Many people really think LGBT people are not discriminated against. Again and again, organizers have found that the most effective way to change the minds of moderates who aren't enthusiastic about civil rights policies is to show them that discrimination is a real problem.

At one time, a popular reply to the "no discrimination here" objection was to say that employers and landlords shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, so it shouldn't matter whether anyone is being hurt at the moment. Never a completely satisfactory answer, this argument is least effective when a policy is hotly contested.

How to Get Stories of Discrimination

Although there are several ways to show that a law or policy is necessary, presenting stories from people who have been discriminated against is one of the best. "Real" people with stories are often more convincing than experts, and compelling stories are difficult for even tough opposition to write off.

The first difficulty with proving discrimination is that since it is not illegal in most states, people who are hurt usually don't come forward. There is no one to complain to. There are several ways to find people who have been discriminated against. One good tactic is to set up an e-mail address and/or phone number where people can share their stories. E-mail addresses are free and easy to set up through yahoo or g-mail. To set up a phone line, you might as a volunteer to let you use his or her number or ask a local LGBT organization, a social service organization, or a sympathetic business to make a line available.

After you set up the e-mail address and/or phone number, you need to get people to call. Typically, people post flyers in bars and in other LGBT or LGBT-friendly businesses. If there is any LGBT press in the area, you should be able to get it to print the flyer for free. Obviously, if you have a newsletter for your own organization, you should appeal for stories there.

Also consider using social networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook or Meetup to look for stories.

Most organizers call local advocacy groups, like the ACLU, and local LGBT organizations, to see if they have gotten complaints and if they can put the organizers in touch with those who complained. The more liberal churches, women's organizations and counseling organizations are also good sources.

While most organizations will not give out the names of people who have called them, they will, with a little prodding, contact the people who called and ask them to get in touch with the campaign. Sometimes they will give you the stories in a way that does not reveal identities, and you can often just use these and give the organization as the source.

The single most important source of stories is word of mouth. Tell your friends that you are looking, and think about stories you've heard in the past. A Raleigh activist has a good word of advice: "We are so accustomed to some of the things which make good stories," she says, "that we overlook them."

Checking out the Story and Protecting the Witness

Do a little checking, particularly if you plan to feature one or two stories in a big way (for example, in press releases, or by making the person with the story available for press interviews, or by featuring one story at a hearing). Don't reject a story just because the employer or the landlord has a different view of what happened. People who have come into conflict usually have different ideas about what happened, and while some discrimination is very blunt, much of it is subtle. All you really need to do (perhaps all you can do) is ask the person with the story if anyone else knows about what happened, and call a few of the people they name to see if they generally think the person who gave you the story has a valid perspective.

When evaluating a story, remember that the essence of discrimination is different treatment. A lesbian, her lover and their child might get evicted from a one-bedroom apartment because three people in that kind of unit violate the city's occupancy rules. That is ok if the landlord applies the rule to all three person families; it is not ok if straight couples with a kid do not get evicted.

Finally, your witnesses and their stories do not need to be perfect. Humans rarely are.

One difficulty with discrimination stories is that people are often reluctant to tell their stories in public because if they do, they risk further discrimination. Losing your apartment is bad enough; you could loose your job if you make a stink about it. There are ways to protect your witnesses.

Explaining the Stories

When you evaluate the stories to decide which ones you will use and which ones you will feature, remember the perspective of the audience. Just telling about how an injured woman's partner was kept out of an intensive care unit while blood relatives were allowed in may not be as powerful as it could be if your audience thinks that same-sex relationships are like pleasant friendships. Having the person with the story describe a few of the things that reflect the deep commitment of the relationship may make the story much more effective.

There is a related audience perspective problem. People generally do not yet have a very sophisticated understanding of discrimination against LGBT people, so they often think the only stories which show discrimination are stories which involve "smoking guns;" that is, stories in which the motive is obvious ("You're fired because we don't want queers working here.").

A lot of discrimination is more subtle, and, with more familiar types of discrimination, most people understand that. If an employer says it has hired no African Americans because it could find none who were qualified, or if it places almost all the women it hires in clerical positions, most people today become suspicious.

If your stories involve anything but the most blatant kind of discrimination, make sure you tell the audience what it needs to know to understand. You may have to explain some common myths about LGBT people (for example, that we are emotionally unstable or more apt to assault children), and show convincingly that they are untrue; you may have to explain that some policies which don't mention LGBT people hurt them (for example, a policy which says you must be married to be promoted beyond middle management); you may just have to explain slang. One good way to make sure that you understand the perspective of the audience and provide any needed explanation is to have a couple of people who are close to that perspective helping to evaluate the stories.

The Big Picture

One drawback to stories is that they don't really tell your audience how pervasive discrimination is. A compelling story or two may make the question of pervasiveness go away; if someone has been seriously hurt by discrimination, people are more inclined to accept the idea that it should not be allowed even if you can't show that it is an everyday occurrence.

On the other hand, you strengthen your position if you can show that discrimination is more than an occasional aberration. And if you are unable to provide many individual stories, "big picture" proof that discrimination is not uncommon may be important evidence of the need for your proposal.

One way to get information on discrimination is to call the doubter's bluff. Ask the legislative body to instruct the local human rights agency to keep track of discrimination complaints.

This tactic has to be used carefully. If the city does not have a clearly identified human rights agency, people may not think to call. Even if it does, you'll need to get word out in the community (through the LGBT press, with flyers in bars and businesses) so that as many complaints as possible get called in.

