11/4/16

Dear President,

According to DoSomething.org; 42% of people in the LGBT+ community report living in an unwelcoming environment. 80% of gay and lesbian youth report severe social isolation. 6 in 10 LGBT students report feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation. These numbers are far too high for people who are the same as others in many ways. People in the LGBT+ get discriminated against and denied rights far too much, and this must be changed.

People of the lgbt+ community deserve equal rights because all of them are normal people like us, but for some reason are still denied the same rights everyone else has because they have different preferences or just feel different inside. Even though all of them are humans, they still don’t get the same rights and treatment as others. Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals are often denied rights that others have or are treated badly or unfairly by others. Transgender people are often discriminated against and are treated very rudely, and get made fun of or teased and bullied by society. What all of these people have in common is the fact they get rejected and excluded often.

Often time, because of invalid reasons, parents will reject their kids after they come out, forcing them to either hide who they really are and have their parents beliefs forced upon them, or be cast into the streets to fend for themselves. Because of the common discrimination, it also is harder for this community to get jobs or a place to stay.

There is no reason this community should be denied their rights. It will have no negative effect on the economy or anything else. It’s also denying basic human rights to the LGBT+ community. By decreasing discrimination of transgenders, it can also decrease the high suicide rates in America, around 41% of transgender people of the transgender community commit suicide at some point in their lives.

Some people are against the equal rights of the LGBT community because it is against the bible, even though there are many things against the bible that people allow anyway. Denying basic human rights because it might offend a god that may not even exist is not a good enough reason to sustain this prejudice. Other things the bible outlaws are cheeseburgers, wearing mixed fabrics, and getting divorced.

A quarter (24 percent) of up-front staff have heard colleagues make negative remarks about lesbian, gay or bi people. One in six lesbian, gay and bi people have experienced a homophobic or biphobic hate crime or incident over the last three years. Fewer than one in 10 victims who reported hate crimes and incidents to the police said it led to a conviction. Almost all (99 per cent) gay young people hear the phrases ‘that’s so gay’ or ‘you’re so gay’ in school, and 96 per cent of gay pupils hear homophobic language such as ‘poof’ or ‘lezza’. More than half (55 per cent) of lesbian, gay and bi pupils have experienced direct bullying. These facts stated by stonewall.org undeniably need to be changed for the better. The discrimination of the LGBT+ community is only getting worse as time goes on, but it would be easy to stop it over time.

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen, Emily Murphy