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Laura's Law mental-health debate rages in Bay Area
News // Bay Area & State
Alameda County delays mental-health program
Vivian Ho
Feb. 26, 2014 Updated: Feb. 27, 2014 6:10 a.m.
Christina Murphy is seen at her home in Richmond, Calif. on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014. Murphy is speaking out against the implementation of Laura's Law within Alameda County.Paul Chinn/The Chronicle
A man drives to the East Bay hills every Wednesday to leave groceries for his son, who lives in the woods. An Albany woman sleeps with a baseball bat and stun gun next to her bed, fearing the son who threatened to kill her.
These were among the stories shared this week by family members of people who suffer from severe mental illness as they sought, yet again, to bring the much-debated Laura's Law to the Bay Area more than 11 years after its passage in California.
The law, now implemented only in Nevada and Yolo counties, allows judges to order outpatient treatment for people with a record of failed mental health hospitalizations and of violence. Advocates see it as a way to help people who won't help themselves and ensure they take medication, but critics warn of a system ripe for civil rights abuses.
This week, the battleground shifted to Alameda County, where authorities used psychiatric holds, commonly known as 5150s, on 10,849 occasions last year. The Board of Supervisors was asked to consider implementing a Laura's Law pilot program, compelling a maximum of five people to accept mental health treatment.
Alameda County should adopt Laura's Law
S.F. needs new thinking on homeless problem
3-month delay
But on Tuesday, after the type of emotional public hearing that is typical in this debate, the supervisors declined to vote yes or no, but rather to continue the discussions for the next three months.
They did so after hearing impassioned pleas from two opposing camps that have a lot in common - both want stronger mental health care - but diverge on compelled treatment.
Speaking against Laura's Law were people like Yaffa Alter, an Alameda woman who said she was doing well, and had gone nine years without hospitalization, after she took responsibility for her own treatment.
Another critic was Christina Murphy, a 35-year-old woman who said she overcame a lifelong struggle with misdiagnosed mental illnesses and overmedication thanks to anger management classes and support groups. She and others said forced recovery didn't work.
"I want to have a say-so in my recovery," said Murphy, who lives in Richmond and works at a Berkeley center that helps mental health patients.
But Laura's Law proponents pointed to reports of success in Nevada County and the failure of the status quo. They included Liz Rebensdorf, who worked with the family whose son lived in the woods as head of the East Bay's National Alliance on Mental Illness, and whose son, she said, repeatedly threatened to kill her.
"When he was born, I made that unspoken pact with him, as you all have as parents - 'I will protect you,' " she said. "Now I need to protect him but I can't. I can't protect him from his inner demons, or from his own self."
Candy Dewitt, whose son Daniel stands accused of killing a stranger in the Berkeley hills in 2012 after cycling in and out of psychiatric holds due to his schizophrenia, said the current system isn't enough. Her son, she said, wouldn't stick with treatment because he didn't understand the thoughts in his head weren't real.
Passionate plea
She turned to her opponents at Tuesday's hearing, many wearing the bright yellow shirts of the county's Pool of Consumer Champions, a group of Alameda County constituents advocating for mental health, and noted their success in battling mental illness.
"I'm so sad when you say it divides us," she said. "There's nobody more on your side than us. I hope for my son what you have one day. But he can't do that and there are many others who can't do that. We need something else."
Advocates like Dewitt hope that if Laura's Law launches in an urban county like Alameda, it will be successful and spread. But the debate has been playing out for years, after Gov. Gray Davis signed a law that gave each county the choice of whether to opt in and build programs.
Orange County is also considering implementing Laura's Law. In San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee in 2011 put in a pilot program he has compared to Laura's Law, but it has significant differences and is voluntary.
In the proposed Alameda County pilot program, up to five people could enter court-ordered treatment only after all other efforts failed, said Alex Briscoe, who directs the county's Health Care Services Agency.
He said no one would be forcibly medicated on the street, but the county still needs to work out a potential consequence for people who refuse to follow court-ordered treatment. Under the law, people can be involuntarily hospitalized.
Also on the table on Tuesday were nine other recommendations for improving mental health care, including an expansion of outreach teams, peer support and intensive case management services. Both sides overwhelmingly supported those proposals, and Briscoe said using Laura's Law was viewed as a last-resort option to be employed only if the other tools failed.
Discussion about the pilot program went on for nearly six hours before Supervisor Wilma Chan called for a vote passing the pilot program, which Briscoe said could be implemented for less than $500,000.
Supervisor Nate Miley also voted to pass the program, but the other three supervisors - Keith Carson, Richard Valle and Scott Haggerty - stated they needed more time, with Board President Carson emotionally speaking of a family member with schizophrenia.
"I have personally seen that person in restraints. I have personally seen that person force-fed medication and I continue to live with that person's disability," he said. "This is not something I read about. It's something I f-ing experience every f-ing day. I understand the pain that people are going through, on both sides, because I lived it."
Making adjustments
The board asked the county's health officials to spend three months working with both sides to hash out what Valle called a "more compassionate" pilot program.
Aaron Chapman, interim director of the county's behavioral health services agency, said he and other health officials were hoping for more direction from the board.
"I think we were hoping for some closure," Chapman said. "This has been polarizing."
Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
Reach Vivian on
Vivian Ho has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle since 2011, covering crime and breaking news as a Go Team reporter with a desk in the Hall of Justice. She reported on Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the Occupy movement, the Napa earthquake, the Rim Fire and the World Series riots as well as on homicides, criminal street gangs, sexual assaults, domestic violence cases and police personnel matters. She also writes for Chronicle Watch, a weekly column exploring stubborn issues in the Bay Area. Before she joined The Chronicle, Vivian reported for the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. Vivian spent most of her life in the frozen tundra that is New England and has a hard time understanding weather stories in California.


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Contract: three (st)ages of potential uncertainty
Resolve - Autumn 2017
Recent case law has reconfirmed that under English law it is possible (save where formalities are required by statute) to conclude a contract without any formalities or reducing it to writing.
For the contract to come into existence there must be an agreement, which is intended to be legally binding, supported by consideration and sufficiently certain and complete to be enforceable.
Once in existence a contract may be varied. The legal requirements for variation are the same as those for initial contract formation. And if a contract expires, and the parties continue to perform it, its effect can continue beyond the original term.
In the beginning there was a contract?
Two cases this year have reviewed whether there was an intention to form a contract when the contracts alleged by the claimants were oral: MacInnes v Gross [2017] EWHC 46 and Blue v Ashley [2017] EWHC 1928. For our report of Blue v Ashley click here.
Both claimants alleged contracts for substantial sums. In MacInnes the sum claimed was EUR 13.5 million, in Blue v Ashley the sum was £ 15 million. The contract in Blue v Ashley was alleged to have been made on an evening out at the Horse & Groom pub with "five guys and a barman". In MacInnes the discussions took place at the Sanctum Soho Hotel and the Zuma restaurant in Mayfair.
In both cases the court held that there was no contract. However, these cases are salutary reminders that two people at the same meeting may have a different perspective on discussions and in retrospect may take a differing view as to the nature of those discussions.
The court confirmed that if all the requirements for contract formation exist, the informal location of the discussions and lack of written confirmation will not necessarily preclude finding an enforceable agreement.
In Blue v. Ashley the Judge noted the inherent difficulties for the court where the evidence presented is subject to the "unreliability of human memory". In MacInnes there were some emails that it was alleged followed up and documented the agreement. However, the Judge considered that they supported a finding that there was no contract. Crucially they included wording such as "headline terms" and "Next time we see each other let's make a proper contract".
Does a lack of documentation and uncertainty favour the party alleging that there was no contract? For example, if Mr Blue had sought to document the alleged terms immediately, would he have been in a different position?
Either making a contemporaneous note recording what has been said, or seeking soon after to document what it is alleged has/has not been agreed, is likely to bring matters more quickly to a head, but in these recent cases doing so might not have changed the outcome. Nevertheless both cases show the need for care in approaching and documenting discussions which take place at informal meetings, particularly where potential future deals, ventures and/or collaborations are discussed.
The court confirmed in Blue v. Ashley that if there had been an intention to make a contract then it would have done its "utmost" to give meaning to what had been agreed.
In such situations, the court will determine whether the parties have reached agreement on all "essential terms". If there are gaps then it will assess if it is able to fill that "gap" by reference to standards of reasonableness. Past dealings between the parties or accepted commercial practices in that sector may play a part here.
In Blue v. Ashley, the missing element (even had an intention to create legal relations been established) was the particular period within which the share price of Sports Direct had to reach £8. The Judge concluded that there was no reasonable yardstick which could have been applied to set this period and, therefore, the terms would have been insufficiently certain.
Each case will be decided on its own facts. In other less bespoke circumstances, the court might have been able to bridge the gap. For example where there have been consistent commercial dealings between parties who are familiar with the trade in question, the courts may imply terms into a contract.
Contracts may change over time due to changing relationships between the parties or advances in a particular sector.
It is not necessary for a variation to a written contract to be documented. Provided that the requirements for a contract to be formed are present (when assessing a potential variation consideration for that revision may prove difficult to show with each case being dependent on its own facts) there are unlikely to be additional required formalities. The Court of Appeal confirmed in the case of Globe Motors Inc. v TRW Lucas [2016] EWCA Civ 396 that a "no oral variation clause" will not preclude a variation by conduct.
If parties are changing the way they work, or undertaking significant new investments, then a formal review of the contractual relationship is usually sensible. Otherwise, they could find the certainty and security of the original documented agreement undermined by evidence that the terms have subsequently changed.
Continuation of fixed term
It is not unusual for parties to contracts to commence performance before a contract has been concluded. While practicalities may dictate starting work to do so is risky; it is better to delay starting work or to bring forward executing the contract.
