Martin Luther King Junior said, “Races do not fall in love and get married. Individuals fall in love and get married. Why don’t you want your fellow mean and women, your fellow Americans to be happy? Why do you attack them? Why do you want to destroy the love they hold in their hearts? Why do you want to crush their hopes, their dreams, their longings, their aspirations?” (Capehart). He used this statement in terms relating to racism, however, it applies to discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Most people today are not accepting of LGBTs, otherwise known as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. They are constantly treated unfairly and discriminated against because of who they are. Examples of these discriminations include the fact that LGBT children that are in foster homes are rarely adopted, gay men cannot donate blood, and LGBTs were not allowed in the military. Foster care agencies have a difficult time placing any LGBT children because gay children face cruelty in foster homes and don’t fit in. Kenneth, a gay teenage boy who was placed in a foster home, got so lonely that he resorted to “calling his cell phone carriers help line with imaginary complaints just so he could have somebody to vent to” (Cherkis 15+). Kenneth finally had a date with a boy and it all went great until Kenneth brought the boy home to meet his foster dad. His dad responded by kicking Kenneth out of the house, he refused to deal with a gay son (Cherkis 15+). “They are the one population thrown out of their home because of who they are,” stated Gerald P. Mallon, a professor at a school of social work in New York (Cherkis 15+). “An organization surveyed its 246 families and found only 21 who were willing to accept a gay teenager” (Cherkis 15+). Many other social workers have stories like Kenneth’s in the aspect that gay kids have a lesser chance than straight kids of finding a home where they are accepted. Some of the stories include “the gay youth in Florida who tore through 48 placements in 4 years and the lesbian teen in Connecticut who made a pinky promise with her social worker to ‘not be gay’” (Cherkis 15+). Some say that “recruiting more gay and lesbian adults as foster parents is one option” (Cherkis 15+). However, “cash strapped child-welfare agencies have done a poor job of reaching out, and legislation like Florida’s ban on gay adoptions hasn’t helped” (Cherkis 15+). The ban on gay adoptions in Florida is not backed up by evidence as to why same-sex couples would not be suited to adopt. “In June 2006, in a case concerning gay foster parents, the Arkansas Supreme court found no evidence that children raised by gay couples were disadvantaged compared with children raised by straight couples” (McCage). Surprisingly, “the Legislature found that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples” (McCage). This is true because it is frequently heard that opposite-sex couples are having a child on accident, without meaning to. “Gays and lesbians do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse” (McCage). They become parents because they truly want to be. Another discrimination is that gay men cannot donate blood. “Since the early 1980s, the blood service has said that a man who has had sex with another man since 1977, even once, cannot donate blood because Canadian Blood Services contends these men are at a higher risk of contracting HIV” (Beaumont 27+). Kyle Freeman was determined to prove that the ban discriminated against gay men. Freeman “lied on pre-screening test and gave blood regularly as a sexually active gay man. Freeman did not have HIV or AIDS. He said he protected himself and blood recipients by using condoms during sex and waiting six months before donating blood after sex. Before he gave blood he got tested for HIV.”
