Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post by yours truly 😁.
This week I wanted to write something that is very exciting for me. In case you don’t know, it’s February which means it’s LGBT+ History Month, therefore today I’m going to talk about the importance of this month to the community, and if you are a part of the LGBT community, you’ll be delighted to know that we have our own society here at University College Birmingham!
A lot of people think “why is it important to have a whole LGBT+ History Month every year, if we are in the 21st century and the community has gained all these rights in the last few years?” Well I could compile a huge list with all the reasons for this… but I am just going to talk about the main reasons in my personal opinion:
- There are still 73 jurisdictions in the world where being LGBT is criminalised. We can be killed or go to jail for literally just being ourselves.
- Being homosexual was a criminal offence in the UK until 1967, so it’s still fresh in the head of many Britons…
- History books never contain any stories about the LGBT community, although there’s loads of inventions and achievements by members of the community that were just forgotten by many.
- Let LGBTQ+ children have role models and learn about their own history, make them feel proud about who they are, something many of us did not have during our childhood/teenage years.
- And most importantly in my opinion, learn how to change the world from our past mistakes.
It’s a month that means change and recognition for me! There’s still a lot that needs to be done but we are getting there each day that passes so do not lose hope 😁.
Furthermore, if you are a University College Birmingham student and part of the LGBT community, feel free to join our society!
See you next week!
Alex x