Finding acceptance

By Alysiana Perez

Members of the LGBTQ community are ordinary people like everyone else, yet they are harassed for how they identify, whether it be their sexuality or gender. And there are ways in which they are targeted for their identities and made to feel like outsiders.

Several years ago in West Virginia, a couple was harassed by a Glimmer County Clerk who refused to issue them a marriage license. Allen, the employee says, “I just told them my opinion” and that she felt “God was standing with me.”

More recently, under the Trump administration, some members of the LGBTQ community were unable to adopt a child. Additionally, “conversion therapy” is a dangerous and discredited practice that claims to convert someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. But this has been rejected by medical organizations.

According to a Yerba Buena student named Alejandra, who identifies as part of the LGBTQ community, the Trump administration “tried to force hospitals and medical places to reject services to people from the LGBTQ. Love and family can come in any skin color, gender, race. Donald Trump is basically preventing people from being a family. It’s dumb because some people can’t medically have babies and turn to adoption.”

When asked if they receive negative comments about their sexuality, the ninth-grade student who identifies as pansexual responded, “It does effect my mental health because, I don’t feel like I’m good enough and I don’t feel valid for who I am.”

This student says they’ve been part of the LGBTQ community for about 2 or 3 years. Alejandra says she's been part of the community since 10th grade. Neither of them have come out to their parents which is very difficult to be able to do nowadays.

Regarding laws that negatively target members of the LGBTQ community, the ninth-grade student says, “I think it’s really stupid regarding the laws that take away rights like health care to LGBTQ people just because we love who we love. We’re humans and we deserve to be treated like them.”

In the article “Supreme Court Delivers Major Victory To LGBTQ Employees”, up until recently, people who identified as LGBTQ could potentially lose their job. This changed though with a recent supreme court decision. Now states and federal law will protect LGBTQ employees, meaning they are no longer allowed to be fired for their sexuality. The court made a decision that every human being should be treated with respect and dignity despite their sexual orientation or sexuality.

We have must spread awareness about the harassment that people of the LGBTQ community recieve to educate others and create change.

Some parents aren’t okay with their child coming out as a different gender or sexuality, but there is nothing wrong with it. People of the LGBTQ community are the same as everyone else, and they should not be targeted nor harassed when it comes to sexuality. Doing so only creates harm.

We should normalize seeing a couple that doesn’t always consist of a female and a male.

As the anonymous 9th grade student says, “Gender is a social construct btw <3”