If a contract is for a fixed period, it may be left to continue past the end of the fixed term. If that happens what are the applicable terms? While they will depend on the circumstances, there is a good chance that the same terms will continue to apply. But that will mean that the duration and means of terminating the new extended contract will be uncertain, because a fixed term contract by its nature is unlikely to include a notice period.
Continuation past the contractual end date will often introduce uncertainty into a previously certain term. Where termination for breach doesn't arise the contract may only be terminated on reasonable notice. What is reasonable notice will be decided on the facts of each case.
It is also worth noting that in particular contractual relationships a continuation on equivalent terms may have a more significant impact. For example, a commercial agency for an initial fixed period will be converted into an agency contract for an indefinite period (Article 14 Commercial Agents Regulations). This is likely to impact on any compensation or indemnity payment an agent may be able to claim on termination.
Managing Associate, Dispute Resolution
Email Rachel
TAKING ACCESS FORCIBLY FOR REPAIRS
Summary of the Law Commission's advice to the Government on Smart Legal Contracts
Can an invalid deed be enforced as a contract?
Read articles and register for events & webinars via LinkedIn
Follow AG Insight on LinkedIn

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Railroad Modeling
Model railroading is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modeled at a reduced scale, or ratio. The modeled world includes rail vehicles (locomotives and rolling stock), tracks, signaling, scenery (roads, buildings, vehicles, model figures and natural features such as streams, hills, canyons, etc.). The earliest forms of model railways are the 'Carpet Railways' which first appeared in the 1840s. Model trains are generally more realistic than toy trains.
1 General Description
2 Methods of Power
3 Control
4 Scales and gauges
Involvement in the hobby can range from the possession of a train set to spending many hours and large sums of money on a large and exactingly executed model of a railroad and the scenery through which it passes, called a "layout". Hobbyists, called "model railroaders" or "railway modellers", may even maintain models large enough to ride (see "Live steam" and "Garden railroads"). Model railroaders may find enjoyment in collecting model trains, building a miniature landscape for the trains to pass through, or operating their own railroad, albeit in miniature.
Some older scale models reach very high prices.
An HO-scale model railroad
Layouts vary from the very stylistic (sometimes just a simple circle or oval of track) to the "absolutely realistic", where real places are modelled to scale. One of the largest of these is in the Pendon Museum in Oxfordshire, UK, where an EM gauge (same scale as OO but with a more accurate track gauge) model of the Vale of the White Horse as it appeared in the 1930s is under construction. The world's largest model railroad track in scale HO is Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, while the largest live steam layout, with over 25 miles (40 km) of trackage is Train Mountain in Chiloquin, Oregon, USA.
Model railway clubs exist where model railway enthusiasts meet. Clubs sometimes put on displays of models for the general public. One rather specialist branch of railway modellers concentrates on larger scales and gauges, most commonly using track gauges from 3.5 to 7.5 inches. Models in these scales are usually hand-built and are powered by live steam, or diesel-hydraulic, and the engines are often powerful enough to haul even dozens of full-scale human passengers.
One particularly famous model railway club is the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT, which in the 1950s pioneered the automatic control of track-switching amongst hobbyists by using advanced technology for the time — telephone relays.
The oldest known society is The Model Railway Club (established in 1910), based near Kings Cross, London, UK. As well as building model railways, they also have a library of in excess of 5000 books, periodicals, etc.
Methods of Power
Model railway locomotives are generally operated by low voltage electricity supplied via the track, but there are exceptions such as radio control and batteries. Today's trains consist of miniature computers located inside the locomotives (called decoders) which receive commands from a command station. Check out the Introduction to DCC for complete details.
Most of the early models made for the toy market were powered by clockwork and controlled by stop/go and reverse levers on the locomotive itself. Although this made control crude the models were of large enough scale and robust enough that grabbing the controls as they ran around the track was quite practical. Various manufacturers also introduced slowing and stopping tracks that could trigger levers on the locomotive and allow reliable station stops to be performed. Other locomotives, particularly large models used actual steam. Steam or clockwork driven engines are still sought by collectors.
Early electrical models used a three-rail system with the wheels resting on a metal track with metal sleepers that conducted power and a separate middle rail which provided power to a skid under the locomotive. This at first apparently strange arrangement made sense at the time as the majority of materials used for railway models were metal and conductive. Modern plastics were not yet available and insulation was therefore a significant problem. In addition the notion of accurate models had yet to evolve and toy trains and track were generally crude tinplate representations of generic models.
As model accuracy became more important some model systems adopted two rail power where the wheels were isolated from each other and the two rails carried the positive and negative supply or the two sides of the AC supply. Other model systems such as Märklin instead used a set of fine metal studs to replace the central rail, allowing existing three rail models to use more realistic track.
Although DC power with the positive and negative charges on the two rails is the most common method of power, Märklin and Lionel use AC power on the three rail system. American Flyer is another exception, which used AC power on two-rail track.
The sugar-cube sized electric motor in a Z scale model locomotive. The entire engine is only 50 mm (2") long.
Early electric trains ran on battery power, as few homes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were wired for electricity. Today, inexpensive train sets running on battery power are once again becoming more common, but these are generally regarded as toys and are seldom used by hobbyists. Battery power is also used by many garden railway and larger scale systems both because of the difficulty in obtaining reliable power supply through the rails when outdoors, and the high power consumption and thus current draw requirements of large scale garden models is easily and safely met with lead acid batteries.
Live Steam locomotives are often built in large gauges (up to 7.5" track gauge or even larger), and are also readily available in G scale, 16mm scale and can be found in O and HO scale. Hornby Railways produce a live steam locomotive in OO scale, development of work by some very dedicated modellers who hand-built live steam models in HO/OO, OO9 and N, and there is even one in Z in Australia.
Occasionally the topic of internal combustion (IC) models, patterned after real-life diesel-electric locomotives, comes up among dedicated hobbyists, but these locomotives are not commercially available. Large scale IC-mechanical and even IC-hydraulic models are commercially available but these are unusual and significantly pricier than the more usual electrical power.
The first clockwork (spring-drive) and live steam locomotives simply ran until they ran out of power, with no way for the operator to stop and restart the locomotive or to vary its speed. The advent of electric-powered trains, which first appeared commercially in the 1890s, allowed one to control the train's speed by varying the current, or voltage. As trains began to be powered by transformers and rectifiers more sophisticated throttles appeared, and soon trains powered by AC started containing mechanisms that caused the train to change direction and/or even go into a neutral gear when the operator cycled the power. Trains powered by DC can change direction simply by reversing polarity.
Electric power also permits control by dividing the layout into electrically isolated blocks, where trains can be slowed or stopped by lowering or cutting the power to a block. Dividing a layout into blocks also permitted operators to run more than one train on a layout with much less risk of a fast train catching up with and hitting a slow train. Blocks can also trigger signals or other animated accessories on the layout, adding more realism (or whimsy) to the layout. Three-rail systems will often insulate one of the common rails on a section of track, and use a passing train to complete the circuit and activate an accessory.
Many modern day model railways use digital techniques and are computer controlled. The industry standard command system is called Digital Command Control, or DCC. Some less-common closed proprietary systems also exist.
In the large scales the use of radio control has become popular, particularly for garden railways.
Main article: Railroad modelling scales
One of the smallest (Z scale, 1:220) placed on the buffer bar of one of the largest (Live steam, 1:8) model locomotives.
The size of the engines depends on the scale being used. The four major scales used are: G scale, O, HO (in Britain, the similarly sized OO is used), and N, although there is growing interest in Z. Engine sizes can vary from around 700 mm (28") tall for the largest ridable Live steam scales, down to matchbox size for the smallest ones in Z-scale. A typical HO engine is around 50 mm (2") tall, and 100 mm to 300 mm (4" to 12") in length.
G scale because of its larger size is most often used for outdoor modelling. It is easier to fit a G scale model into a garden landscape and still keep the scenery proportional to the size of the trains running through. O, HO, and N gauge are more delicate due to their size and are used more often indoors.
The words scale and gauge seem at first to be used interchangeably in model railways, but their meanings are different. Scale is the model's measurement as a proportion to the original, while gauge is the measurement between the two running rails of the track.
At first, model railways were not to scale. Manufacturers and hobbyists soon arrived at de facto standards for interchangeability, such as gauge, but trains were only a rough approximation to the real thing. See NEM and NMRA. Official scales for the various gauges were soon drawn up, but the scales were not at first at all rigidly followed, and were not necessarily correctly proportioned for the rail gauge chosen. O (zero) gauge trains, for instance, operate on track that is too widely spaced, while the British OO standards operate on track that is significantly too narrow. Most of the commercial scales also have standards that include wheel flanges that are too deep, wheel treads that are too wide, and rail tracks that are too large.
Later on, groups of modellers became dissatisfied with these inaccuracies, and developed finescale standards in which everything is correctly scaled. These are used by dedicated modellers but have not generally spread to mass-produced equipment in part because the inaccuracies and overscale properties of the commercial scales are necessary to ensure reliable operation in the hands of consumers as well as experts, and also to allow for shortcuts necessary for cost control.
Personal Layouts - List of personal layouts of the DCCWiki community.
Clubs - Club listings.
Standard Dimensions - Standard dimensions and clearances for railways.
Retrieved from "https://dccwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Railroad_Modeling&oldid=11363"


The 4.0 Gallon M3 Utility Can features a 2 handle design for ease of use and superb reliability. Equipped with an easy pour spout and the can is easily personalised with your Name and Race number.
The M3 Utility Can features an indent that allows the use of Matrix Concepts tie-downs to strap into place during transport to reduce the possibility of spillage.


