The Importance of Accepting The LGBT

LGBT is a community which consist of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. Moreover, LGBT is a global trend issue nowaday and some people start to talk about it. It is because they are minor community which get wrongly judged by the society. In addition the existence of LGBT triggers some pros and cons among communities in the world. As a result, there are some elements need to be considered before doing any actions toward the LGBT communities.

The first element that people need to consider before doing any actions toward the LGBT community is religion. The majority of religious people oppose the existence of LGBT because of their religions. Some of this religious people decided that the government need to ban LGBT, like how nearly three dozen religious institutions of higher learning have asked the federal government to waive laws that protect LGBT students in USA because of their religious beliefs. However, they failed to consider that there are thousands of religions that exist in this world and we cannot make a generalization based on what some religions think of LGBT. For example, in Hinduism, there is a clear emphasis upon bisexuality and duality; the Hindu society believe that bisexuality is hidden in every aspect of creation, which means that bisexuality exists in every person’s nature. The Hindu society acknowledge the sexuality between men and third genders as a variation of male- female sex and they believe that it is a part of heterosexuality, not homosexuality. Although the Hindu society does not formally acknowledge sexuality between men[[1]]. Another example, in Australian Aboriginal, the rainbow serpent god Ungud is described as androgynous (possessing the sex organs of both sexes).[[2]] The point is that it is not okay to make generalization like “LGBT is wrong in the perspective of all religions and we have to ban it,” because certainly not all religions have the same opinion regarding the LGBT community.

The second element that people need to consider is, sexual orientation is not a choice and homosexuality is not a mental illness. The majority of people still believe that homosexuality is a mental illness and homosexual people choose their sexual orientation. There are a lot of theories about the origin of sexual orientation. Most of scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors.[[3]] Regarding the association of homosexuality and mental illness, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the official manual that lists mental and emotional disorders since before that time homosexuality was considered as a mental illness.[[4]] Two years later, the American Psychological Associations support the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental and emotional disorder.[[5]] Since then both associations have urged all mental health professionals to help remove the stigma of mental illness that some people still associate with homosexuality.

Every human being have the same basic human rights to love and to be loved, and if they are part of the lesbian, gay or bisexual then certainly it is not their choice. If they could choose, of course they would choose heterosexuality since no one would want to go through what the lesbian, gay and bisexual have gone through. They have been bullied and discriminated over something that they have no control over. Tolerating the LGBT community will not make you less religious but hating or even hurting them is not something a religious person would do. Even though religions have different views regarding the existence of the LGBT community but all religions have one thing in common: no religions teach their people to commit an act of violence nor hatred. If someone is a part of the LGBT community yet also part of the religion that against the existence of LGBT then it is their concern with their own Gods, not yours. Accepting the LGBT doesn’t mean that you agree with them or support them, it just means that you are a decent human being.