Assignment 16- Taylor Hodges

When I was in elementary school, my brother picked me up from school everyday. One day, my mother picked me up without any warning. I was confused. When I got into the car, the first thing I asked was, "where's Justin?" She told me that he was at home. I thought that if he was home, why didn't he come get me? We got home and as I walked through the door I saw my brother, laying on the couch. Blood and bruises on his face. He was a senior in high school and just a year before he came out as gay. He was bullied a lot because of who he is. This is when I realized that people didn't see him the same way I did. "Gay" has such a bad connotation to it now. When you say it, people instantly look at you differently. People even bring up how gay people talk differently and use that as a way to judge them(Do I Sound Gay?). But it's not something that's able t change. It's like making fun of someone with an accent. There's no point. When I tell someone that my brother is gay, their first reaction is "oh, really?" They act like being gay is a problem or is confusing to them. And that's when I started researching. After watching what my brother had to go through, I wanted to see how other people saw “gay” and how they reacted to it.

There are more LGBT rights than there has been in years past. People are more educated about it and see it more often than before. And yet, people still say that they're "morally wrong". How? Because they are with someone that you don't agree with? In the first half of 2016 alone, 87 bills that limited LGBT rights have been introduced(The Washington Post). Just because a male has a partner that is also a male (or vice versa) should not mean that they are lesser of a person. Physically, they're equal to you and me, but they think of who they want to be with differently. No one in the world thinks exactly the same. Everyone has their own beliefs and ideas, but there aren't riots over people liking waffles more than pancakes. These people are the same as everyone else. One claim that people make is that gay marriage is against their religion. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all talk about homosexuality. In Leviticus 18:22 it talks about how man should not lie with man because it is an abomination, but in Isaiah 30:18 it also says that He (God) will show you compassion and contradicts what it has said before. It also talks about how women are subordinate to man and has strict food laws (sins to eat pig(pork)).

People instantly judge when someone says, "I'm gay". Marsha Wetzel, a member of Glen St. Andrew, a senior living facility, has fallen victim to this. Wetzel was in the facility, getting to know the other people when someone asked her about her family. She said that she raised a son with her partner, Judy Kahn. Once the other members found out, she was subject to verbal and physical abuse. The managers weren't protecting her from these residents. She then went and initiated a lawsuit about what the residents were doing to her just because of her sexuality (The New York Times). There are a million other stories that deal with the abuse and judgement people go through because of the person they are.

In 2015, President Obama gave a speech regarding LGBT rights, and after that, 61% of Americans believed that gay marriage should be legal. This was the complete opposite of years before. According to "The Washington Post", rights for members of the LGBT community increased 50% every year following Obama's speech. In June of 2015, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage which caused a lot of controversy and many people were against it. In Kentucky, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even after same-sex marriage became legal, people were still defying it, making tensions worse and causing people to be more violent towards gays.

Throughout the years of noticing how people look at my brother, I've realized a lot of how people think and react to LGBT and the rights they should have. We need to realize that members of the LGBT community are the same as we are. Just because you don't believe in the same way they do, doesn't mean you have the right to abuse them. If you say gay is "against your religion" and you're a Christian, you need to go back and reread Leviticus and follow the rest of the rules it lays out. "Gay" shouldn't have a negative connotation to it because it's just an adjective. Along with male, female, dog, cat. They're all descriptive words and should look that way. The LGBT community don't deserve to be attacked for who they are. They deserve the same rights as everyone because at the end of the day, we're all human.