Issues Facing the GLBT Community

By Mike Rotkin

The GLBT community is faced with many issues related to equality. We need to move beyond tolerance to respect and appreciation for the contributions of the GLBT community.

The issue of discrimination continues to be a significant problem, ranging from issues related to lack of equal access to society's resources through ridicule and insults, to open violence. Many of these problems are magnified in school settings. Again, we have made some significant progress on these issues in California in general, and especially in Santa Cruz, but schools remain very difficult places for young members of the GLBT community--with daily taunts, jokes, insults, threats, intimidation, and outright violence all too common.

The lack of social recognition is also a serious problem. We need to move beyond "tolerance" or "acceptance" of diverse lifestyles to a recognition and celebration of the significant contributions to our community made by many, many members of the GLBT community. We are still in a difficult period in which we are not past the risk that right-wing politicians and activists and fundamentalist religious zealots will try to undo the great progress we have made, and an unfortunately large amount of our energy is required just to defend the gains we have made so far when we should be moving to advance the struggle for full equality.