Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage is not the end of LGBT Issues

In two weeks from Sunday, June 12, we will be marking a year of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court of the United States case that allowed same-sex marriage to be legal in the United States.

On Saturday, June 11, my sister married her longtime girlfriend, something we thought we would have to wait much longer for.

It has almost been a year since the landmark decision was made with a 5-4 decision, with Justice Anthony Kennedy delivering the opinion of the court, saying, “No union is more profound than marriage.”

And Justice Kennedy is correct.

In the last year, I have seen same-sex couples of all ages become married.

My sister and her fiancée are no different. I have seen them grow in this process of setting things up, pulling extra shifts at their jobs just to make sure their big day and the honeymoon following it are perfect.

Though same-sex marriage has been a remarkable milestone in LGBT rights, there is so much more work to be done in the fight for their equality.

Now that marriage is legalized, it has become less of an issue in public debate. Which means, it is important now more than ever to make sure the LGBT is safe from other forms of discrimination, both legally and socially.

To start, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act in North Carolina was signed into law in March and has been called “the most anti-LGBT bill in the country.” Commonly nicknamed the “Bathroom Bill,” the Act declares that state law overrides cities from creating their own laws and rules that prevent the discrimination of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are at a greater risk for poverty and are at a greater risk of being victims at sexual assault.

While the bisexual community has been inherently written off as invisible, the Williams Institute indicates that there are roughly as many bisexual individuals as there are gay and lesbian individuals. Bisexual women experience high rates of domestic violence.

Transgender individuals are also at a high risk for being victims of hate crimes, which was highlighted in 2015 when at least 81 transgender individuals were reported to be murdered, but the number of murders that go unreported could be significantly higher.

There are also still laws in place in certain states that allow for discrimination in some states, while others have no laws protecting LGBT employees at all.

I am not trying to downplay the importance the impact Obergefell v. Hodges has had on the United States this past year.

But just like slavery was not the end of racial discrimination, legalizing same-sex marriage is not the end of LGBT discrimination in anyway way, shape or form. Just like having racial segregation until the 50s, there are still plenty of ways—again, both legally and socially—that the LGBT community is still being discriminated against.

I encourage you to stand up with and for the LGBT community as they go through the everyday hassles outside of marriage rights. Stand up with and for them as they fight for equal economic, medical and in employee rights.

This post has been edited for timeliness.

This post was originally published in the independent student publication, The BG News, which can be found here. 

Parsing out complexities of intersectionality

A column published in Tuesday’s paper titled “LGBT Community’s unseen racism problem,” caught my attention, and I immediately began to read. But what I found when I was reading this column was an emotional response that left me raising my eyebrows.

While the column did open the conversation about racism in the LGBT community, the columnist missed the opportunity to address the things that make the LGBT less inclusive: the conversation on intersectionality and the conversation of preference versus racism.

First, let me just say that there is no “fine line” between preference and racism. Having a preference is not only racist but sexist as well.

As an afro-indigenous ally to the LGBT community, I will be the first to tell you that I do not know what it is like to have the experiences an LGBT individual does. But I do experience racism and sexism and those are both things I can speak about.

A woman of color can tell you that sometimes the racism she experiences can be sexist and the sexism she experiences is racist, so it is no surprise that the same can happen to LGBT people of color.

An Australian study published in the summer of 2015 looks at sexual racism, which the abstract describes as “a specific form of racial prejudice enacted in the context of sex or romance.”

In that same summer, a UK charity publication FS magazine surveyed 850 gay men of color.

Eighty percent of the black men who responded to the survey said they had experienced some sort of racism while on Britain’s gay scene. Even worse, 63 percent of black and South Asian men reported racism within the community being a worse issue than homophobia.

“Intersectionality” is a word that I’ve heard often, mostly with the feminist movement.

“Intersectionality” is the idea that describes ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another.

Instead of using myself as another example, I will use my sister who identifies as lesbian, but like myself, is of mixed races. Since her identity as a woman and a member of the LGBT community are both a part of her. They cannot be separated. As goes for LGBT black men. One hour, they could be getting followed around a store in fear of stealing something; the next hour, they could be having an experience similar to the one(s) described in the previous column.

The only way to get past sexual racism in the LGBT community is to converse. It is important to have these conversations about sexual racism so can grow as a community.

I agree with the column that the LGBT community is becoming strong. However, I think the column is being too hard on the LGBT community for not knowing about things that haven’t been brought up in conversation or discussion yet. The LGBT community is not perfect, like any other community. It will have its flaws at the start. But the bigger it grows and the more people talk to each other about issues, the stronger it will be.

This is in response to the column “LGBT community’s unseen racism problem” originally published February 2. 2016, which can be found here.
This response column has been updated for the internet by the original writer.
This response column first appeared in the independent student publication, The BG News on Feb. 4, 2015. You can find their web edition here.