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FAQ with the GitHub Sponsors team
Hello, this is Devon from the GitHub Sponsors Team! It's been incredibly motivating for us to see the outpouring of enthusiasm for the launch and to hear your ideas for where you'd like to see it go from here. We're just getting started, and your input is important to keep us going in the right direction.
Devon Zuegel
Hello, this is Devon from the GitHub Sponsors team! It's been incredibly motivating for us to see the outpouring of enthusiasm for the launch and to hear your ideas for where you'd like to see it go from here. We're just getting started, and your input is important to keep us going in the right direction.
Open source funding is a nuanced, important topic, so we wanted to share our thinking on how GitHub Sponsors fits into the story and the frameworks for how we've made certain decisions about the product.
We'll continue to add to this FAQ as more questions come up. If you can't find what you're looking for, don't hesitate to send us a note at opensource@github.com. You can also find more details about how GitHub Sponsors and the matching fund work in our help docs.
Why did you build GitHub Sponsors?
What's the story behind GitHub Sponsors? How did it all start?
How does the waitlist work?
How will you determine if FUNDING.yml will natively support a platform? Why isn't my platform of choice supported?
Will you support corporate sponsors and sponsored teams? Why did you start with individual sponsors and sponsored developers?
How will you ensure sponsorships are diverse and inclusive?
Why did you create the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund?
Can't people just steal money from the matching fund?
Everyone building GitHub Sponsors is passionate about the problems we're tackling for their own particular reasons. Here's how each member of our core team answered this question in their own words:
"Online communities have always been a huge part of my life—from connecting with others to growing as an individual. I've been designing tools and systems for communities on GitHub to be productive, welcoming, and safe. Coming from that perspective, I'm thrilled to work on GitHub Sponsors to financially empower developers in the open source community in their current and future work! I'm excited to see how funding can give maintainers, mentors, organizers, and beyond more equity and access to building communities on GitHub."
– Kat Fukui (@katmeister, Designer)
"I believe great software is built on the shoulders of giants. As cliché as it sounds, it truly takes a village to solve interesting problems in a scalable manner without reinventing the wheel unnecessarily. Open source provides an accessible avenue for creators and developers to tap into that digital infrastructure.
I'm building GitHub Sponsors to support the human beings behind open source and to allow users to give back to maintainers and help the open source ecosystem thrive."
– Yumin Wong (@itsbagpack, Engineer)
"The world runs on open source. For decades, both integrators and end users have enjoyed the benefits of open source work without considering the cost of labor necessary to build and maintain the infrastructure on which our modern world operates.
I'm excited by the opportunity to call attention to these people; to normalize the idea that their time and effort is valuable, and by extension, increase the pool of prospective open source contributors. Win win."
– Mike Kavouras (@mikekavouras, Engineer)
"Open source is such an exciting phenomenon because it gives anyone with a computer and access to the internet a way to positively affect thousands of lives.
Funding open source means empowering even more people to contribute, grow, and build together. I'm so proud to work on GitHub Sponsors because we have the opportunity to make open source not only more sustainable but also more accessible to people all over the world."
– Katie Delfin (@yassskatie, Engineer)
"Open source is freely shared without the expectation of great reward, but that shouldn't preclude maintainers from accepting funding to support the great deal of work, often on personal time, that goes into its creation, maintenance, and management.
I'm excited to work on the Open Source Economy team and GitHub Sponsors specifically because we are in a great position to normalize the idea that open source creates value worthy of compensation. In the long term, I believe successful and generally accepted funding models will create more opportunity in open source."
– Derek Prior (@derekprior, Engineering Manager)
I've been maintaining the Homebrew project for ten years and seen huge growth in the size of the project and number of users. As the current Project Leader, the hardest problems in Homebrew for me to work on have moved from being technical to efficiently raising and allocating resources. It's been invigorating to spend my day job building new ways for maintainers and projects on GitHub to raise the resources they need to grow and maintain their projects.
– Mike McQuaid (@mikemcquaid, Engineer)
Many people at GitHub have been thinking for years about how to make open source thrive—including but not limited to funding models. We have lots of maintainers on staff who have a personal connection to and passion for the topic, and Nadia Eghbal's extensive work, including her 2016 Roads & Bridges report, deeply impacted how the team thinks about the challenges faced by open source communities.
These problems are not abstract but rather deeply personal for me, too. Many of my closest friends are or have been open source maintainers, and I'm a passionate believer that building, supporting, and funding infrastructure is one of the highest-leverage ways to make a difference in the world.
With this in mind, I dove deep into independent research into this problem space last year. I spoke with hundreds of open source developers all around the world; I read everything I could get my hands on the topics of open source, gift economies, shared resources, and infrastructure development; and I learned so much from talking to amazing people at GitHub and beyond who've been working on these problems for years.
Open source is the heart of GitHub, so it was a no-brainer for us to build tools for developers and communities that make the community even stronger. After this extensive research, I approached the leadership team with a proposal of what I thought was an important responsibility for GitHub to take on, as the place where so much software development happens and one that is so indebted to open source. GitHub Sponsors is a first step to building those tools.
The conceptual groundwork laid by previous GitHubbers, combined with the whole team's love of open source, made this an easy sell. The team that built the first version of GitHub Sponsors, which we launched on May 23, is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about the problems that open source developers face, and we're so excited about what's to come this summer and beyond.
As we scale up operations for Sponsors, we want to be fair and welcoming to all of the amazing developers who've applied. We're inviting people off the waitlist in randomized order, prioritizing folks who've received recommendations from others.
We're sourcing recommendations from two places:
Recommendation form: We'd love to hear who you'd like to see receive sponsorship in the program! If you'd like to recommend another developer for GitHub Sponsors, please fill out this form.
Waitlist applications: When a developer applies to Sponsors, one of the questions we ask is: "What developers would you like to sponsor through GitHub Sponsors who aren't already part of the program?" We're using these recommendations to better understand which contributors the open source community is most eager to support.
How do you determine if FUNDING.yml will natively support a platform? Why isn't my platform of choice supported?
Several of you have reached out asking why we don't support certain platforms (including PayPal and Venmo) natively in FUNDING.yml, the file for configuring a "Sponsor" button on a repo. Great question!
We decided to leave PayPal, Venmo, and others out of the set of supported platforms because there is a less explicit social contract for where the money is going compared to platforms like Patreon, Open Collective, Tidelift, and Community Bridge, to name a few of the platforms we do support. Those are community, creator, open source, or developer-focused—and they make it clear that you are supporting the work of the person or team developing code in that repository.
We support custom fields so we can monitor funding methods we might not have known about, and iterate accordingly. Good news is you can put PayPal—or any other link—in the custom field, too.
Learn more about funding links
Do you plan to support corporate sponsors and sponsored teams? Why did you start with individual sponsors and sponsored developers?
We want to make it as easy as possible for those who benefit from open source—whether they're massive corporations, students, small startups, non-profits, or beyond—to sponsor the amazing people, teams, and projects they depend on. Companies in particular receive tremendous benefit from open source, and a huge portion of the open source that exists is built in teams of people and not just individual developers, so we're especially keen to offer better tools for both corporate sponsorships and sponsored teams in the future.
Today's GitHub Sponsors is just the first step, and we plan to extend the types of sponsorships it supports. We launched small and simple, but our mission is vast: to expand the opportunities to participate in and build on open source. We're just getting started.
We began with developer-to-developer sponsorships because it's a great tool for individual developers to receive grassroots support from their community. For some, that'll look like small tokens of gratitude and moral support. For others, that might mean it's possible for them to work on open source full time, or it could mean some extra funds for a nice vacation. We don't expect it will solve the funding problem for everyone. Rather, it is a key building block that enables us to build a rich suite of tools for all sorts of open source developers to fund and coordinate their work with other models of open source funding, too.
Funding is a nuanced issue, so it's crucial for us to build Sponsors based on your feedback rather than going off in the direction our own untested assumptions. We've intentionally prioritized taking an iterative approach to get feedback on what's working, what we can improve, and where you all would like to see the program expand. If you have ideas about how GitHub Sponsors can serve the open source community, send an email to opensource@github.com. We're excited to hear from you!
We want GitHub to be the home for all developers, and we have a lot more work to do to reflect the growing global industry. We also want to recognize all types of contributions, like mentorship, design, documentation, organizing, and non-profit work. We're actively elevating the current and future work of underrepresented groups through the recommendations of community organizers and maintainers, and working closely with developers to set them up for success. We believe better representation in open source communities makes technology more accessible and addresses more diverse needs.
We had several goals for the Matching Fund:
The first one is pretty straightforward: we just plain want to give a lot of money to open source developers! This community is what it is today because of the amazing developers who build shared tools for each other, and we want to give back to them.
Like all software companies, GitHub uses open source extensively, so we have a responsibility to support the development and maintenance of that infrastructure. We want to set an example for software companies to give back to open source.
We went with the matching fund format because we want to empower you, the community, to decide where that funding should go, instead of just deciding ourselves where that money should go. We're excited to see how you surprise us!
We want to make sure the developers in the program can get their sponsorships off to a good start. Our goal with Sponsors is to help them thrive, and the matching fund makes it all the more attractive for others to sponsor them in the first place. Their contribution goes twice as far.
We have a rigorous vetting process for the sponsored developers who receive the match. If you happened to see the application form at github.com/sponsors, you'll notice we ask a lot of questions that support this process. We're also introducing more measures—including an extensive identity verification and antifraud program in partnership with Stripe—as we grow the program this summer.
More on GitHub Sponsors
Everything new from GitHub Universe 2022
See what we're building to enhance the most integrated developer platform that allows developers and enterprises to drive innovation with ease.
