#this is a button

"In your words, what do school board members & those who oppose equality need to realize when it comes to equality for our LGBT students?"

They need to realize that too much blood has flown from the wrists of the children shamed for those they chose to kiss. From those who can't help what they are, Can't help that they aren't 'normal', that their body doesn't agree with what they are, or that they love the same gender or sex.(This is blatantly riffing off song lyrics, I will not be including this for serious.)

It's bad enough kids torture each other for normal things like not wearing the right clothes, or not being <whatever>. Every person that says that it's not normal, or right, or okay to be like the same sex or be a different gender than your sex reinforces that fear.

Because, you see, everywhere you look there's the message that you must like the opposite sex. That you must be what you look like, and that you should produce biological children. That those are all musts.

We blank out the history, of gay rights and trans rights. We blank out the history and the learning that those things are okay too.

They need to realize that silence from them perpetrates those ideas- that it isn't okay to be different, that it's dangerous to be different than you seem. That your sex and gender must agree, because there's NO reason they shouldn't, right? No scientific reason.

They need to realize that their silence tells those children that everything they've ever heard bad is *RIGHT*, about those being differents I spoke of up there. Their silence tells them that those who have killed themselves, that those who were tortured to death by their peers, that such a fate will be theirs too. Because they are different

And different is BAD,

and BAD can be killed without repercussion.

Because, you know... Different is less than Human.

No. It's not. But the silence they exude is acceptance of that hatred, and without the role models, without the ground to stand on.. The acceptance of the hate is as bad as the hate itself, LGBT Youth are people too, and they don't get that daily affirmation that every straight and cisgender person does. That's what they need to realize.