help shape what comes next.

What protections exist for the LGTBTQ+ community in Ohio?

In Ohio, sexual orientation and gender identity are currently not listed as separate protected classes under state law. However, Phelps-White said they have been protected statewide through Ohio Revised Code 4112 under the term “sex.”

They’re also protected federally under the umbrella of sex discrimination following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020 which applies to employment nationwide.

The group “Ohio Equal Rights” is collecting signatures in an effort to get two amendments on the November ballot this year — one to get rid of the ban on same-sex marriage in the Ohio Constitution and the other to advance discrimination protections, which would include sexual orientation and gender identity as separate protected classes.