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text:
The Invisible Minority: Discrimination Against Bisexuals in the Workplace
Jan 28, 2018 | eVol. 3, Online, Volume 52
Elizabeth Childress Burneson, The Invisible Minority: Discrimination Against Bisexuals in the Workplace, 52 U. Rich. L. Rev. Online 63 (2018).
Click here to download PDF.
Elizabeth Childress Burneson *
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer ("LGBTQ+") community has won major legal victories in the last twenty years, but at least one group remains left behind in those victories. The bisexual population is often ignored, erased, and discriminated against by both homosexual and heterosexual individuals and communities.[1] This is true despite the fact that bisexuals outnumber both lesbian women and gay men.[2]
This erasure and discrimination affects bisexuals in different areas of life and the law, including the employment context. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), which protects against employment discrimination on the basis of sex, has long been used as a tool for legal activists to protect the LGBTQ+ community from employment discrimination. For years, this strategy had mixed success in lower courts and no success in circuit courts or with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC").[3]
Then, in 2015, the EEOC reversed its long-held position that claims of sexual orientation discrimination are not actionable under Title VII in David Baldwin.[4] Two years after Baldwin, in 2017, the Seventh Circuit in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana became the first circuit court to declare that sexual orientation discrimination is actionable discrimination under Title VII.[5]
Both the Baldwin and Hively opinions endorsed or discussed three legal theories to support their holdings: an expansive statutory interpretation of Title VII, the affiliate discrimination theory, and the sex stereotyping theory.[6] However, all three of these theories suffer serious flaws and fail to protect bisexual employees. These theories fail to take notice of how discrimination against bisexuals differs from discrimination against homosexuals and other key differences between bisexuals and monosexuals.
To ensure full protection of the law for bisexuals, LGBTQ+ advocates must urge Congress to amend Title VII to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. The LGBTQ+ community and the legal community must also acknowledge the bisexual population in their legal analyses and advocacy.
A. Bisexuality Defined
Defining bisexuality is an important and challenging task; appropriate naming is a matter of substance and not merely style.[7] The simplest way to define bisexuality is in contrast to monosexuality;[8] that is, an attraction to more than one gender, sex, or gender identity. There are various axes upon which to define sexual orientation. Kenji Yoshino, in his seminal work on bisexual erasure, describes three different axes on which one can define sexual orientation: desire, conduct, and self-identification.[9] Yoshino explains that a desire-based definition is the best definition for discussing bi erasure because it includes individuals with desires that they have not yet acted upon, likely because of stigma.[10] Another way to conceptualize bisexuality is by reference to Alfred Kinsey's sexual orientation spectrum.[11]
The term "bisexual," as used here, applies to any person that does not define himself or herself as monosexual. For the purposes of this paper, the term "bisexual" includes those identifying as pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, or fluid.[12] The English language, while on the one hand vast and ever changing, is on the other hand not entirely accurate in describing the complex nature of human relationships.[13]
B. Bisexual Population
Virtually all reliable studies of sexual orientation populations have found that the population of bisexual individuals is equal to or greater than the population of gay men or lesbians.[14] This is true despite the fact that researchers are concerned that bisexuals are underreported in studies on sexual orientation.[15]
Nearly all sexual orientation studies conducted have found that "the incidence of nonexclusive orientation toward members of the same sex was 'greater than or comparable to the incidence of homosexuality'"[16]—starting as early as Kinsey's studies in 1948 and 1953.[17] Kinsey found that the percentage of the population that was bisexual was one-and-one-half times the percentage of the population that is homosexual.[18] Subsequent studies all found the same—that the population of bisexuals was equal to or greater than the gay or lesbian population.[19] Bisexual individuals represent a significant segment of the population, yet have been largely ignored in legal scholarship and the court system.
C. Bi Discrimination and Erasure
Bisexual individuals face unique challenges and varied forms of discrimination and erasure. While bisexuals face many of the same hardships that gays and lesbians encounter, bisexuals face the additional burden of "double discrimination": they face discrimination by both heterosexuals and homosexuals.[20] Bisexual people are often seen by monosexuals (both straight and gay) as "greedy" and "promiscuous," as having not "picked a side," or as just "going through a phase."[21] Some people refuse to believe that bisexuality exists at all.[22]
Bisexuals are relatively invisible because most people have a tendency to presume that all individuals are either gay or straight, depending on the gender of their current partner.[23] Bisexuals are also less visible because they are less likely than their gay and lesbian peers to come out: overall, bisexuals are "less than half as likely as gays and lesbians to have told most or all of the important people in their lives about their sexual orientations."[24] This invisibility is especially evident in the fact that only twenty-nine percent of respondents to a 2017 GLAAD survey reported knowing someone that is bisexual.[25]
In addition to invisibility and "double discrimination," Yoshino explains that bisexuals also face erasure from heterosexuals and homosexuals.[26] Heterosexuals seek to erase same-sex desire and keep it silenced, but homosexuals also have an interest in "privileg[ing] the straight/gay binary."[27]
Fritz Klein states that one reason that bisexuals are discriminated against by both heterosexuals and homosexuals is that "the bisexual . . . opens up the possibility of their own sexual ambiguity. They cannot understand the bisexual's ability to share their own preferences but not their own aversions."[28] Further, bisexuals face distinct discrimination from homosexuals. One reason for this, Robyn Ochs theorizes, is that homosexuals may see bisexuals as possessing a form of privilege not afforded to homosexuals because of their ability to "pass" as straight.[29]
In 2000, Yoshino demonstrated the extent of bi erasure by showing the "striking discrepancy" in the mentions of homosexuality and bisexuality in major newspapers.[30] An updated version of Yoshino's media experiment shows that between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2016: the Los Angeles Times had 694 documents mentioning the term "homosexuality," and 29 mentioning "bisexuality;"[31] and the Wall Street Journal had 306 documents mentioning "homosexuality," and 8 mentioning "bisexuality."[32] While one may be led to believe things have improved since 2000, the striking discrepancy still exists.
Bi discrimination and erasure have a significant impact on the bi community. Recent data shows that bisexual men and women face more mental and physical health problems than gay men or lesbians: bisexuals have a higher rate of suicide ideation and bisexual women are more likely to "experience frequent mental distress" and have "poorer general health" than lesbians.[33]
D. Bisexual Individuals in the Workplace
A majority of bisexual individuals face discrimination and harassment in the workplace because of their sexual orientation.[34] One United Kingdom study found that bisexuals reported they "endure more scrutiny about their relationships from their colleagues" than their homosexual colleagues do.[35] Twenty-five percent of heterosexual respondents in a 2016 study said they were uncomfortable seeing a LGBTQ+ coworker's wedding picture.[36]
Bi invisibility and erasure are also present in the workplace. A recent study found that bisexuals are "less likely to self-report their sexual orientation in [a] confidential human resource survey than their gay and lesbian peers" by eighteen to twenty percent.[37] Another study found that bisexual individuals are "roughly one third as likely as gays and lesbians to feel comfortable being out in the workplace."[38] For bisexual employees, not being out in the workplace undermines their "engagement and retention" and leads to lower levels of satisfaction with their workplace.[39]
A recent study by Ann Tweedy and Karen Yescavage found that bisexuals face significant levels of discrimination in the workplace.[40] Their study revealed that 51.7% of bisexual respondents reported experiencing employment discrimination, and the number was even higher for bisexual respondents of color, at 68.8%.[41] Their study revealed that 12.8% of bisexual respondents felt they had not been hired for a position because of their sexual orientation, and 7.7% of respondents reported being terminated because of their sexual orientation.[42] Other reported forms of discrimination included verbal sexual harassment (experienced by 30.8% of bisexuals) and unfair access to fringe benefits (experienced by 27.4% of bisexuals).[43]
Despite high instances of employment discrimination, bisexual plaintiffs bring very few employment discrimination cases, and succeed even more rarely.[44] Tweedy and Yescavage's study included a survey of employment discrimination cases brought by bisexual plaintiffs, finding only eleven cases on WestLaw, four or five of which were based on state laws, and the only successful suit was out of the United Kingdom.[45]
E. The Courts' Treatment of Bisexuals
Discrimination and erasure follow bisexuals into the courtroom, where they are ignored, erased, or negatively stereotyped by the courts. One of the most prominent cases involving bisexual plaintiffs is Apilado v. North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, in which a gay softball league discriminated against bisexual plaintiffs.[46] The league implemented a limit of two heterosexual members per team, and the league contested one team's inclusion of bisexual players as contributing to their heterosexual player limit. Those players were subject to invasive questions about their sexual orientation.[47]
In the immigration context, bisexuals have fared no better. Just last year, the Seventh Circuit denied the claim of Ray Fuller, a bisexual asylum seeker who claimed he was persecuted for his sexual orientation in his home country of Jamaica.[48] The immigration judge expressed disbelief that bisexuals were persecuted, despite evidence that Fuller was the victim of extreme forms of sexual harassment and violence, including being stoned and stabbed.[49] The judge also refused to believe that Fuller was bisexual; Fuller provided letters from ex-boyfriends but the judge was concerned that he was once married to a woman.[50] As Judge Posner put it in his scathing dissent in the Seventh Circuit case, "[a]pparently the immigration judge does not know the meaning of bisexual."[51]
In the employment law context, bisexuals are primarily visible as a hypothetical "bisexual harasser," brought up to demonstrate the absurdity of the now-foregone requirement that harassment need be desire-based to be actionable under Title VII.[52] Even cases that have extended rights to the LGBTQ+ community ignore and erase bisexuals. In the landmark case challenging California's Proposition 8, Plaintiff's attorney, Ted Olson, pressed his client, Sandy Stier—a woman seeking to marry her female partner—because she had previously been married to a man.[53] Olson questioned his client, saying, "Some people might say, 'Well, it's this and then it's that and it could be this again.' Answer that."[54] Olson's comments implied that it was impossible for Stier to be attracted to both men and women and still deserve recognition for her marriage.
