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LGBT or GLBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexuality, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay in reference to the LGBT community beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. Activists believed that the term gay community did not accurately represent all those to whom it referred.
LGBT rights are considered human rights by the Amnesty International and civil rights by some.
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- ...Trans persons should have the right to access legal and safe healthcare which includes medical procedures, surgeries, and hormones without discrimination. Folks who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and two-spirit should not be forced into conversion therapy and should have the right to engage in sexual relationships without violations towards their bodily autonomy....
- Shahzi Bokhari, What Bodily Autonomy Means - Raise the Hammer May 29, 2019
- The terrorist in Orlando targeted LGBT Americans out of hatred and bigotry, and an attack on any American is an attack on all Americans.
- Hillary Clinton, speech in Cleveland, Ohio after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (June 13, 2016)
- We will defend all our rights – civil rights, human rights and voting rights… women's rights and workers' rights… LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities!
- Hillary Clinton, 2016 Democratic National Convention, transcript by Los Angeles Times (July 28, 2016)
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- One crucial reason why LGBT people have cause to organize together politically is that, even though we see ourselves as distinct tribes, the rest of society has tended to conflate us. Or as one trans person succinctly put it: we are all beaten up by the same people. This shared oppression, both historic and current, drives – indeed, necessitates – solidarity between lesbians, gay men, bi people and trans people. In an era of growing right-wing populism in the United States and the UK alike, accompanied by an alarming rise in visible street fascism, there is more need than ever for unity across the four different letters (as well as queer, asexual, intersex and other groups). It is in the interests of those who hate us all for us to be at war with one another.
- Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1. Chapter Six
- Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being ‘unnatural’: homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from a prejudice that a person’s stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their ‘natural’ role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women's reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.
- Shon Faye, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Allen Lane. 2021. ISBN 978-0-241-42314-1. Chapter Six
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- At a time when Americans are increasingly supportive of equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people, a growing percentage of Americans identify themselves as LGBT. With younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBT, that growth should continue
- Gallup survey "Gen Z Says It’s America’s Queerest Generation Yet" (February 24, 2021)
- Queer people exist. Choosing not to accept them is not an option.
- Dan Howell, Basically I'm Gay, 13 June, 2019
- Gay and lesbian Americans cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.
- Brett Kavanaugh, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 U.S. ___ (2020) (dissenting), reported in Dawn Ennis, "Supreme Court To Gay And Transgender Workers: You’re Equal", Forbes (June 15, 2020).
- [Talking with young students today], I play the part of concerned older gent, because when I was their age [an older generation of public LGBTQA individuals] didn’t exist.
- Ian McKellen in “In new documentary, Ian McKellen reflects on Magneto, Gandalf”, by Nathan Mattise, Ars Technica, (7/8/2018).
- Like other marginalized groups, LGBTQ people are over-represented in sex work. Discrimination, rejection and abuse - both at home and in wider communities - increase their precarity and vulnerability in a homophobic and transphobic society, leaving prostitution as one of the remaining viable routes out of destitution. Trans women in particular often find that formal employment is out of reach. Increased school drop-out rates, lack of family support, and lack of access to adequate healthcare (including the means to finance gender-affirming treatment) leave them exposed to poverty, illness, and homelessness.
- At the 2008 Lambda Literary Awards (the awards the LGBT community gives to books ignored by straight book awards) not a single lesbian book nominated for best novel was published by a mainstream press. Our literature is disappearing at the same time we are being told we are winning our rights. How can we be equal citizens if our stories are not allowed to be part of our nation's story?
- Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 151
- Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community. They have been through something that nobody could ever experience. This is a very dark moment in America’s history. A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation.
- Donald Trump, speech after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (transcript) (June 13, 2016)
- The reality is that LGBTQ+ people face challenges at disproportionally higher rates than their straight counterparts - drug use, sex work, and financial instability can be an unfortunate result. My privilege as a young cis white man whose parents weren't going to let me drown afforded me the ability to make those mistakes and live to talk about it.
- Jonathan Van Ness, Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love (2019), p. 117/118
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