The best way to generate empathy between people is to get to know them, in order to identify meeting points that allow us to see them as our peers. Therefore, having a conversation with members of the LGBT community is a great step to understand the reality they experience on a day-to-day basis. If you try, in this exchange of ideas and experiences, this is part of what you will discover:
1. Coming out of the closet is not a one-time thing, but a lifetime thing
Celebrities have a hard time coming out of the closet because doing so is a public act that cannot be reversed and that, in many cases, has meant the end of their professional careers due to discrimination in the media. But this is not exclusive to celebrities.
The truth is that for LGBT people, in general, coming out of the closet is an act that is repeated day by day, be it when meeting new co-workers, with the family, when doing administrative procedures or even when traveling. In addition, when a homosexual is asked about his marital status or his partner, the answer is not a simple informative act about the person with whom he shares his life, but involves a revelation that may or may not cause a positive reaction, may or may not cause a change in treatment and, above all, it usually implies that from that moment on they will be defined exclusively as homosexual. In other words, he is no longer seen as a co-worker but rather “the co-worker who is gay”, or instead of being a friend’s relative he is “my friend’s lesbian sister”. So say it once or say it a thousand times It’s always an act of courage..
2. Acknowledging an LGBT couple should not be the last option for society
One thing that heterosexuals take for granted is how easy it is to gain recognition as a couple. Usually, when a man and a woman arrive for a meeting with unknown people, other guests automatically assume that they are boyfriends, spouses or that they have some other type of socially accepted and recognized relationship. Meanwhile, an LGBT couple is often asked if they are siblings, friends, cousins, neighbors, co-workers, or whatever before acknowledging that they might be a couple. This, beyond sometimes being funny, especially when the members of the couple have such opposite physical traits that the idea of a consanguinous relationship is quite absurd, reflects lack of recognition that still exists around the relationship of a couple, family and love that can exist – and exists – between people of the same sex.
3. Gay pride is a matter of dignity
Much has been said about the celebration of the Gay pride (gay pride), but to understand it, you must first know what elements define it. First, it’s a act of memory. It recalls the discrimination, violence and abuse to which the LGBT community was subjected on June 28, 1969 in a raid on Stonewall, a gay bar in New York.
Gay pride is also a demonstration. Your goal is urge tolerance and raise awareness of LGBT rights which are, above all, human rights. It is also an act of visibility. Through him, the LGBT community raises its head to look the world in the eye and proudly say: «I will not be ashamed of who I am.» That’s why, Talking about gay pride is talking about human dignity.
4. The acronym LGBT has grown to LGBTTTIQ and can grow more
Since the LGBT community began fighting for their rights in the 1970s, they have been fighting for the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders. Such rights have included everything from the decriminalization of homosexuality, the elimination of homosexuality from the WHO list of mental illnesses (May 17, 1990) and the fight against discrimination, to the possibility of contracting a civil marriage and of adopt. This common struggle has sensitized the LGBT community to diversity; For this reason, as it has achieved certain goals, it has welcomed other groups that, although they are different, their rights and existence also deserve to be recognized. Hence, the acronym LGBT has grown over the last few years to support transgender, transvestite, intersex, and queer.
5. There is an LGBT population all over the world
Conservative groups that generate discrimination and hate argue that homosexuality should not be recognized because it entails the «appearance» of homosexuals or the «conversion or transformation» of heterosexuals into homosexuals. Nothing could be further from reality. The reason why today it is more likely to live with LGBT people or for them to present themselves as such is the visibility and recognition of rights that has allowed the fear of saying it and expressing it openly to be lost a bit. But every single one of those people was already LGBT before they came out and would be even if they didn’t.
Proof that repression is what forces LGBT people to stay in the closet is the unfortunate fact that in 72 countries homosexuality is considered a crime. There, they are persecuted and punished with prison or physical punishment (in Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, India, Barbados and Guyana the penalties range from 14 years in prison to life imprisonment), but the most serious thing is that in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, northern Syria, and northwestern Iraq, homosexuality is punishable by death.
In the rest of the world there are many nations in which the LGBT community is subjected to social rejection, discrimination and harassment, even if homosexuality is not prosecuted by law. In addition, Only nine of the countries that recognize the rights of homosexuals contemplate in their constitution non-discrimination for reasons of orientationand only Brazil, Ecuador and Malta prohibit conversion therapy (treatments that aim to «redirect» a person’s sexual orientation).
Thus, although there is an LGBT population all over the world, homophobia keeps people in fear and silence. It even forces them to lead lives outside of their nature and, in many cases, to form marriages they do not want to be in. That’s why it’s important to understand that denial of rights and oppression don’t make the natural go away, they just suffocate it.
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