What's New in the LGBTQA+ Community?

The LGBT community has been marginalized and wrongly misjudged for most of American history. They are a demographic that until recently, was not treated with equality, respect, or given much recognition in politics. Many atrocities like hate crime has been committed against the entire community, but like other smaller demographics, they stood up for themselves countless times.

The famous Stonewall riots of 1969 have been credited with sparking the L.G.B.T. movement and throughout the years there have been many battles over the topic. The L.G.B.T community continued to demand constitutional equality and societal acceptance.

We had our first transgender mayor in 2008, Stu Rasmussen was elected mayor of Silverton, Oregon and he is openly transgender. In 2010, we had our first openly transgender judge. Phyllis R. Frey became a judge in Houston. Victoria Kolakowski, another openly transgender individual became a trial judge that same year. Kye Allums was the first publicly transgender Division I basketball player while he played for George Washington University in 2010.

In 2012, the Girl Scouts spoke out in support of the LGBT community and openly welcomed all children who identified as girls, regardless of sexual organs. In 2014, actress Laverne Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of TIME magazine.

With all of this progress, we still have very far to go before LGBT community members are taken seriously as members of the American public. As of today, the newest struggle for them is the issue of restrooms. Not every individual identifies as one gender or likes to be confined to one gender and so they feel like they don’t fit into either restroom option. Many states across the country have been battling about making all restroom open to all who identify as such gender, regardless of sexual organs. A lot of them have settled for creating a third alternative bathroom for those who do not wish to be confined to one gender.

Photo Source: www.motherjones.com

Donald Trump’s stance on the issue has caused unrest within the community due to his lack of sympathy and understanding for those who do not wish to be labeled or who are trans. Endless protests have taken place in rebellion to the unfair laws made against the LGBT community. Our president’s stance could very well lead to more battles in the future, which could amount to a “war” against the government in protection of the LGBT community.