One possible reason for bisexual erasure is the strategies adopted by the LGBTQ+ legal community. The LGBTQ+ community, in the fight to obtain rights for sexual orientation minorities, has adopted a model referred to as the "homo kinship" model.[55] The homo kinship, or "like straight," model has been employed by advocates to show that "but for gays' and lesbians' differences, they are just like" straight people.[56] This strategy attempts to normalize the LGBTQ+ community so that heterosexuals are more likely to accept them.[57] However, this model has left behind bisexuals, because bisexuals are not "like straight," in that they are attracted to more than one sex. Bisexuals challenge the monosexual paradigm on which our society insists. In this way, the LGBTQ+ community has left bisexuals behind in their legal strategy.
F. Changing Tides: EEOC Recognition and an Emerging Circuit Split
In 2015, the EEOC changed its longstanding practice of not recognizing sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII.[58] In David Baldwin, Baldwin, a male air traffic controller, filed an EEOC complaint alleging that he was discriminated against on the basis of his sexual orientation.[59] Baldwin alleged that he was not selected for a position because he was homosexual and that his supervisor made negative comments regarding his homosexuality.[60] The EEOC held that Baldwin's allegations of discrimination were actionable claims under Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination.[61]
The EEOC gave three reasons to support its assertion that sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination: (1) sexual orientation "cannot be defined or understood without reference to sex,"[62] (2) it is associational discrimination on the basis of sex,[63] and (3) it involves sex-stereotyping.[64]
The first reason supporting the EEOC's conclusion is that sexual orientation is "inherently a 'sex-based consideration'" and that discrimination based on sexual orientation "necessarily alleges" that the complainant's sex was taken into account.[65] The EEOC stated that the connection between "sex" and sexual orientation is an "inescapable link."[66] Second, the EEOC endorsed the affiliative theory of sexual orientation discrimination, following court decisions regarding racial affiliations.[67] Third, the EEOC relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins in holding that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex-stereotyping.[68]
Two years later, in April 2017, the Seventh Circuit reviewed Kimberly Hively's case and came to the same conclusion as the EEOC.[69] Hively was a lesbian adjunct professor at Ivy Tech Community College who was "out" to her colleagues.[70] After working at the college for fourteen years, her contract was not renewed; she alleged that it was due to her sexual orientation.[71] The eight-judge majority cited the same three arguments cited by the EEOC in Baldwin: statutory interpretation, affiliative discrimination, and sex-stereotyping.[72]
While Baldwin and Hively represent a victory for sexual orientation minorities, the theories they rely upon are flawed in several ways, and all fail to account for the existence of bisexuals.
II. Theories Supporting Prohibition of Sexual Orientation Discrimination Under Title VII
A. Statutory Interpretation and the Comparative Method
One argument in favor of interpreting "sex" to include sexual orientation comes from the history of the statute and its later interpretations. Proponents such as Judge Posner argue that the role of the court is to "mak[e] old law satisfy modern needs and understandings."[73] The argument is that we often interpret statutes to mean something that the drafters of the statute did not intend, and that courts have done so with Title VII repeatedly.[74]
The dearth of legislative history on the definition of "sex" in Title VII fuels these claims.[75] The history of the addition of "sex" to Title VII is strange and virtually unparalleled in modern legislative history, and leaves behind interpretive questions: how does one interpret a term in a statute, knowing that the term was introduced with the expectation that the term would cause the statute to fail?[76] Because there is so little guidance from the legislative history, the argument goes, one can look at the history of interpreting the term "sex." The court's interpretation of "sex" over the years has stretched far beyond adverse employment actions because of gender to include hostile workplace claims, sexual harassment claims by individuals of the same sex, and even sex stereotyping claims.[77] This evolution shows a willingness on the part of the Supreme Court to extend Title VII beyond the drafters' intentions, and some argue that this trend should continue to extend protection to sexual orientation minorities.
In Baldwin, the EEOC offered its own interpretation of Title VII, noting that the question is whether the employer "relied on sex-based considerations" and that sexual orientation "cannot be defined or understood without reference to sex."[78] The EEOC held that sexual orientation discrimination "necessarily entails treating an employee less favorably because of the employee's sex" and cited Heller v. Columbia Edgewater Country Club for the proposition that "[o]ne way . . . [to allege discrimination] is to inquire whether the harasser would have acted the same if the gender of the victim had been different."[79] This method is referred to as the "comparative method."[80]
To demonstrate the comparative method, the EEOC gave the following example: an employer suspended a female employee for displaying a photo of her wife but did not suspend a male employee for displaying a photo of his wife.[81] Because the first employee was only suspended because she was a woman, the discrimination was because of the employee's sex.[82]
The majority in Hively also discussed the comparative method and insisted that the critical step in comparing employees is that all variables but the employee's sex remain the same, especially the sex of the employee's partner.[83] The proper test, the majority insisted, is how a female employee who has a wife fares compared to a male employee who has a wife.[84]
However, as the dissent in Hively pointed out, the majority "distorts" the comparative method: the appropriate comparison is between a female homosexual employee and a male homosexual employee.[85] According to the dissent, that is the only way to isolate the single characteristic (sex); otherwise, the comparison is between a gay woman and a straight man, which changes two variables at once (sex and sexual orientation).[86]
The comparative method has another serious flaw: it ignores the existence of bisexuals. When one applies the comparative method to bisexuals, it becomes clear that discrimination based on an employee's sexual orientation is not "because of sex." Presumably, a woman with female and male partners and a man with female and male partners would both be discriminated against. When the test is applied to bisexual employees, it becomes clear that the discrimination is truly because of sexual orientation and not sex.
Further, the comparative method puts the focus of analysis on the current partner of the employee, which may hurt bisexuals. A bisexual may be discriminated against even if their current partner is of a different sex. If a bisexual woman has both male and female partners, and is discriminated against while she has a male partner, this discrimination would "fail" the comparative method test.
The EEOC and the court in Hively ignored the possibility of discrimination against bisexual employees, and that is a fatal flaw in their analyses. Overall, the statutory interpretation adopted by the EEOC and the Hively majority falls short in serious ways, and fails to protect—or even recognize—bisexuals.[87]
B. Associational Discrimination
Another theory advanced by both the EEOC and the Hively court is the associational discrimination theory, also referred to as "relational discrimination" or "affiliative discrimination."[88] This theory posits that sexual orientation discrimination is prohibited under Title VII because it involves looking to the sex of the employee in relation to the sex of the individuals with whom that employee associates.[89]
This theory of protection stems from case law involving race and national origin discrimination under Title VII.[90] It has been suggested that because Title VII "treats each of the enumerated categories . . . exactly the same," the same interpretation that applies to race and national origin should also apply to sex.[91]
The first case to apply this relational theory to race discrimination was Whitney v. Greater New York Corp. of Seventh-Day Adventists, in the Southern District of New York in 1975.[92] Plaintiff Whitney was discharged "because she, a white woman, associated with a black."[93] The court in Whitney held that her discharge as a white woman, because of her association with a black man, fit within Title VII's prohibition against discrimination "because of . . . race."[94] Following Whitney, district courts in several other states began to accept the relational discrimination theory as to race, and now the Second, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits have adopted this approach.[95] Only one district court has extended the relational theory to sex discrimination cases.[96]
One argument for viewing sexual orientation in a relational context is consistency; for example, it would be "structurally inconsistent" to treat some of the protected characteristics relationally, but not others.[97] Victoria Schwartz argues that one benefit to this interpretation is that it does not require the term "sex" to mean anything other than its intended meaning.[98] Sexual orientation discrimination, Schwartz posits, is discrimination on the basis of sex because one must look at an individual's sex in relation to others.[99] Schwartz explains that "sexual orientation is an inherently relational concept" because the discrimination occurs where the individual "is of the wrong sex in relation to the sex of the people she generally associates with romantically."[100]
Sexual orientation relates to an individual's sex in relation to his or her partner, but only if that individual is monosexual. Bisexuals are not the "wrong sex" in relation to their partners because their partners are not a single sex; this is especially true of a bisexual individual whose current partner is of a different sex. Further, for bisexuals, discrimination is not because of their sex vis-à-vis another person, but rather other persons.
Similarly, in Baldwin, the EEOC stated that Title VII prohibits sexual orientation discrimination based on the fact that "such individuals are in a same-sex marriage or because the employee has a personal association with someone of a particular sex."[101] This analysis notably uses the terms "same-sex marriage" and "a particular sex" which narrows the scope of protected employees to exclude bisexual individuals in different-sex marriages and employees that do not associate with "a particular sex," but rather with multiple sexes.
For bisexuals, discrimination is more complex than being the "wrong" sex in contrast to their partner. Bisexual discrimination is often due to failure to conform to monosexuality, rather than the sex of a current or future partner. A bisexual female employee may be discriminated against even if she has a male partner, the "right" sex. Schwartz and the EEOC describe the problem in a way that ignores bisexuals and ignores the ways that discrimination against bisexuals is different than discrimination against gays and lesbians.
