The Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Jury Selection and Services Act and other protective legislation and policies were passed after strenuous efforts of minorities that needed the protection from the government to have fair opportunities as others - middle to upper-class white male. Does this cover everything and everyone? The answer is no.

           

The past and current government always struggled or failed to address the daily issues that LGBTQIA+ community face. The way to protect this group of the minority would be through The Equality Act, whereby law, provide consistent and explicit non-discrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ people across key areas of life, including employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs, and jury service.

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There have been two attempts of passing The Equality Act in 2015 and in 2017, both by David Cicilline and Jeff Merkley but both of the bills died in committee. As if this was not enough, the current government ran under President Donald Trump, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services is reportedly considering a narrow federal definition of gender that hinges solely on sex assigned at birth, a move that would in effect strip transgender and intersex Americans of their civil rights and render their chosen identities invisible in the eyes of the federal government which also holds the possibility of crises in self-identity of individuals. The fluidity of gender will not be a personal choice but rather assigned which will set America as a country several centuries back.

 

The permanent mark on individual identification resembles the time in South Africa before 1997, where transgenders and transsexuals unless they went through a sex reassignment surgery and was successful, it was completely illegal to change the unique identification number to correlate with the sex that they are. The oppression that the individuals experienced during the time where one couldn’t be the gender and sex that they believed themselves were and also being scrutinized in the process had tremendous damage. The Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, if they follow and push along their agenda, after all the acts of activism in the United States, will be worthless.

 

The intersectionality in the society is not as apparent as it may have been before, but it still exists in the form of microaggression. It is the day to day interaction either on an interpersonal level or in a group setting, it is that feeling of being treated differently than others that leaves you wondering if it is because of what you are as an individual. There are also groups such as QT POC, Queer Trans People of Color, that face multi-layers of oppression. There are different types of microaggression, mostly known as racial microaggression as introduced by Derald Wing Sue but the issue here is that for the LGBTQIA+ community, they have sexism against them. They have judgments against them. They have conflicts within them. They deal with many more feelings of oppression and frustration on a daily basis, which also affects the quality of life.

 

The rate of homelessness is more apparent in LGBTQIA+ communities if you were to take a look into San Francisco, approximately 30 percent of homeless individuals identify as LGBTQIA+. The change in the economy and the consequences that follow pushes minorities out and this can also be seen in the video produced by DADDIES PLASTIK, a queer trans people of color group, Google Google Apps Apps that presents the phenomenon of sexual minorities being the first to be pushed out of an advancing city.

           

Just because we’re not it doesn’t mean that it’s okay to look over and neglect the issues that surround us on a daily basis. People in our lives, who may look as though they are cis-gendered, might be suffering inside and is preventing them from being who they truly are. For the health of its citizens and to fight for the wrongdoing, we need laws that protect the minority group.

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Works Cited

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Swarr, Amanda Lock. Sex in Transition: Remaking Gender and Race in South Africa. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed March 6, 2019).

Sue, Derald Wing. Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

Williams, Ian. "Queer Land Trust Working to Preserve Affordable Housing, Stop Displacement of the LGBT Community." The San Francisco Examiner. June 20, 2018. Accessed March 07, 2019. http://www.sfexaminer.com/queer-land-trust-working-preserve-affordable-housing-stop-displacement-lgbt-community/.