I decided to investigate oppression in the LGBT community in the United States. The LGBT community is anyone who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender with a Q often being added at the end for those who may be questioning their sexuality. I choose this group one because I know very little about them and what happens to them in our country and two because I want to better understand them and their constant struggle.
In order to form a basis on some of the challenges the LGBT community faces I found this video from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver which outlines some of the basic challenges that LGBT's face in the United States. (This video does not use the best language but I think it does a good job of clearly outlining ideas and it also uses some humor to make the topic more understandable and easy to relate to.)
After watching this video I was shocked to find out that in many states it is legal to fire someone just because of their sexual orientation. It is also legal for them to be discriminated against in housing, public accommodations and access to credit along with it being legal to refuse them service in public restaurants. I was even more shocked to hear the story of the two lesbian moms with a sick child that a doctor refused to care for. It is not the child's fault who its parents are and a child should not be punished or refused services based on their parents.
I found this pole done by the Pew Research survey to be really interesting too because it shows the kinds of things that LGBT people have faced in relation to rejections, prejudices, and discrimination which most other groups do not face today. Most of these things are things that as a society we do not wish to think about anymore and we do not want to believe that they still happen but the fact of the matter is that they do and they cannot be ignored.
Much of the movement in regard to the LGBT community started in the United States following the Stonewall riots in 1969 after the police raided the Stonewall Inn. In 1973 Maryland became the first state to make gay marriage illegal with many states to follow. The first openly gay character in television appeared in the TV show "Soap" in 1977 and the first LGBT march in Washington DC followed just 2 years later in 1979. However in 1993 a step backward was taken when President Clinton signed the Don't ask don't tell bill which allowed for LGBT's to serve in the military as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. And in 1996 the Defensive of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed making gay marriage illegal in the United States. It would remain that way until 2000 when Maryland became the first state to legalize civil union between couples of the same sex but the first gay marriage would not occur until 2004 in Massachusetts. But it would not be until 2015 that the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban same sex marriage. In 2017 a circuit court ruled that it was illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on sexual orientation. However just this month the Attorney General said that the civil rights act of 1964 does not protect transgenders from employment discrimination. So the history of the LGBT community has been a long one with lots of ups and downs in relation to what is considered right in relation to the law and it will continue to have many more ups and downs as history continues and as we try to figure out what equal rights would mean. (Information found from http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html).
In recent years the LGBT community has been subject to many horrible things like in June of 2016 when a shooting at a gay bar become one of the worst mass shootings in United States history. Not only was this a terrible event but it happened during pride month when people all across the country were gathering together to celebrate. It was a hate motivated crime which the LGBT community is mostly likely to be target of these kinds of crimes. It has become a great concern to the community who has been taking advances toward trying to be more accepted. The LGBT community in recent years has been working to create parades and festivals in which people can openly express who they are and provide support-- they are supposed to be happy and safe places for those in the community but with the rise in hate crimes concern has begun to spread. And I think that is why so many people that may identify has LGBT hide how they feel because they are afraid of what will happen to them in society. We as a society have not been accepting of them but have rather upheld many forms of discrimination just because they are different. Whites in the government have continued to use their white privilege to enforce their beliefs on others without accepting anyone who may be different from them.
Additionally Hollywood has portrayed the LGBTQ community in a unfavorable light for many years. This video does a really good job of explaining how Hollywood took on the role of often making gays or lesbians the villains in movies or the bad guys and then eventually moved on to making them hate themselves in movies. Thus the LGBTQ community was always seen in a bad light that has made it very hard for people to accept them. Also I was shocked to find out that in movies LGBTQ characters almost always are killed before the end of the movie which just helps to uphold the idea that something is wrong with them. And even though in recent years huge advances have been made in the portrayal of LGBT characters in movies and TV often we still see gays as comic relief rather then giving them serious story lines and relationships.
It is time that we take steps towards acceptance as the LGBT community is continuing to grow and it is a group that we cannot ignore. Below I am going to attach links to some statistics on the LGBT population to help us better understand their makeup within our own population.
These statistics help us to better understand what the composition of the LGBTQ community in the United States is and though it may not be a very big one they are all human beings who deserve to be heard and represented fairly
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the history of the LGBT community and the oppression and discrimination that they face within the United States. The problems that this group faces are so similar in many other groups that are considered the minority. As teachers I think it is so important that we learn what oppression is and how it may factor into our classrooms and then it is important that we create a culture of acceptance in our classrooms. After studying this group I realized that often we jump to conclusions about groups and what they go through or their ideas without being informed. It is vital for our success as future teachers that we research and find out what has happened to these groups because by knowing where they come from I think we can find ways to be better involved in making changes and helping them. And then as educators we can help students to understand what it means to have a culture of acceptance. We must teach our students that it is not alright to treat people differently just because they may do things a little different. And we must work to give our students the tools necessary to change society rather than just uphold the existing discrimination and oppression.
