Your December 6, 2010, editorial “Keeping the ‘equal’ in equal rights” received much online attention (at the time of writing, this link had been taken down). It is my understanding that the misinformation about the reported Jay McDowell incident will be corrected by The Lanthorn in a follow up letter. I look forward to these corrections. However, there is another glaring piece of misinformation that has not been addressed.

The editorial states the following:

“The LGBT community is not the only community with rights that need protecting.”

I wish this were true. I wish the LGBT community HAD their rights and that we could be in the business of protecting them as well as the rights of every other marginalized community. However, that is not the case.

The fact is that in the state of Michigan, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals are not protected under our Eliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act. This means that LGBT people are not protected from either housing or job discrimination. Additionally, our hate crimes law excludes protections based on sexual orientation and gender
identity/expression. In Michigan, not only can same-sex parents not adopt, we have a constitutional amendment which bans marriage equality.

The author asks us “not to get carried away” when it comes to LGBT “rights” (the rights that do not exist). That is a request often made by those who enjoy privilege in our society… those who have their rights. To ask individuals of a minority community “not to get carried away” is to ask them to suffer in silence and to believe that their inequality does not impact the society in which we live.

We must remember Dr. King’s words “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and remember that when one of us is diminished, we are all diminished. Only then will we be truly keeping “the ‘equal’ in equal rights.”

Colette Seguin Beighley
Director, LGBT Resource Center