If the agency's staff is hostile to your policy, it may be better not to try this at all. They may ignore calls, lose them, discourage callers with indifference or scare them with hostility, etc. Even if you are not sure the staff is hostile, you should check on it periodically with a few test calls.

Distributing questionnaires in LGBT communities is another way to get information about discrimination. You can publish them in the press or a website, distribute them at events like pride rallies or in bars and other businesses.

The information you get is likely to be more useful if you get someone trained in surveys to help write the questions. Many social scientists get this kind of training, and you can often get help at local universities or from local psychologists or social workers.

If you do a questionnaire, think about what you might want to ask people in addition to whether they have been discriminated against.

You might get a professional to train a small group of volunteers to interview people at events or in bars, etc., to be sure you get a decent number of responses back. You might be able to persuade an academic or a graduate student to do a small study of individuals in depth to try to see how discrimination has impacted their lives.

In 2007, the Williams Institute published Bias in the Workplace: Consistent Evidence of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination (PDF), which summarizes the findings of 10 years of research on LGBT workplace discrimination. This report contains lots of useful information showing the need for civil rights protections for LGBT people.

If you don't want to discourage responses from people who might be afraid to come forward, you should probably put a statement on the questionnaire explaining that you will not reveal the details of any set of answers, but will instead do a summary totaling all the responses. However, both questionnaires and interviews can also be a good source of stories. After the promise not to reveal details, you can ask people who are willing to give their telephone numbers so you can follow up on stories you think may be interesting.

Neither questionnaires nor small scale studies like this will give you any reliable statistics on discrimination. But the point really is to show that discrimination is more than an occasional problem, and they will do that.

Opponents sometimes attack surveys or studies as "collections of unproven allegations." But of course, there is never a way to prove or disprove a claim about any kind of discrimination unless you have a policy making discrimination illegal and a way to enforce it.

Showing the Damage Discrimination Does

Once you show that discrimination occurs, you've shown that the law is necessary provided the audience you are aiming at agrees that it is wrong. However, you may also want to provide some evidence of the harm that it does. There are at least two obvious ways to do that.

First, you can try to show how discrimination harms the whole community. For example, most economists agree that employment discrimination costs business and government money because able, productive workers get fired, not hired, or not promoted. You should be able to get an economist or other social scientist from a university to explain why discrimination costs.

Second, you can try to show how discrimination damages individuals. Although some of the economic damage which goes with a lost job is obvious, some consequences (foreclosures on people who can't pay mortgages, long term career damage) are not.

If you use a social scientist to show harm to the community, he or she should be able to testify about this as well. You can also try to illustrate the points with your stories, for example by having people who lost entire careers describe what happened to them after the incident.

You may also want to talk about the psychological damage that discrimination does to individuals. This can be tricky. Most people have never been fired or evicted, and they don't understand how traumatic it can be. Even those who have lost jobs, for example, usually lost them because of a dispute about job performance or misconduct, or because a company shrunk or went out of business. They don't understand the special psychological shock that goes with losing a job because of something central to who you are that has nothing to do with your ability to work.

If you try to make people understand by having people with stories describe what they went through, you run the risk that you will inadvertently reinforce the old stereotype about gay and trans people being emotionally weak. And most people are simply not very good at describing emotions and psychological trauma.

If you want to try to overcome these hurdles, you should get an expert who can talk about the effects of employment discrimination based on race, gender, disability, etc., as well as discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Try to get the expert to be as vivid and direct as possible.

You probably need to back any expert with at least one or two accounts from individuals with stories. If possible, try to have your witnesses work with a professional (like a trial lawyer or an author or director) to figure out how to describe what happened in a way that will make people understand the emotional trauma.

Showing the Other Good Things the Law Will Do

You may also want to provide proof about other things a policy can do which will be helpful to the community. There are two obvious possibilities.

First, by making a strong statement that discrimination is not acceptable, nondiscrimination policies help to reduce prejudice and make hate violence less likely. There are studies on prejudice and hate violence, and you should be able to get someone from a local university to testify about what they say.

Police officers, especially high ranking officials, are often very good witnesses on this point and are willing to testify more often than you would expect. It probably won't hurt to ask. If all else fails, you should be able to get written materials from some of the LGBT organizations.

Second, anti-discrimination laws and policies allow many LGBT people to lead easier lives by reducing (if not eliminating) the need to keep a central part of their personalities secret. This may be the most important thing nondiscrimination policies do, but it is difficult to make many people understand it.

A lot of people think that LGBT people should keep quiet about their lives, and they don't understand how difficult that is, or that it frequently requires outright deception. Experts can be useful, but you need a few good stories that will make people understand at a gut level.

What to Do With the Stories Once You Have Them

It is a good idea to have the people with stories do short written versions, and to have your other witnesses do short reports, summaries or statements. You can use these in press packets, with individual policy makers when you lobby them, with editorial boards and with groups from which you seek support. You may also want to submit the written statements at public hearings if the witness can not attend, or if you have enough other live witnesses.

You will want your most impressive witnesses to testify at public hearings. You may also want to make them available for press interviews, visits with policy makers and editorial boards, and at appearances before other groups whose support you are seeking.

Be careful not to put all of your evidence out in every medium from the start. If the media has all your stories, it may stop covering you. Most policy makers won't listen to the same story more than once if they can help it.