Rights and History

I just want to talk about rights and how we as the LGBT+ community deserves them. I look at the current state of LGBT+ rights and it makes me sick, for every stride that we make we have assholes like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and the rest of their cronies who would like to see the strides we have taken away. Justice Scalia still whines about losing the marriage equality fight. It seems that everywhere we turn that someone wants to take our hard earned rights away. Why, because we love differently, or because we choose to be who we truly are? I look at the battle we fight as members of the LGBT+ community and I can’t help but see parallels to the civil rights movement of the 60s. With the black community of the 1960s it was court orders to integrate college campuses, for us it’s marriage equality, and even though we have a court order from the highest court in the land we are still fighting battles for something as simple as a marriage license. Frankly I’m tired of going to Huff Post and seeing Kim Davis’s face, I think her 15 minutes of bigoted fame has come and gone.

Then we can take a look at discrimination with the little things like equal protection under the law, equal opportunity employment, and housing rights. I mean we’re not asking for much just the same things that every heteronormative and cisnormative individual has. This shouldn’t be that hard, there’s no asterisk next to all men are created equal, there is no “but” in the civil right act. The fact that some people likes boys instead girls, girls instead of boys, or identifies as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth should not make them any less of a human being. So why is it that in most cities I can still is be fired from my job or denied medical care? There is nothing about my sexuality that makes my skillset any different or my body any less functional.

Then let’s talk about the elephant in the room, cakes. Now I know I have said some things before about Christians and their businesses and what I think they can do with them, and there’s part of me that firmly believes what I say, however I don’t think we should be fighting this war over cake, flowers, or catering in general. I believe the concept of discriminating against someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is ridiculous. This discrimination in 2015 looks as ridiculous as discriminating against someone based on their race looked in the 1960s. How can we claim to be a progressive society; a melting pot of different cultures, ideas and beliefs yet we want to exclude one segment of the population just because they are different.

So as we come to the end of LGBT history month let’s also remember that this fight didn’t start with marriage equality. Anyone coming here from my Instagram (@ravenillusion) knows that I’ve been covering LGBT history month events there just to show some of the struggles and triumphs that have happened in the past. There are many pioneers that have come and gone that have fought for the rights that we have today so take some time to remember them, and look onward to the pioneers of the future.