C. Sex Stereotyping
The third theory advanced by the EEOC and the Seventh Circuit is that sexual orientation discrimination is a form of sex stereotyping, based on the Supreme Court's holding in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.[102] Price Waterhouse established that employees can bring Title VII claims for discrimination based on failure to conform to gender stereotypes.[103]
Ann Hopkins was a senior manager at Price Waterhouse who was proposed for partnership but was ultimately denied the position.[104] Hopkins received glowing references from some colleagues, yet reviews from other colleagues contained harsh personal critiques of Hopkins, saying she was "overly aggressive," "macho," and needed a "course at charm school."[105]
The court held that Hopkins was discriminated against because of her sex, reasoning that Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination is a broad prohibition that "forbids employers [from even making] gender an indirect stumbling block to employment opportunities."[106] The court framed the required analysis as: "if we asked the employer at the moment of the decision what its reasons were and if we received a truthful response, one of those reasons would be that the applicant or employee was a woman."[107] Applying this analysis, the court found that a man would not have been discriminated against for exhibiting the same traits.[108]
Homosexual plaintiffs have used the sex-stereotyping theory to bring claims of harassment or discrimination under Title VII with limited success.[109] Plaintiffs advancing the sex-stereotyping theory allege that they were impermissibly "judged against the standard of how a stereotypical person of the same sex should look and act"[110] and discriminated against because of that judgment. For example, in a Massachusetts case, Stephen Centola, a homosexual man, brought a claim against his employer for discrimination based on sex stereotyping for harassment he experienced at work.[111] Applying the sex-stereotyping theory, the court held that Centola was "discriminated against . . . because he failed to meet their gender stereotypes of what a man should look like, or act like."[112]
The court in Centola struggled with whether the harassment was because of Centola's sexual orientation or his failure to conform to gender stereotypes.[113] The court illustrated the intertwined nature of sexual orientation discrimination and sex stereotyping:
The harasser may discriminate against an openly gay co-worker, or a co-worker that he perceives to be gay, whether effeminate or not, because he thinks, "real men don't date men." The gender stereotype at work here is that "real" men should date women, and not other men. Conceivably, a plaintiff who is perceived by his harassers as stereotypically masculine in every way except for his actual or perceived sexual orientation could maintain a Title VII cause of action alleging sexual harassment because of his sex due to his failure to conform with sexual stereotypes about what "real" men do or don't do.[114]
The court's analysis here suggests, although in dicta, one route to Title VII protection for gay men or lesbians who otherwise conform to gender stereotypes. This has given some scholars and proponents of LGBTQ+ rights reason to hope.[115]
In the wake of Price Waterhouse, some scholars have advanced a theory that would enable gay and lesbian employees—regardless of their gender conformity—to assert Title VII claims: the "ultimate gender stereotype" theory.[116] Proponents of the ultimate gender stereotyping theory argue that there is "a common gender stereotype in play for both gender-conforming and gender-non-conforming gays and lesbians,"[117] which is that "'real' men and women should not be attracted to a member of the same sex."[118]
The first issue with this theory is that sexual orientation stereotyping is not gender stereotyping at all. Zachary Kramer, in his article on this theory, articulates the nature of masculine and feminine stereotypes: "[G]ender stereotyping relies on the existence of both a masculine and a feminine stereotype. These stereotypes are interrelated in that the purpose of either stereotype is to contrast with the other, rendering masculinity and femininity polar opposites on a gender continuum."[119] To be a gender stereotype, the stereotype must be specific to one gender and be in contrast to the stereotype for the opposite gender.
Two examples help elucidate this point. First, it is a gender stereotype that "women should wear makeup at work," but men should not. Those two stereotypes contrast each other and are polar opposites. However, it is not a gender stereotype that "women should dress professionally for work," because men should do so also. Sexual orientation falls into the second category.
While Kramer and others have framed the stereotype in a way that makes the two stereotypes seem opposite (men only date women and women only date men),[120] the actual stereotype is "women and men should only be attracted to people of the opposite gender." This is not a gender stereotype, but rather an expression of heterosexism, as it applies to both genders.[121] The dissent in Hively echoed this analysis, stating plainly: "heterosexuality is not a female stereotype; it is not a male stereotype; it is not a sex-specific stereotype at all."[122]
Another issue with this theory is that it does not always work as applied to bisexuals. Another formulation of the ultimate gender stereotype is that "real men are and should be sexually attracted to women, and real women invite and enjoy that attraction."[123] Under this formulation, bisexuals conform to the stereotype: bisexual men are attracted to women and bisexual women are attracted to men. This formulation of the stereotype would leave bisexuals unprotected, because they conform to their respective sex stereotypes. This highlights another issue with sex-stereotyping theory: clarifying what the stereotype actually is, and how it is to be framed.
Further, relying on the sex-stereotyping theory is demeaning to sexual orientation minorities and will likely be harmful to the LGBTQ+ movement. The cruel irony of using this theory to protect gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is that it forces them to advance the theory that they are not "real men" or "real women" and that they do not conform to gender stereotypes. It is also plausible that there will come a time when being a "real man" no longer means exclusive sexual attraction to women, and being a "real woman" means something far from the stereotype we now envision.
III. Conclusion and a Possible Solution: Revising Title VII
Because all three of the legal theories discussed have fatal flaws and fail to adequately protect bisexual employees, LGBTQ+ advocates must push to protect the full spectrum of sexual orientation minorities by amending Title VII. But more than that, we must also be inclusive in all of our discussions of sexual orientation minorities, and we must recognize the largest sexual orientation minority, or else they will continue to face societal harms.
The legal theories that purport to extend protection to sexual orientation minorities under Title VII fall short in crucial ways, especially for bisexuals, so the LGBTQ+ community must demand amendment of Title VII to include them by name, or passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act ("ENDA"). Of the two, amending Title VII is the preferable path.[124]
First, Title VII protects more than just employment discrimination and cures more issues, while the ENDA would cover only employment discrimination.[125] The narrow scope of the ENDA leaves little room for legal protections to "migrate" to other areas of the law, such as education.[126] Further, the ENDA's religious exception and lack of a bona fide occupational qualification exception make it more prone to exceptions and less favorable than amending Title VII.[127]
There is value in declaring that sexual orientation is a protected characteristic and that discrimination on such basis is abhorrent, and thus should be prohibited under the law—rather than piecing together several interpretive theories to provide protection. Congress took a bold stance in 1964 to declare that we as a nation will not tolerate sex, race, or national origin discrimination, and it is time we do the same for all forms of sexual orientation discrimination.
* J.D. Candidate, 2018, University of Richmond School of Law. B.A., 2012, Lynchburg College. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Steve Allred for his mentorship, expertise, and wise counsel. I also wish to thank the members of the University of Richmond Law Review for their time and effort preparing this comment for publication. I also wish to thank Arianna Stelling, my sounding board, informal consultant, and best friend. Finally, I wish to give special thanks to my husband, Brandon Burneson, for his constant and unending support.
[1]. See infra Part I.C.
[2]. See infra Part I.B.
[3]. See infra Part II.A.
[4]. David Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 15 (July 15, 2015), https://www. eeoc.gov/decisions/0120133080.pdf.
[5]. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll., 853 F.3d 339, 341 (7th Cir. 2017) (en banc).
[6]. See id. at 341–44; Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 8–10, 13.
[7]. See, e.g., Elizabeth M. Glazer, Sexual Reorientation, 100 Geo. L.J. 997, 1062 (2012) (discussing the philosophers of language and the debate over the importance of naming). Conscientious language use is especially important in the context of LGBTQ+ scholarship and legal history, where the terms "gays and lesbians" and "homosexuals" are often used as shorthand for all sexual orientation minorities. While the use of these phrases may seem innocuous, they indicate the larger issue of bisexual erasure and invisibility. See id. at 1062–64.
[8]. Monosexuality is defined as "[a]ttraction to a single gender." Ashley Mardell, The ABC's of LGBT+ 11 (2016).
[9]. Kenji Yoshino, The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure, 52 Stan. L. Rev. 353, 371 (2000).
[10]. Id. at 373. Yoshino also narrowly defines desire as sexual appetite or lust that is "more than incidental." Id. at 373, 377.
[11]. Id. at 380–81. Kinsey famously posited that rather than using strict dichotomies, sexual orientation is best explained as a continuum. Id. at 380. The Kinsey scale spans from zero to six, with zero representing heterosexuality (with no desire for the same sex), and six representing homosexuality (with no desire for the opposite sex). Id. For purposes of his research, Yoshino categorizes Kinsey scale numbers two, three, and four as individuals that would be bisexual: (2) "[m]ore than incidental homosexual contacts; but more frequent heterosexual contacts;" (3) "[e]qual homosexual and heterosexual contacts;" and (4) "[m]ore than incidental heterosexual contacts; but more frequent homosexual contacts." Id. at 380–81.
[12]. See Mardell, supra note 8, at 8, 12, for definitions:
"Pansexual/romantic a.k.a. Omnisexual/romantic: Capable of being attracted to any or all gender(s)."
"Polysexual/romantic: Someone who experiences attraction to multiple, but not necessarily all, genders."
"Fluid: Not fixed, able to change."
[13]. The term "bisexual" is used in this comment because it is the term used most often in research and legal scholarship, and is "widely understood as describing those whose attractions fall outside an either/or paradigm." Lindasusan Ulrich, San Francisco Human Rights Comm'n, Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations, at iii (2011).
[14]. See id. at 2–3 (providing a comprehensive review of recent studies showing population totals for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals).
[15]. Yoshino, supra note 9, at 383. There is evidence to support underreporting, as studies have found that bisexuals are less likely to be "out" to important people in their lives and less likely to self-identify as bisexual on a confidential human resources survey. Human Rights Campaign Found., Bisexual Visibility in the Workplace (2016), http://assets. hrc.org//files/assets/resources/Bi_Inclusion_One_Sheet_FINAL_2016.pdf?_ga=1.92999320. 440168641.1486155417.
[16]. Glazer, supra note 7, at 1008 & n.54; Yoshino, supra note 9, at 386.
[17]. Yoshino, supra note 9, at 380–82.
[18]. Id. at 382.
[19]. E.g., id.
