Dear next President,

You have probably heard of the LGBTQ community; it's been a big deal for the past few years.  You most likely know someone or are related to someone of the LGBT community. Ever since gay marriage has become legal in all fifty states, the LGBT community has been getting more and more attention, but some attention isn't the good kind.

The LGBT community has been getting discriminated against by many people, and many people of the LGBT community live in fear of harassment. In this document by GLHV they speak of how many people of the LGBT community live in fear. “A 2008 study of 390 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Victorians found that nearly one in seven reported living in fear of homophobic violence. This fear was justified in that nearly 85 per cent of respondents had been subjected to some form of homophobic violence or harassment in their lifetimes and one in two had experienced homophobic harassment or other non-physical abuse in the past two years.”

There are other fears that some people in the LGBT community share, and that is the fear of coming out. Many people in the LGBT community have experienced this fear, and many people don’t. I myself have experienced the fear and I still do. People have this fear of coming out because they are afraid of what people would say or think of them. Some people come from really strict families and are afraid of rejection. Though many things have changed, some people have not. As stated in this article from A Australia, ”While many things have improved for gay and lesbian people over the past 50 years in Australia, there is still constant uncertainty about whether they will receive acceptance from families, friends, colleagues and services.”  The constant pressure of dealing with this uncertainty has an impact on health.

These conditions develop in response to different scenarios including:

‘coming out’, only to be rejected by family members and friends

being bullied or taunted by schoolmates on a daily basis

homophobic jokes or harassment in the workplace

being threatened or bashed when out on the street

hiding part of yourself in social situations for fear of being rejected or marginalised

feeling guilt and shame about your sexuality in the face of negative messages being delivered by the society around you.”

This article talks about the bad things that can happen to someone who is coming out, but most families, and friends are accepting of them and will respect what ever decision they make, and some people may not like it, but they will respect it because they care about that person, and some people just need a little convincing that it is the right decision for them.

Many people go against the LGBT community because it goes against what they believe in and what they deem is right. Some people find it wrong because people believe it affects a person's health. Another reason people may go against it is because they believe it's all in their mind. A man named John Hopkins, who is a psychiatrist, believes that people who are transgender have a mental disorder and that it's all in their minds, I personally believe that it is not a mental disorder and that when a person changes their gender, that they are what gender they wish to identify as. Many people of certain religions go against it because it goes against their god, or what they were raised to believe. As stated in this article written by the Oxford Journals. ”This article examines the process by which persons reconstruct their Evangelical religious identity to include the formerly incongruent homosexual identity. Members of one conservative gay Christian organization, called Good News, are profiled in the way they come to desire, construct, and solidify a gay Evangelical identity. Through a process of socialization, they renegotiate the boundaries and definitions of their religious identity to include a positive valuation of homosexuality."

Sincerely,

Riley

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change

John Hopkins, CSNnew.com

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/gay-and-lesbian-discrimination

GLHV, betterhealth.gov

http://glbtrc.colostate.edu/coming-out-to-your-parents

Pride resource center

http://lifehacker.com/five-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-coming-out-1479386952

Adam Dachis, lifehacker.com

http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/4/333.short

Scott Thumma, Oxford Journal