Jack Miller, Chair, LGBTQ+ Advocacy Committee

Jack Miller and Luna. (photo courtesy of Kat Ku Modern Pet Photos)

JSM 2020 has just passed us by, and I hope the theme of “Everyone Counts: Data for the Public Good” resonated with you. As David Corliss told us in his JSM 2019 review, “advocacy groups remind us Data for Good is more than papers and presentations. Direct service to individuals is an important channel.”

There is a lot of good happening in the ASA! We are fortunate to have the ASA LGBTQ+ Advocacy Committee, Committee on Minorities in Statistics, Committee on Women in Statistics, and Committee on Statistics and Disability as official ASA committees. We also have the Caucus for Women in Statistics, and a proposed new interest group on diversity and inclusion is gathering signatures for consideration as an official ASA interest group. Both Past President Karen Kafadar and President Wendy Martinez have initiatives related to diversity and inclusion. The emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion will continue with President-elect Rob Santos. As I mentioned, members of the ASA are fortunate.

I write as the chair of the ASA LGBTQ+ Advocacy Committee and a member of Wendy’s LGBTQ Inclusion and Diversity (LID) working group. Unfortunately, 2020 has not been a banner year in many ways. Rather than focusing on the ills, I decided to focus on the good efforts we have been engaged in.

Jiashen You (vice chair of the ASA LGBTQ+ Advocacy Committee) and I have been working together to keep our committee active. Unfortunately, COVID-19 put a crimp in our plans to have regular committee meetings, but we have had a few calls and emails.

In May, David Marker shared with our committee a post from the Daily Kos about the difficulties some LGBTQ+ individuals have responding to the census.

Some of us (including me) experienced that ourselves and shared our stories; others shared excellent resources, including the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology’s Measuring Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Research Group’s working papers and the Journal of Official Statistics special issue on measuring LGBT populations.

Also, you can read about committee member Deirdre Middleton’s work with her team on the challenges facing LGBT individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finally, committee member Qing Wu shared his friend’s work on how an app was used to quickly gather, share, and analyze COVID-19 data.

The LID working group has been active, as well. One subset of the group is examining best practices for gender and sex as variables. Another subset has been working on a website to increase LGBTQ+ visibility and representation in the ASA. In June 2020, Wendy’s President’s Corner featured “A Conversation to Celebrate Pride Month” with Suzanne Thornton and me. Both Suzanne and I (and many other LGBTQ+ individuals) are grateful Wendy has LGBTQ+ inclusion as one of her presidential initiatives.

Also in June, several of us had a virtual Pride Month celebration organized by Brittany Green, Donna LaLonde, Suzanne Thornton, and Ben Toh. It was wonderful to have other LGBTQ+ individuals and our allies meeting together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the remarkable strength a few transwomen of color had at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969.

Our virtual celebration included fun (and some talent), but it also included some solemnity, including a reading of “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou. We have come far since Stonewall, but there is more work ahead of us.

I have long thought we cannot have true equality when there are still inequalities, particularly those of us in minority groups (not to mention those of us with intersectionalities). In late 2019, the chairs of several minority-focused ASA committees and other like-minded individuals talked about having a broader umbrella group that would allow more ASA members to participate in diversity and inclusion efforts. Many thanks to Saki Kinney and Donna LaLonde for organizing the efforts to propose an ASA Diversity and Inclusion Interest Group (DIIG). Julia Sharp has graciously volunteered to be the interim chair of this new group.

By the time you read this, the petition and charter will have been submitted to the Council of Sections. We hope DIIG becomes an official ASA interest group and invite you to join us. We can all come together to do good—with data, with our teaching, with our mentorship, with our allyship, and with our advocacy. May we all be allies to and advocates for each other.