Everyone has a view of the LGBTQ community.  Some have hate towards it and some have a good view or no opinion at all.  But even though LGBTQ rights have become normalized, some still don’t respect them.  Why? 

There are so many people who say cruel words to and harass LGBTQ people.   Crimes and cruelty against members of the LGBTQ are still commonplace. Perpetrators of these crimes seem to want to force their victims to change to fit their political or religious beliefs.   Parents who discriminate against LGBTQ members often don’t want their kids to be influenced by them.  “There are lots of people who say and do the same [hurtful] thing, for those exact reasons but they are not right,” Jackie Luna, an advocate for LGBTQ rights said.  “Those who push their opinions onto others are not going to go anywhere with what they do.”  The people who stand with LGBTQ try and protect them from harm and support and comfort them through various projects and programs.

Transgender people – or, in other words, people who do not identify as the gender that they were born into – also get hurt by those who fear them or find them strange.   Some people are proud to make transgender people comfortable with themselves, while others don’t understand who they are and why they identify as certain genders. It’s not something you can control; it’s how you feel that makes you want to change.  “Transgender people have complicated problems, since they changed their genders, they changed everything about themselves as well which will confuse others,” Luna said.

There are a lot of people who are confident and don’t care what others say to them.  This is good because they are showing them that they are not afraid to express themselves and show that they love themselves.  There are also people who are not as confident and more shy and get hurt more easily than others.  The people who hurt them know how to put them down and get under their skin.  When someone hurts a person from the LGBTQ community, the whole community gets involved to defend them. They help everyone feel protected and loved.  The LGBTQ community has gone through lots of hard times and they deserve to be treated right by everyone no matter their differences.  They are human, just like all of us.