How has the Hate Train Against the LGBTQ+ community been Fueled?

 How has the Hate Train Against the LGBTQ+ Community been Fueled?

    Discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community has been a huge problem recently, with people from all different sides trying to wear the community down. What these people need to realize is that they need to be more conscious about their decisions, and understand that members of the LGBTQ+ community are people too, with feelings and emotions. 

An image of the Pride Flag

When it comes to the discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, religion has been a huge, if not the biggest factor in promoting hatred against the community. Since the early sixties even, Christianity specifically has been against the community, with their main argument based on the Bible. They use the argument that “homosexuality is a sin” and that the Bible deems it unnatural. Since the sixties, Christianity has, for the most part, still advocated for its views against the LGBTQ+ community, however, there have been more churches that have opened their minds to the concept, and have been more accepting. Yet in most cases, the Christian faith is still seen as an opposition to the LGBTQ+ community. Today, the main argument against Christian values still has the roots of saying homosexuality is a sin but has used the argument that you have to live by way of the Bible, and if you don’t, you will go to Hell. They have taken it upon themselves to “save” people’s souls, and their attention has turned to the LGBTQ+ community. 

The discrimination doesn’t stop with religion, however. For a long time now, politics have been a driving factor against the LGBTQ+ community. Over the past few decades, politics have shifted, and have become heavily polarized. Today in politics, it feels like there is no common ground, no one can agree, and it feels like everyone has to pick aside. It has become a series of winners and losers. Recently, the conservatives have become deeply rooted in their religion and beliefs, and have implemented them into their laws and policies. During World War 2, people who considered themselves gay were perceived to have a mental illness, and same-sex relations were criminalized and considered a cause for discharge. Nowadays this isn’t the case, but for the longest time, members of the LGBTQ+ community were not allowed to serve, based on certain laws put in place. However, there have been different laws recently put in place that have been extremely harmful to the LGBTQ+ community. A current issue is the Don’t Say Gay bill that was just passed in Florida. This new law states that any teachings from school or a third party teacher on the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity cannot be taught from kindergarten through the third grade, as it is deemed not age-appropriate, and can harm students' development in the learning process. 

    One of the biggest impacts more rooted in the twenty-first century is based around cyber-bullying, and the impact social media has on the discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. When it comes to online forums, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snap chat, people can say just about anything they want, with little to no repercussions. Some would argue that this falls under the idea of free speech, but mindlessly spewing hate speech against others isn’t fair to the victim, all because the attacker had the right to say it. One app, in particular, called Yik Yak, is almost completely anonymous to the average viewer, with no idea who is saying what. This leaves the door open for people to say anything they set their heart to and has no repercussions. This leads to people saying things without realizing the significance of what they are saying, leading to them believing that the hate speech they are saying is normal.

    Over the past decade or so, there has been an uproar of funny images and jokes called “memes”. For the most part, there are memes that everyone can enjoy, but there are some who make memes based on hateful speech. These people who are posting hateful speech as memes play it off as “oh, it’s just a joke” and “it isn’t meant to be taken seriously” but you can easily tell that they are just trying to cover up their hateful actions and that they will do it again. They are normalizing their hateful speech and influencing others in the process. 

One such meme features a dog with the text saying “I don’t think that’s normal”. At face value, it might not mean much, but to a certain group of people on the internet, it means that they believe being gay is unnatural, immoral, and wrong. 

    The problem here lies that when people post stuff like this to the internet, they see nothing wrong with it, have zero regrets about it, and do not stop to think about the harmful impacts that it will have on others, specifically members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

People, specifically of the older generation, who lean more right-sided on the political spectrum would argue that in today’s age, members of the LGBTQ+ community are too open about it, and constantly trying to “shove it down everyone’s throat” when this isn’t true. While members of the LGBTQ+ community do flaunt their sexuality much more nowadays, this isn’t a bad thing. Around the sixties, people who were gay or trans hid who they were from the public, for fear of being ridiculed, beaten, arrested, or even murdered. Nowadays, they don’t have to worry as much, they have the freedom to be gay or trans, and they are free to represent who they are in public. That is something that people back in the sixties were not able to do.