Dear Future President,

My name is Marieta, I attend an art magnet program in Baltimore County Maryland. Yes, I know I am a sophomore in high school, but I have an issue with today’s society that affects my friends, my school, and even the world. My issue concerns the LGBT+ community and their rights, I believe by creating more LGBT+ rights worldwide will lower discrimination rates and have more people to be comfortable around or being a person apart of the LGBT+ community.

When I entered Patapsco I knew nothing about the LGBT+ community, I even remembered asking my friend that is a part of LGBT+ community “What does the plus mean?” now of course I know it means queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual. When I was collecting this, one of my extremely close friends told me a story that shocked me a lot, she said “The main reason I haven't come out yet is so people around me don't look at me as different or like have a different perspective of me because I like girls over boys.” Some people like are completely confused about LGBT+ communities and think negatively about them because of bias from religion, family, or the news could even impact their bias. The community cannot say something from all the discrimination they may receive because they may not be protected by their state. I would like you to imagine if you weren't the president of the United States, if you were openly part of the LGBT+ community and worked a 9 to five job every day of the week in Texas, where there is no state level protection of LGBT+ rights. You’d receive stares maybe even hate threats while you'd be with your significant other, or even just going to work you'd most likely not be well paid because you would not be protected by your government. You could also be prone to attack by your own government, for example when Ken Paxton, an Attorney General in Texas, “is willing to go to incredible lengths to target transgender students in an ugly, politically motivated lawsuit”

The LGBT+ community will only get larger, the discrimination will get worse with more people to cover. In the article “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?” ,Gary J. Gates estimates about “3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender… there are approximately 9 million LGBT Americans, a figure roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey.” . According to the Human Rights Campaign in Growing Up LGBT in America “4 in 10 LGBT youth (42%) say the community in which they live is not accepting of LGBT people” Also, according to PFLAGnyc in “Statistics You Should Know About Gay & Transgender Students”, they state “Gay teens are 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection.” In fact the website NOBULLING.com stands that “82 per cent of LGBT youth had problems during the previous year with bullying about sexual orientation.”

This is beyond a national problem, this is a worldwide problem. The LGBT+ community will only get larger in the future, and if we don't act now the community may never get the rights they need. In China, they have a book that say being gay is a “disorder” and in Hong Kong billionaire Cecil Chao is paying 1 billon dollars to a man who can turn his homosexual daughter straight. These kind of issues are not only in Middle Eastern countries but in to home country of the USA. For example, When the national tragedy of the Pulse shooting in Florida, an religious activist group, welly known as The Westboro Baptist Church was protesting outside the club and shouting ‘God Sent The Shooter’ or in Mississippi when gang member Josh Vallum kills his Transgender girlfriend. These hate crimes and discrimination will not stop if you don't do anything about it!

If it is a right that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” then should it too be a right for a person to be able to marry the person one loves, no matter the gender, or even live your life without being discriminated on your gender preferences. Religion is a life choice and so is being a part of the LGBT+ community, shouldn't they be equal no matter how someone lives their life. I know I'm not old enough to change this large problem affecting the nation, but you can future president. I know you can, and if you do you will not only make the nation a more equal and better place, you will have the satisfaction of seeing people be happy with who they really are. Please Future president make my country better for everyone, it will solve problems and make this world a better place!

Sincerely,

Marieta