Being Thankful Day Three: Coming Out

              Coming to terms with who you are, that day when you figure out who, and how you love and now you want to tell the world, or at least someone close to you. Now you can come out and it is a beautiful thing, even if it was not well received it can still be the most freeing experience that a person can go through. I am thankful for the fact that in 2015 coming out is beautiful, not disgusting. One’s sexuality is something to take pride in, not be ashamed of.

               I am thankful that coming out can no longer get you thrown into an asylum, or jail. There are no more morals charges, and slowly, but surely the sodomy laws in this country are being repealed. I am thankful that being LGBT is becoming more and more accepted in this world. Yes, there are places where being LGBT will never be accepted, but there are more places where it is accepted.

               I also thankful that you can come out in any way that you choose, including not coming out at all, I’m looking at you K-Stew, or in my case, I chose to not make a big deal of it, and only answer the question when I am asked, but I am thankful that I don’t have to live in fear of someone outing me. I know that is not true in all part of the world, but I know that the world isn’t perfect yet, and there are still some bad things that can keep a person from coming out, but I am still thankful that coming out is a beautiful thing.  For the joys of coming out take a listen to this.

Being Thankful

            It is November and fall has fallen all around us, well except for here in South Florida it’s still hurricane season for another 28 days and the weather is still in the 80s.  There is something else about November, it is Thanksgiving and it gives me time to sit down and think about what I am thankful for. This year the LGBT+ community has made many strides, the biggest being that same-sex marriage is now legal in all across America and that got me thinking that as a member of the LGBT+ community I have a lot to be thankful for so I decided to dedicate this month to what I am thankful for as a member of the LGBT+ community. Follow me on Instagram (@ravenillusion) for daily lead-in to these blogs.

Day One: Those who Fought Before Me.

               I stand up and fight for causes. I write my congressmen, I do whatever I can to help, but I have never been able to get down in the trenches and but my blood, sweat or tears into a cause. No, not like those who have fought before me. I look back at thinks that the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, or the more better known Stonewall Riots and I see people who were ready to lay it all down on the line for their belief in freedom to be who they were. I look upon those people with admiration and pride because of what they have done.

               I think what make me look at them with the most admiration is the fact that they did set about to become the champions of the rights that they are. They were just everyday people trying to live their lives as who they were who just happened to be in the right place at the right time when history took place. In the case of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot it was transvestites, drag queens and other gender non-conforming individuals were just enjoying themselves when the cops came to raid the place and they took to arms to protect themselves from discrimination. The same is true of Stonewall, the people of that night were just trying to have a good time when the cops came, but strangers rallied together to fight for freedom. For more information on either the Compton’s Cafeteria or Stonewall Riots see this. Without those fights we wouldn’t be where we are today, we must learn from our past or we are doomed to repeat it.

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.