Wednesday, Ball State's Spectrum members participated in the annual Day of Silence to express the difficult challenges lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face.
Our generation is one of the first to experience times when there have been open members of the LGBT community. As we've grown up, we've witnessed an increase in the number of people in this community, and with that larger population has come a new age of debate over the rights they should have.
Despite its growing size and visibility, the LGBT community has remained a repressed minority. Their lifestyle has become a mainstay of political and social debate and commentary for some time now. At its roots, the arguments over the freedoms LGBT community members are nothing more than a debate of civil rights. Rights that everyone, regardless of any preference, should have.
Though seemingly simple, that statement may seem controversial to some. For those who believe LGBT people choose their lifestyles or for those who think it is a disease, this view may sound dead wrong. And that is exactly the sort of uphill battle they have faced as more and more have publicly taken a stand in their own defense. Much like any other minority, they put up with more resistance than open mindedness, which is a problem that can only be altered by shifting to the opposing side of the fence.
The majority owes the minority, in any situation, the willingness to accept -- or at least entertain the concept of -- people's differences. Without this willingness to hear others out, the voices of the minority seem no more valuable than silence itself. And silence often does nothing more than create tension.
LGBT community members are struggling through civil rights battles reminiscent of those that blacks, women and other minorities have gone through before. Decades after their fights begin, most minorities still struggle to break the barriers created by prejudice. It's a disturbing truth associated with being a minority, one that can only change with the opening of the minds of people with the opposing viewpoint.
It's not about changing other's beliefs, but accepting them for who they are.
No doubt about it, there is a long battle ahead. Though some of it has already been fought, members of the LGBT community must continue to advocate equal rights for all Americans. Ask any woman or black person who can vote: Time alone does not bring change. Only through the persistent pursuit of a belief over time will change actually been seen. Without this constant, driving force behind their belief, members of the LGBT community will certainly fall silent to the majority.
In that situation, silence is anything but good.
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