Welcome to my first ever blog. Read below to find out more...
2020 has been a hectic year but in the dark, there is always a light, something to celebrate. From June 1st – June 30th our society takes special care to celebrate our gay community in LGBT pride month. This involves parades and marches to show the pride of gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender members of our society. Making June one of the most important months in our calendar.
Pride month was first established in the USA to commemorate the stonewall riots in 1969. The riots were violent and angry demonstrations of the tiredness of discrimination the gay community felt, due to a police raid later that morning. Two presidents of the United States then declared the month of June pride month in honour of the Stonewall riots. The first of these presidents was Bill Clinton during his time in office in 1999 and 2000 and second Barack Obama who declared it every year in office from 2009-2016.
It was too my horror when I discovered that same sex (gay marriage) was only made legal in 2013 in the UK with the first marriages taking place on the 29th of March 2014. I was disgusted about how recent this law was carried forward for this community has existed forever and only in 2014 did they get the right to be free to marry who they love. Before this in 1978 the rainbow was made the symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Giber Baker. The different colours are commonly meant to show the ‘diversity’ of the gay members of society. Original colours and their meanings being pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony and violet for spirit.
Another very important group in our society are transgender people. They identify or have a gender expression that is different to their birth assigned gender. They choose to get medical assistance to change gender. The first recognised transgender person was Christine Jorgensen from the USA New York City.
In the UK Transgender rights have been making their way into the titles of our news due to the government's recent rulings on the use of same sex spaces (bathrooms, changing rooms etc.). Many in the UK have responded badly this statement calling it discriminatory and aggressive. Many have signed petitions to show the discrimination of this act.
We have come along way from the way we used to treat the different sexualities. However, we still have a long way to go to rid our society of discrimination. If you want to find out about pride month and discover more about the LGBT community go to Pride Month 2020 UK.
Hi Ruth, I've enjoyed reading your posts ... do you have a view on the quarantine rules that the British Government has introduced? Could be interesting, having your 'perspective' on this!