Currently, society is littered with systemic injustices. The hardest part is trying to tackle each issue in order to address them all since they are so deeply ingrained into society. A major issue that continues to persist in the United States is LGBTQ+ rights. Despite same-sex marriage being legalized in 2015, laws are continuously being added to suppress LGBTQ+ voices and communities. This can range from small-scale issues such as being denied service from a business to more life-threatening issues as being denied medical treatment.
In Nashville, the federal government is funding organizations that discriminate against LGBTQ candidates to become foster care parents for unaccompanied refugee children. Kelly Easter was turned away multiple times from fostering migrant children held under the federal foster care program simply due to the fact that she was a lesbian. The agency near her was the only organization participating in the federal program, but they told her that she had to drive half an hour away to their office since they consider same-sex couples as eligible foster parents. This heavily perpetuates injustice since the government is essentially deeming people of the LGBTQ community as incapable parents and further stigmatizing them as less deserving and less worthy of respect than other individuals who want to become foster parents. In Easter’s case, she was turned away twice only because of her identity. LGBTQ individuals are just as capable of having a family as any other community and their families are just as important and deserving of any opportunities. This also makes LGBTQ individuals feel as if they are lesser than those who identify as heterosexual because of the fact they are unable to become foster parents due to their identity; they may feel they must conceal their true identity in order to foster or be able to be their true selves and simply never have the opportunity to foster at all. The issue with that statement is that LGBTQ individuals should never have to choose between those two things, let alone feel like they must conceal themselves.
In most cases, LGBTQ+ couples are usually denied services due to a business/organizations’ religious affiliations. Laws that directly go against LGBTQ+ couples and hurt their rights are usually because the representatives are homophobic and implement these laws because of their religious/personal biases.
This is relevant since class concepts such as “the One” and “the Other” can be easily identified here. The LGBTQ+ is being “othered” since they’re being suppressed and they are being denied basic rights such as freedom of speech and the ability to adopt children. Because of their identity, they are seen as ‘lesser’ in society compared to heterosexual couples.
https://www.wjhl.com/news/suit-us-enabling-lgbtq-discrimination-in-foster-program/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/us/trump-hhs-lgbtq-rule.html
This was such a wonderful, and well put together showcase! My internship was with a foster care agency, and I was so happy to see that the agency I was with was so accepting of LGBTQ (as it should be) families, and actually did a lot of advocacy for more inclusion and equal rights in the foster care world for LGBTQ families. Additionally, my cousin and his husband have been wanting to expand their family for several years now, but have been fearful to even try to go the adoption route until more recently, due to fearing they would be discriminated against or passed by simply because they are two gay men, even though they would be the best parents ever and have way more means than most to provide for a child.
Equal rights for LGBTQ individuals has always been such a close to home topic for me because of my cousin (he is like a brother to me), and seeing first hand the difficulties he has faced for absolutely no reason. I think you hit the nail right on the head with relating our class material of “othering” with how LGBTQ individuals feel in society because heterosexuality is the dominant “master”.