[20]. Ann E. Tweedy & Karen Yescavage, Employment Discrimination Against Bisexuals: An Empirical Study, 21 Wm. & Mary J. of Women & L. 699, 702–03 (2015); Robyn Ochs, Biphobia: It Goes More Than Two Ways, in Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority 217, 217 (Beth A. Firestein ed., 1996).
[21]. Yoshino, supra note 9, at 374, 391, 398.
[22]. See, e.g., Benoit Denizet-Lewis, The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists, N.Y. Times, (Mar. 20, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/the-scientific-quest-to-prove-bisexuality-exists.html ("I can't tell you how many people have told me, 'Oh, I wouldn't date a bisexual.' Or, 'Bisexuals aren't real.'"); Loraine Hutchins, Bisexuality: Politics and Community, in Bisexuality: The Psychology and Politics of an Invisible Minority 240, 240–41 (Beth A. Firestein ed., 1996); Ochs, supra note 20, at 224 ("A primary manifestation of biphobia is the denial of the very existence of bisexual people.").
[23]. Ochs, supra note 20, at 225. For example, two women holding hands "read as gay," while a man and a woman holding hands "read as straight," but both or all of them could be bisexual. Ulrich, supra note 13, at 3.
[24]. Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 704. The stigma of bisexuality discourages people from coming out, which further contributes to their invisibility. See Human Rights Campaign Found., supra note 15.
[25]. GLAAD, Accelerating Acceptance 4 (2017), https://www.glaad.org/files/aa/2017 _GLAAD_Accelerating_Acceptance.pdf.
[26]. Yoshino, supra note 9, at 361.
[28]. Fritz Klein, The Bisexual Option 11 (2d ed. 2013).
[29]. Ochs, supra note 20, at 217. Another reason that bisexuals face discrimination from the homosexual community is the HIV epidemic of the 1980s. Id. at 231. Many homosexuals, particularly lesbians, believed that bisexual women were the conduit from which HIV spread to lesbians from the heterosexual community. Id.
[31]. Search of LexisNexis, https://www.lexisnexis.com (narrow search results to "News"; then search in search bar for "homosexuality"; then narrow by "sources > Los Angeles Times"; then narrow by "Timeline > 01/01/2010 to 12/31/2016").
[32]. Search of LexisNexis, https://www.lexisnexis.com (narrow search results to "News"; then search in search bar for "homosexuality"; then narrow by "sources > The Wall Street Journal"; then narrow by "Timeline > 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2016").
[33]. Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 703–04.
[34]. Id. at 724. The most common type of discrimination bisexual employees experience is inappropriate jokes or insults, with nearly sixty percent of bisexuals saying they have faced this sort of harassment. Id. at 727.
[35]. Glazer, supra note 7, at 1001.
[36]. GLAAD, supra note 25, at 6.
[37]. Human Rights Campaign Found., supra note 15.
[38]. Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 704. A person who is "out" is "a person who is open about being bisexual, gay, lesbian, or transgender." Further, "[c]oming out is a lifelong process of self-acceptance of one's sexual orientation and/or gender identity." Ulrich, supra note 13, at 38.
[39]. See Human Rights Campaign Found., supra note 15.
[40]. Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 707.
[41]. Id. at 724. Tweedy and Yescavage's study is the "first descriptive, quantitative study designed to specifically measure the subjective experiences of bisexuals with employment discrimination." Id. at 718.
[43]. Id. at 727–28.
[44]. See id. at 709–10.
[45]. Id. at 709–10, 710 nn.51–52.
[46]. Apilado v. N. Am. Gay Amateur Athletic All., 792 F. Supp. 2d 1151, 1155–56 (W.D. Wash. 2011).
[47]. Id. In response to one player's admission that he was attracted to men and women, one committee member said, "this is not a bisexual world series—this is a gay world series." Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 712. This case—and those statements—are indicative of the discrimination faced by bisexuals by the gay and lesbian community, despite the fact that the league's mission statement "explicitly included promotion of the participation of bisexuals." Id. The court ultimately focused on the league's intrusive questions, and not on the discriminatory definition of "gay" or "straight" that excluded bisexuals, essentially ignoring the question of bisexual discrimination. See Apilado, 792 F. Supp. 2d at 1156; Tweedy & Yescavage, supra note 20, at 712–13.
[48]. Fuller v. Lynch, 833 F.3d 866, 867 (7th Cir. 2016).
[49]. Id. at 872 (Posner, J., dissenting).
[52]. See, e.g., Regina L. Stone-Harris, Same-Sex Harassment—The Next Step in the Evolution of Sexual Harassment Law Under Title VII, 28 St. Mary's L.J. 269, 283–84 (1996).
[53]. Glazer, supra note 7, at 1001 (referencing Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010)).
[54]. Glazer, supra note 7, at 1001 (quoting Transcript of Record at 166–67, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (No. C 09-2292_VRW), http://www. afer.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Perry-Vol-1-1-11-10.pdf).
[55]. Id. at 1014.
[56]. Id.
[58]. David Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 5–6, 14 (July 15, 2015), https:// www.eeoc.gov/decisions/0120133080.pdf.
[59]. Id. at 1–2.
[60]. Id. at 2. His supervisor commented about "that gay stuff," and told Baldwin that he was causing "a distraction" any time he mentioned his partner. Id.
[62]. Id. at 6.
[69]. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll., 853 F.3d 339, 350, 359 (7th Cir. 2017) (en banc).
[72]. Id. at 343, 345.
[73]. Id. at 352 (Posner, J., concurring).
[74]. See, e.g., id. at 352–53.
[75]. Zachary A. Kramer, The Ultimate Gender Stereotype: Equalizing Gender-Conforming and Gender Non-Conforming Homosexuals Under Title VII, 2004 U. Ill. L. Rev. 465, 470 (2004); see, e.g., Holloway v. Arthur Andersen & Co., 566 F.2d 659, 662 (9th Cir. 1977) (noting that "[t]here is a dearth of legislative history" regarding Title VII).
[76]. See Kramer, supra note 75, at 469.
[77]. See generally id. (discussing the history and development of sexual discrimination claims).
[78]. David Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 6 (July 15, 2015), https:// www.eeoc.gov/decisions/0120133080.pdf. This opinion provides definitions of "gay," "lesbian," and "heterosexual" to illustrate that point, but notably provides no definition of "bisexual." Id.
[79]. Id. at 7 (citing Heller v. Columbia Edgewater Country Club, 195 F. Supp. 2d 1212, 1223 (D. Or. 2002)).
[80]. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll., 853 F.3d 339, 345 (7th Cir. 2017) (en banc).
[81]. Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 7.
[83]. Hively, 853 F.3d at 345.
[84]. See id.
[85]. See id. at 366 (Sykes, J., dissenting).
[87]. But see id. at 355 (Posner, J., concurring) (mentioning bisexuals, but incorrectly defining bisexuality "as having both homosexual and heterosexual orientations").
[88]. See id. at 347, 349 (majority opinion); David Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 8 (July 15, 2015), https://www.eeoc.gov/decisions/0120133080.pdf; Pierce G. Hand IV, Affiliative Discrimination Theory: Title VII Litigation Within the Sixth Circuit, 32 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 541, 543–44 (2016); Victoria Schwartz, Title VII: A Shift from Sex to Relationships, 35 Harv. J.L. & Gender 209, 211 (2012).
[89]. See, e.g., Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 8.
[90]. See Hively, 853 F.3d at 347–49; Schwartz, supra note 88, at 221–23.
[91]. See, e.g., Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 8–9 (quoting Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 243 n.9 (1989)).
[92]. Whitney v. Greater New York Corp. of Seventh-Day Adventists, 401 F. Supp. 1363, 1366 (S.D.N.Y. 1975); Schwartz, supra note 88, at 217.
[93]. Whitney, 401 F. Supp. at 1366.
[95]. Schwartz, supra note 88, at 223–28.
[96]. In the Hustedt Chevrolet cases, two male employees of a car dealership claimed that their supervisor harassed a female co-worker, and then harassed them "based on what can fairly be characterized as [the defendant's] perception of his association with [the female co-worker]." The court reasoned that "but for his sex, male, his relationship with his coworker, female, . . . would not have been an issue." Ventimiglia v. Hustedt Chevrolet, No. 05-4149, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24834, at *28–33 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2009); see also Weiss v. Hustedt Chevrolet, No. 05-4230, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59408, at *28–34 (E.D.N.Y. July 13, 2009); Pratt v. Hustedt Chevrolet, No. 05-4148, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26312, at *24–29 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2009). This, of course, is only true if one assumes all parties are heterosexual.
[97]. Schwartz, supra note 88, at 247.
[100]. Id. at 248–49.
[101]. David Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 9 (July 15, 2015), https:// www.eeoc.gov/decisions/0120133080.pdf.
[102]. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll., 853 F.3d 339, 342 (7th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (citing Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989)); Baldwin, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080, at 5–6 (citing Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989)).
[103]. Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 272–73 (1989). It is worth noting that the lead opinion in Price Waterhouse was not a majority, but a four-Justice plurality.
[105]. Id. at 235.
[106]. Id. at 242. Price Waterhouse is also a formative case for its discussion of mixed-motive discrimination, like here, where the employer had both legitimate reasons and discriminatory reasons for the adverse employment decision. Id. at 252. Congress amended the statute later to reflect that but-for causation is not required when there is at least one discriminatory motive. Civil Rights Act of 1991, Pub. L. No. 102-166, 105 Stat. 1071, sec. 107(a), § 703(m) (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2(m) (2012)).
[107]. Price Waterhouse, 490 U.S. at 250.
