Honoring Gay Pride Month

June is gay pride month. To honor the LGBT community and its continuing struggle for equality, I invited Andy Humm – a long time gay rights activist – to discuss the movement on my radio show. Mr. Humm helped lead the fight for New York City’s gay rights bill that passed in 1986, thanks to the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights. As director of education at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBT youth, he fought to get explicit AIDS education into public schools in the 1990s. Since 1985, Mr. Humm has hosted the national, weekly television program “Gay USA.” He writes regularly for the Gay City Newsand and the Gotham Gazette. His work has also appeared in the The New York Times, The Daily News, The Post and numerous other publications

As Mr. Humm pointed out, even Orrin Hatch (Republican Senator from Utah), has publicly admitted that gay marriage will eventually pass, nation-wide. That battle has been won, but we still have a long way to go before we have truly eliminated discrimination. So what’s next?

Transgender rights have certainly gotten a lot of press lately, and Mr. Humm agreed that the gay community is an ally of this movement – (and, he hopes, of all subsequent social justice movements). Mr. Humm pointed one challenge that the transgender movement faces: how to rally its constituency. “Coming out” – for gay and lesbian folks- is a powerful way to claim one’s identity, stand in solidarity with the community, and move forward on the road toward marriage and family. Transgender people, on the other hand, do not want to be recognized as transgender; they want to be acknowledged as the new gender which they have embodied. So “coming out” is not a step that makes sense. Because of this difference, the movement will take a separate shape, but it is certainly coming along. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already ruled that the transgender community is protected under sex discrimination laws.

Another important battle that we have yet to fight is that of the homeless youth of our nation, over half of whom are LGBT. According to Mr. Humm, there are approximately 150 beds available for homeless kids in New York City – a shockingly inadequate number. In Mr. Humm’s words, we are not taking care of our kids.

Mr. Humm also reminded us that even as we are enjoying real progress here in the states – more kids than ever before are coming out in high school and are accepted by their communities – we cannot forget what is occurring on the International stage. Countries like Russia, Uganda, and Nigeria are passing draconian anti-gay laws that are supported by large majorities of their populations. It is a deeply troubling reality.

The phrase “civil rights” in connection with the LGBT movement makes some people bristle, because it is so tightly connected with “The” civil right movement of the 1960′s. Mr. Humm reminds us that there are many groups of people fighting for civil rights, and at their root, they are the same fight. As the LGBT community gains more ground than ever, we hope that it becomes a powerful ally to other marginalized groups, both globally and here at home. We all have the right to equality and to be respected in our communities regardless of differences. Anything short of this reflects a lack of humanity. As Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail on the 16 of April 1963:  “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”