You don’t have to be gay or queer to understand that restrictions on the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community are not only unfair to gay people, but they are fundamentally dangerous to every person who lives in our democracy.
Think about this for a moment. Restrictions on gay marriage, pride parades, and drag queens are restrictions on expression of your right to be yourself, to dress how you want, and to do what you want, and people who push these kinds of restrictions will never stop at just one thing. Next they might come for alcohol, or chocolate cake, or whatever it is that you happen to enjoy.
If you don’t see how restricting these rights is a danger, you need to think back just 100 years ago.
It wasn’t until 1920 that women earned the right to vote. It wasn’t until the 1960s that being gay was made legal in several states. And it wasn’t until 2003 that gay marriage was allowed.
If they can roll back 20 years of progress, what’s to stop them from rolling back 60 years, or 100 years?
Regressives are liars and they will lie to control you. Take abortion for example. Forced-birth advocates claim that they have exceptions for rape and incest and that bans will only take place after X number of weeks of being pregnant.
But the reality is much different. These exceptions are often limited, difficult to access, and can involve invasive and traumatic procedures, such as requiring an intensive police investigation and approval. These processes are often made arbitrarily long so that an abortion can then be denied based on length of pregnancy.
In states that allow abortion in the case of rape you must have a processed rape kit done by the State before you can get an abortion – kits that have a 14 week backup. But once you’ve been pregnant for 12 weeks, you’re no longer allowed to have an abortion there. They’ve made it literally impossible, even in the case of rape.
In many cases, women are forced to travel long distances, take time off work, and pay for expensive procedures out of pocket, all to access the basic healthcare they need.
But the truth is 20% of pregnancies already end in miscarriage – these bans put women’s lives at risk because they can’t even get an abortion of a pregnancy that will clearly not survive. While activists claim there are exceptions for these – they are made so obscure and difficult that no doctor or hospital will accept the liability for these exceptions.
In addition, forced-birth advocates often push for bans on abortion without considering the individual circumstances of each woman’s situation. They ignore the fact that many women who seek abortions are doing so because of health risks to themselves or their unborn child. Abortion is a deeply personal and often difficult decision that should be left up to the woman who is carrying the pregnancy, in consultation with her healthcare provider. It is not up to politicians or activists to dictate what a woman can or cannot do with her own body.
As we roll back the rights of women and the LGBTQIA+ community, we are putting our own rights at risk.
The restriction of liberties is always under the vague name of “safety”. We have to stop this pattern of using safety as a guise for taking away rights. The truth is that restricting the rights of any group is a slippery slope that can lead to greater oppression for all. If we allow the government to dictate who can love whom or what someone can wear, then what’s to stop them from dictating how we can live our lives, what we can say, or what we can believe?
It’s not just a matter of personal freedoms, it’s a matter of human rights. LGBTQIA+ people have the right to live their lives without fear of discrimination or violence. They have the right to express themselves and to love whomever they choose. When those rights are restricted, it creates a society where some people are seen as second-class citizens and treated accordingly.
We must stand up for the LGBTQIA+ community and fight against any and all attempts to restrict their rights. We must recognize that these restrictions not only affect the LGBTQIA+ community, but they affect all of us. We must fight for a world where everyone is free to be themselves and to love who they choose, without fear of persecution or discrimination.
So, whether you identify as gay or not, it’s important to understand that the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights is a fight for human rights. We must all stand together and demand that our government protect the rights of all its citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Only then can we truly call ourselves a free and just society.
