Thoughts on LGBT lifestyle – Korea Times

Today, I want to talk about the LGBT lifestyle. Many already have fixed perspectives about, likely against, the LGBT community. Hopefully, from curiosity, compassion, or both, some of you will open your mind and try to understand my view.

One of the many abbreviations for this group is LGBTQ.

Lesbian (L) refers to a woman who is romantically and sexually attracted to women. Gay (G) can be tricky, as it refers to a person who is romantically and sexually attracted to individuals of the same sex. While women may identify as “lesbian” and/or “gay,” the term gay in this article is used to describe men who are attracted to the same sex.

Bisexual (B) refers to a person who is romantically and sexually attracted to both men and women, while transgender (T) refers to a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person was assigned at birth.

Q which stands for queer and describes a person who does not identify with sexual or gender constructs perceived as “normal” by general society. Because the definition of queer is intentionally non-specific, and for some older generations remains a hurtful term, today’s article will only refer to the LGBT population.

Recently, I do not know how it started, but had an opportunity to talk about the LGBT lifestyle with my friends. It may be because one of the then-leading candidates for the president of the United States, Pete Buttigieg, was openly gay. I found myself to be alone in defending the LBGT community’s needs and rights.

I am also aware of a 2018 survey in Korea which asked 8,000 adults to list minority groups that they did not want to accept. Topping the list was LGBT at 49 percent, followed by North Korean refugees at 12.6 percent and foreign laborers 5.7 percent.

Some say sexual acts by LGBT people are gross. However, anyone’s sexual acts might also generate the same thought! Some say the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was caused by gay people. While the spread of it through the gay community was extraordinary, scientific research points the actual origin of the disease to human consumption of monkey meat in DR Congo in the 1920s.

Some believe that God would not approve of LGBT people. However, all religious persons I have met tell me that God has a reason for everything, and we are not supposed to ask why as that is the entire concept of faith.

To me, this means that God must have created individuals who identify themselves as LGBT, just as heterosexuals were created. God must have a reason for having done so, and if we are to have faith, we must accept anyone who identifies as an LGB or T.

When I find myself a sole defender of the LGBT community, I just tell them that maybe I am more liberal because I had been a college professor too long. The reality is a little more complicated.

The birth of the LGBT rights movement in the U.S. began with the Stonewall riots of 1969. This event became a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the LGBT community against a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York City.

The equal rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s provided momentum, and in the 1980s, the LGBT rights movement became more organized and pursued social acceptance.

In response to this, the U.S. Congress in 1996 passed the Defense of Marriage Act to prevent LGBT couples from receiving federal marriage benefits.

On June 26, 2003, the split U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that a Texas state law criminalizing certain intimate sexual conduct between two consenting adults of the same sex was unconstitutional. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriages.

The Employment Nondiscrimination Act of 2007 prohibits discrimination of sexual orientation in the workplace, specifically during hiring.

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “is unconstitutional and violates the rights of gays and lesbians,” a significant step forward for the LGBT rights movement. Prior to that ruling, 37 states allowed for same sex marriage. However, with that ruling, LGBT citizens in all 50 states were legally able to marry.

To date, 28 countries currently allow same-sex couples to marry, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, England, Finland, France, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Uruguay and, as stated above, the United States.

According to the Jan. 24, 2020, Newsletter that I received from Sun Trust Bank in the U.S., “Today, nearly half (49 percent) of all cohabitating same-sex couples are legally married, providing approximately one million Americans not only with equal rights and protections under the law, but also a number of previously unavailable financial benefits and opportunities,” including “married filing jointly” tax status and spousal social security benefits.

We live only one short life. Why should I be bothered by how others live their lives, when they do not bother me? While understanding a love that is different may be beyond many, can we not all agree that more love in the world can never be wrong?
Chang Se-moon (changsemoon@yahoo.com) is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.