The Fight throughout Time

Struggling for equality has been an issue for many different minority groups throughout history in America. African Americans struggled with slavery and women struggled to be equal. These were public struggles, and are taught to children as they grow up. One minority group, which encompasses millions of people, has been struggling for equality for years, but has been under the radar of most people until the early 70’s. Rights for gays and lesbians finally surfaced after the stonewall riots in 1969, and it was the start of a revolution for this minority group to fight for equality.  Throughout time, people have used religion as an excuse to discriminate against people who are different from themselves. When there were miscegenation laws, there excuse was that God put the different races on different continents, and therefore people were not supposed to marry outside their race. This same logical thought has been used to discriminate against the Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Bisexual community, or the LGTB community. This discrimination is not just in America, but throughout the world. There are 11 countries in the world countries in the world where homosexuality is punishable by death (Professor Disario). In fact, several of the countries where homosexuality is punishable by death are countries where the Islamic people are a majority. Discrimination like this is unnecessary.

Homosexuality has sometimes been seen as a choice, someone chooses to be homosexual. If homosexuality was a choice, there would not be a high correlation between homosexuality and suicide. “Studies of human sexuality have noted high rates of suicidality [sic] among homosexual youth…” (AAP).  If someone’s choice was to be homosexual, they would probably not want to commit suicide for being homosexual. At the same time, why would homosexuality be a world-wide issue if it was a choice? Homosexuality has been around for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, homosexuality was not just accepted as a part of nature, but in was encouraged. “ For many in Greek society, the highest form of love affair was considered to be that between two males, one an adult and the other a young boy before puberty” (Sex Crimes). It is important to note this was before the rise of Christianity, and homosexuality was common. It seems that if homosexuality was a choice, it would not have been around for this many centuries.

Another factor that shows that homosexuality is not a choice are studies that have proven that a homosexual man’s brain’s is similar to a woman’s brain and a homosexual woman’s brain is similar to a male’s brain. “MRI scanning revealed that the two hemispheres of homosexual men’s brains are equal in volume, like those of heterosexual women. Similarly, the right hemisphere of homosexual women is slightly larger than the left hemisphere, as is the case for heterosexual men” (Scanning Sexuality). This study is scientific proof that being homosexual is not a choice, but is a quality someone is born with. It is still not known whether environmental factors play a role in homosexuality, but seems that it would only help to encourage, or discourage, a person to be the sexuality they are born. 

Homosexuality is a highly diverse topic, one that touches millions of people. When looking at how many people are gay in America, I found a study by AVERT (Averting HIV and AIDS) who found “This can be interpreted as there being nearly 1.2 million gay people living with a same sex partner in America. This is a huge increase from the 1990 census, which identified only 145,000 same sex unmarried households.” If more than 1 million people in America alone are homosexual, it can be concluded that millions of people all around the world are homosexual, and are affected by discrimination. This is a serious issue, and one that needs to be looked at intelligently and without bias.  

References:

Gary Remafedi, James A. Farrow, and Robert W. Deisher (1991)
Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth
Pediatrics, 87, 869 - 875.

Holmes, S. T., & Holmes, R. M. (2009). Sex Crimes (3rd Ed). Thousand Oaks, California: Safe Publications Inc.

How Many Gay People are there? (2011). Retrieved February 9, 2011, from http://www.avert.org/gay-people.htm

Nicholson, C. (2008). Scanning sexuality. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(8), 582.

Professor Disarrio (Writer). (2010). Current State of Gay Rights. [PowerPiont]