Ohio’s cities recieve high marks for LGBTQ+ friendly policy and legislation from the group Human Rights Campaign. Six of the eight major cities surveyed in the latest municipal report - including Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland - scored 100 percent on five benchmarks that include non-discrimination protections, percentage of LGBTQ personnel in law enforcement, and municipal efforts.
The index’s founding author, Cathryn Oakley, says it's less a guide to the best cities for LGBTG+ to live, than an evaluation of the progress a city has made, to encourage improvement each year.
“Equality isn’t an end post, right? Like there isn't a line that you cross and then you get to say we've won equality we're all done now. It's important that we all continue to be having these conversations about how to do more and how to do better.”
While the report had praise for Ohio's cities, the Human Rights Campaign has had harsher words for the state, especially after the Ohio School Board voted 10-7 to reject updated Title IX protections for transgender students.
In a statement released after the vote was taken in December, HRC's legal director Sarah Warbelow said:
"These adults have a duty to protect Ohio children, yet turning their backs on them to extend a radical, nakedly political agenda into the classroom fails to confront the real issues that schools in the state are facing."
HRC's State Equality Index for 2021 rated Ohio a "high priority to achieve basic equality".
