Banished for existing

The widespread anti-gay mindset is not new, having impacted LGBTQ+ people in America in the 60s and 70s and shutting down designated gay bars that served as safe spaces for many community members. However, the LGBTQ+ community eventually sought to end this discrimination.

Though various riots occurred years before, the historic 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, N.Y. are widely regarded as the “spark” of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. But this spark did not happen overnight. The need to create change resulted from years of hate crimes and discriminatory laws. At the time, bars were prohibited from selling alcohol to LGBTQ+ people, and LGBTQ+ people were not allowed to dance together in public. Furthermore, the New York gay bar scene was widely run by the Mafia, who bribed the police to only raid the bars at “convenient” — less busy — times and made large profits off of LGBTQ+ people looking for a safe space to be themselves. In Stonewall’s case, the Genovese crime family purchased the establishment to convert it into a gay bar. While the Mafia made it possible for gay bars to exist with less interruption, their intentions were not to help the LGBTQ+ community; rather, they were exploiting a vulnerable group for some extra cash, hence why all of these circumstances combined finally ignited the spark of the revolution.

On the night the Stonewall Inn was raided, patrons who had been kicked out decided to gather outside the establishment instead of leaving. Eventually, members of the police barricaded themselves inside the bar. At the same time, the patrons outside began throwing bottles, coins, rocks and other objects at the door barricade and the police outside. The group steadily grew as news spread throughout the village, leading to a protest over five days as various groups came and left. Historically, this was the first major and well-recognized riot against police officers for LGBTQ+ rights.

Protests like these paved the way for discriminatory law removal and increased protections for the LGBTQ+ community. As with these anti-LGBTQ+ laws from the 1900s, many lawmakers and lobbyists now still view their homophobic actions as helping “misguided souls” rather than doing genuine harm to individuals. Sophomore Mya Jenkins is bisexual and has seen the effects of this viewpoint.

“My personality has changed; I have an on-and-off button of who I am versus who I am at home,” Jenkins said. “There’s already stereotypes about Black people. Being a part of the LGBTQ+ community makes [those stereotypes] worse, and it makes my anxiety start kicking in. Especially in Black family households, parents automatically assume that gay is wrong, so when your parents don’t accept you for who you are, it’s obviously going to take a toll on your mental health and who you are as a person.”

In fact, some may think they are serving their communities by eradicating the presence of LGBTQ+ people. This attitude is further seen in those who condone conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy is a procedure in which a religious official or “psychologist” attempts to alter an individual’s sexuality or gender identity in hopes of upholding an entirely cishet society. This practice partly stemmed from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) original classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. In doing so, the APA encouraged and endorsed using these “therapy techniques.” This created the long-held opinion that being LGBTQ+ was not normal and something that needed to be “fixed.” However, in 1973, the APA officially declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness and therefore supported laws allowing gay individuals the same rights as any other citizen.

Despite this alteration, the damage had been done. Today, conversion therapy is still practiced in some areas of the U.S. In fact, a 2019 study by the Williams Institute found that over 600,000 LGBTQ+ adults have reported receiving conversion therapy at some point. The same institute found that LGB individuals who have experienced conversion therapy are 92% more likely to have lifetime suicidal ideation than those who have not experienced conversion therapy. Rather than celebrating identity, teens are sent away to churches, camps or even wilderness therapy — a practice in which “troubled teens” are forced to spend months doing physically grueling activities in the wilderness, often led by adults who are verbally and physically abusive.

So while this practice is called “therapy,” it is anything but  — conversion therapy uses tactics to misrepresent the root of LGBTQ+ identity. In these sessions, “therapists” typically identify childhood factors such as parental divorce, unemployment or the breaking of gender roles as reasons for “becoming” LGBTQ+. These “causes” fail to recognize that being LGBTQ+ is not a choice, nor is it something that needs to be changed.

The 2020 Trevor Project National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 10% of LGBTQ+ youth reported experiencing conversion therapy at some point. Considering the dangers of conversion therapy, this percentage should be zero. Many conversion therapies can include practices such as sexual and verbal abuse, isolation, exorcisms, food deprivation, electrocution and forced medication. 

LGBTQ+ teens subjected to these practices are at higher risk for developing mental illness, even leading to suicide in some cases, as was with 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn in 2014. After being ridiculed by her parents for coming out as a transgender woman and sent to Christian therapists, Alcorn decided she would rather take her own life than continue living in an unaccepting world. With this action, Alcorn wished to bring awareness to the struggles that LGBTQ+ teens face in unaccepting societies, being treated inhumanely and ridiculed for expressing their identity.

We have failed to protect our youth from assault and abuse. The subsequent effects are detrimental — teens learn to become ashamed of their identity, to hide away and live an untrue, unfulfilling life. When we could be celebrating the diversity of human identity, we are now instead mourning the loss of those who were silenced by hate.