[109]. See, e.g., Simonton v. Runyon, 232 F.3d 33, 34–35 (2d Cir. 2000) (holding that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation); Higgins v. New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., 194 F.3d 252, 259 (1st Cir. 1999) (holding that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation); Centola v. Potter, 183 F. Supp. 2d 403, 414 (D. Mass. 2002) (holding that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation).
[110]. Kramer, supra note 75, at 485.
[111]. Centola, 183 F. Supp. 2d at 406.
[112]. Id. at 406, 409.
[113]. See id. at 408.
[114]. Id. at 410 (citation omitted).
[115]. See, e.g., Mary Anne Case, Legal Protections for the "Personal Best" of Each Employee: Title VII's Prohibition on Sex Discrimination, the Legacy of Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, and the Prospect of ENDA, 66 Stan. L. Rev. 1333, 1353–54 (2014).
[116]. See generally id.; Kramer, supra note 75, at 489.
[120]. See Centola v. Potter, 183 F. Supp. 2d 403, 410 (D. Mass. 2002); Kramer, supra note 75, at 496.
[121]. See I. Bennett Capers, Sex(ual Orientation) and Title VII, 91 Colum. L. Rev. 1158, 1159 (1991) (discussing heterosexism as the "institutional valorization of heterosexual activity").
[122]. Hively v. Ivy Tech Cmty. Coll., 853 F.3d 339, 370 (7th Cir. 2017) (Sykes, J., dissenting).
[123]. Sylvia A. Law, Homosexuality and the Social Meaning of Gender, 1988 Wis. L. Rev. 187, 196 (1988).
[124]. See, e.g., Case, supra note 115, at 1374–75 (offering a robust discussion of the ENDA's shortfalls).
[125]. Id. at 1373.
[126]. Id.
[127]. Id. at 1374–75.


My wife and I decided to behave somewhat differently for our wedding…we didn't tell anyone we were getting married. On our day, we decided to walk around Chicago like every other tourist and found these beautiful tulips and thought they looked great from below. Here is one of the fun images we found on our day.


Hopkins Clinic limits its practice to the examination, diagnosis and treatment of traumatically induced injuries related to motor vehicle collisions and other personal injuries resulting from incidents such as slip and falls, boating injuries, dog bites, and personal altercations.
Hopkins Clinic's advanced training & experience does make a difference. We are a distinctive and unparalleled health care facility serving the Tampa Bay Florida area.
Dr. Clayton Hopkins has been helping patients since 1983. Thousands of patients suffering from neurological and musculoskeletal complaints have passed through the doors of Hopkins Clinic and found relief and an understanding team of caring professionals waiting to assist them. Dr. Daniel Roode, Dr. Margaux Allen and Physical Therapist Breck Pribyl also direct the Hopkins Clinic team that includes Licensed Massage Therapists, Registered Chiropractic Assistants and a Certified Personal Trainer. If you are in pain or just want to feel better, call us today.
The highly trained professionals of Hopkins Clinic are focused toward the treatment of significant traumatically induced injuries, often the result of automobile collisions, work related accidents and sport injuries. Over 75% of our patients have sustained injuries to spinal intervertebral discs.
Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health. Chiropractic care is used most often to treat neuro-musculo-skeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and headaches. Doctors of Chiropractic – often referred to as chiropractors or chiropractic physicians – practice a drug-free, hands-on approach to health care that includes patient examination, diagnosis and treatment. Chiropractors have broad diagnostic skills and are also trained to recommend therapeutic and rehabilitative exercises, as well as to provide nutritional, dietary and lifestyle counseling.
The Clinic has developed a strong reputation in its friendly and caring treatment of traumatically induced injuries such as automobile accidents and work related injuries with a focus on a multifaceted approach of traditional medicine, chiropractic treatment and physical therapy rehabilitation.
Physical therapy modalities as well as "hands on" therapy by specially trained Licensed Massage Therapists are utilized to provide quick pain relief and optimum recovery of soft tissue injuries. Hopkins Clinic emphasizes active exercise and rehabilitation as the cornerstone of your treatment plan. An experienced Physical Therapist will supervise your treatment program customized for your specific rehabilitation goals. Discover the benefits of a multidisciplinary approach and get the results that work for you. Hopkins Clinic… when nothing but the best will do!
Acupuncture is a component of oriental medicine that involves the insertion of extremely thin needles in your skin at strategic points on your body. Acupuncture originated in China thousands of years ago, but its popularity has grown significantly within the United States.
Hopkins Clinic is a leader in the Tampa Bay area in offering Spinal Decompression traction therapy. This FDA cleared treatment is performed on a newly designed computer program that provides gentle traction to the spinal segments, intervertebral discs and nerve roots to afford relief from this debilitating pain. Many patients, who have tried chiropractic care, physical therapy, drugs, injections, and even surgery without relief, have had success with this treatment. Combined with a rehabilitation exercise program and home instructions, relief may be in your near future.
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Referrals for advanced diagnostic testing to include X-rays, nerve testing, ultrasound imaging, MRI, CT, and PET scans and bone density testing is easily and quickly arranged through the office.
Your satisfaction is our highest priority. You can rest and relax knowing you are in good hands at Hopkins Clinic. Call (727) 544-3330 for an appointment.
For a FREE no obligation consultation or for more information please contact Hopkins Clinic at 727-544-3330 today.


text:
Not Made to Last: A Look at Advertising Banners
Much like newspapers, advertising materials have a definite and distinct shelf-life. Products come and go, and for those companies that do stick around for many years, marketing slogans and styles will change with the times, thus deeming periodic updates to advertising campaigns a necessity. As a result, vintage advertising materials were not made to last for very long: they were constructed with low cost materials and quick reproduction methods that make their survival a rarity. That's why it is so astounding when items like these banners make it decades remarkably intact. Here's a look at four advertising banners that have come through the doors at The Center over the years.
Drink Moxie
Dated 1917, this banner is advertising Moxie, a soft drink that once rivaled Coca-Cola and is still available and popular in the Northeastern United States. In fact, in 2005 it was designated the official soft drink of Maine by state statute. Manufactured in New Hampshire, the collector was drawn to the nostalgia of the piece. "I grew up in New Hampshire, but now live in Illinois. I decided to focus on Moxie [in my collecting] as a way to connect back to where I grew up. I started collecting Moxie bottles, but because I really enjoy signs I thought this piece would be a great addition to my collection. The fact that it has survived almost 100 years and is made of such a thin cloth is amazing."
Upon arrival at The Center, the Moxie Banner showed evidence of its 99 year history; edge creases and fold lines, a grime layer on the surface, and small losses around the perimeter. The owner decided to have the banner conserved so it could be displayed. He explains, "Given how fragile it was I thought it necessary to bring it to a professional to preserve the integrity of the piece. Hopefully it will last for another 100+ years for people to enjoy."
Senior Paper Conservator, Brian Kapernekas describes the collaborative treatment efforts between the Paper Department and the Textile Department:
After initial preparations from the textile conservator were complete, we offered some suggestions to materials and methods that might be used in aiding the reduction of the creases and overall distortion. Due to the fragile condition of the textile the banner was supported between two sheets of Hollytex, which is a polished polyester blend fabric.
The banner along with the Hollytex was then placed within a Gore-Tex package. This form of passive humidification allowed the textile fibers, creases and overall distortion to relax. Once relaxed the banner and Hollytex were placed between heavy cotton blotters and selectively weighted. To ensure proper drying the blotters were changed out on a regular basis. After the banner was determined stable and overall distortion was reduced, it was then handed back to the Textile Conservator who then proceeded in the mounting and stabilization.
The Dodge City Banner
A part of the collection at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, this banner was produced when Harley-Davidson motorcycles took first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh place at the Dodge City, Kansas 300-Mile Race in 1915. Every Harley-Davidson rider in the race broke the previous speed record for a 300-mile race, and the first place winner, Otto Walker, set the new world record for miles per hour in a 300-mile race at 76.27 mph.
Before treatment, water stains are obvious through the right half of the banner, and ink migration is noticeable along the right edge. Although the stains could not be safely addressed in treatment, the banner was stabilized, flattened and mounted to a canvas support before being installed into a custom frame to protect it from environmental exposures.
Tarzan and the Ant-Men and The Argosy All-Story Weekly
Argosy Magazine was a pulp magazine published from 1882 until the late 1970's, and is considered the first of the pulp publications. Pulp magazines reached the height of their popularity in the early 20th century, and these advertising banners were produced during that time, roughly 1924. As the collector of these banners shares, "original pulp advertising pieces are very rare. They were meant to be displayed at newsstands and then thrown away, and were generally printed on cheap cardboard. Window display signs for various pulp magazines are probably the most common items that still survive, though even those are very hard to find."
Shown after treatment, both banners were cleaned of surface particulates and flattened before being mounted to a canvas support attached to a custom stretcher. This provides support to the banners, helping to reduce handling and prevent further splits or losses to the delicate fabric. Given their fragility, it is amazing to think that they have survived almost 100 years. The collector notes, "not only are they fragile, so most have probably been destroyed over the years, but back in the 1920's and 1930's [these banners] weren't produced in nearly the same numbers as ads on cardboard or poster paper, so the number of them was small to begin with."
Due to the successful treatments, these vintage advertisements will be around for many more years to come. Have a similar piece? We'd love to hear the story behind it!
"The Dodge City 300 Mile Race." The Harley-Davidson Dealer 4.7 (1915) 212. < http://www.harley-davidson.com/content/dam/hd/documents/museum/museum-members-only/this-day-in-h-d-history/en_US/0703-HD-Dealer-July-1915.pdf>
§224. State soft drink <http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/1/title1sec224.html>
Tagged: banners, advertising, textiles
Adventure in Pulp Painting
Conservation Station: A Behind the Scenes Look at The Conservation Center