Safe Zone

This week in cultural anthropology we broke off into small groups and met with safe zone. Safe zone is a group at UAB that is active in creating a safe place for all different kinds of people to feel comfortable being exactly who they are. When you join the group you agree to be supportive of cultural diversity and the needs of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender). Although I have several friends who are gay, this experience with class taught me a lot. We got to meet with a student, Shibli, who is gay and a woman, Amy, who works in admissions who has been married to a woman for 9 years. Everyone was allowed to ask questions to the two panelists and they responded with what they thought. One question was about gay marriage and whether or not Amy and Shibli thought that the majority of Americans supported gay marriage and were just afraid to admit it openly. Amy and Shibli both agreed that they thought that this was true...it seems that when confronted, many Americans will say that they support gay marriage and even adoption by gay couples but then they will deny this to others. I learned also that some gay couples decide that instead of adoption they will use a surrogate to carry a baby for them. Amy said the only issue she sees with this is that only one person in the couple can have a biological connection to the child and this may bother some couples. Another question asked was how does being in the GLBT community affect your religion. Shibli explained that it has affected how he feels about his religion. He has not yet come out to his parents and is not sure how they will react. They are Muslim and he has felt disconnected with his religion since he figured out that he was gay. Amy said that it has had no affect on her spirituality. I know from having gone to many different churches that the GLBT is only accepted certain places. We learned in our sessions that statistically educated people re more tolerant of GLBT than uneducated people.
Another huge topic that we talked about was if we thought the gay rights movement now is equivalent to the civil rights movement of the 60's. I think that the two are very similar but at the same time they are very different. Obviously the civil rights movement was about race and the gay rights movement is about sexual preference. Another difference is the severity of physical abuse that the people of the civil rights movement went through was much worse than the violence toward GLBT today. However this is not to say that the GLBT does not have to face violence toward their community on a regular basis. Amy told us of several instances of violence against students at UAB. It is truly sad and appalling that one student would lash out on another student simply because they have a different sexual preference. Also another disturbing fact of intolerance toward GLBT are places called conversion camps. These conversion camps are set up to turn gay kids straight again. Obviously these people who created the camps and the parents who send their children to them do not understand that some people are just made different than others. Those people do not see that it is no big deal. They see embarrassment, shame, and confusion as to why their child is not like them.
What I hope for this world is tolerance among people. A person should not be defined by their sexual preference, their color, or anything like that. A person should be defined by their personality, the things they love, the things that make them who they are. Yes a persons sexual preference and also their color is a part of them too but someone should not be known as "Ted the gay guy". I hope that as students at UAB, the 3rd most diverse collage in the country, that we can set an example of tolerance and create a place where every person feels accepted.