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The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The forgotten ‘BT’ of LGBTQ rights

The amount of Snapchat selfies of boys in tank tops making the duck-face with the caption “marry me?” increased tenfold on Tuesday, Nov. 5. It’s nice to know that Illinois, a state that hasn’t voted Republican since 1988, finally caught on to the slow-growing trend of legalizing marriage for gay couples.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m extremely happy that I can stay in the state I live in if I want to be a June husband. But I’m also far from impressed. There’s still so much more to be done for equality for the LGBTQ community around the world, and legalizing marriage in all 50 states is maybe just the tip. Of the iceberg, that is.

It seems that a lot of attention is paid to the “L” and the “G” in LGBTQ. Researchers presented information at the American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting & Exposition Nov. 5 that indicated 85 percent of people believe in bisexuality as much as they believe in unicorns.

This idiotically large percent of people includes homosexual people as well as heterosexual people. This study also found that heterosexual males were three times more likely to view bisexuality negatively and that bisexuals of any gender faced prejudice from lesbian and gay individuals.

For some reason I’m reminded of that scene in “Mean Girls” where Tina Fey instructs the young girls of the student body to stop calling each other bitches, in order to keep the young men of the student body from calling the young ladies bitches. What she was trying to say is that if people want to be treated equally, they should treat each other equally. If groups within the LGBTQ community aren’t even on the same page with each other, there’s not going to be blanket equality for anyone.

Besides bisexuals being denied existence by pretty much everyone, transsexual and transgender individuals also have a pretty raw deal in the whole “getting recognition as an actual legitimate thing to be” department. This past May, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published the DSM-5, which has the most up-to- date information on how to classify and diagnose mental disorders. Gender Dysphoria and Gender Identity Disorder are featured in the DSM-5, implying they are diagnosable, classifiable mental disorders.

Naturally, this fact does not sit well with many – if not all – people who consider themselves transgender or transsexual, as it supports binary gender roles. Also, classifying these terms as mental disorders in the company of schizophrenia, autism, and trichotillomania (that’s the one where you have such intense anxiety that you pull out all your hair) may be a touch polarizing and macabre.

But progress is progress. The dinosaurs didn’t just decide to be birds one day. Things move at glacial paces, but things happen inevitably. Fifteen states with marriage equality are 15 more than there were 10 years ago. So while all the bars on Halsted are pumping out pitchers of sangria at ridiculous prices, remember we’re fighting for equal rights for more than just the gay boys and girls of the country.

As you ponder that, I’m going to go pick out my table settings. Because there’s nothing I love more as a gay man than a tasteful centerpiece (I’m joking).

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