To Those Who Think Marriage Equality Is Enough
From A College Student Who’s Sick Of This Shit
Hi everyone. My name is Elena Schmitt and I am a freshman at the University of Michigan. I graduated in the top 10% of my high school as Senior Class President, homecoming queen and National Honors Society member. I have met with former Prime Minister Tony Blair and been interviewed on PBS to discuss interfaith relations. I was selected to attend the International Rotary Conference and have gone through diversity training with the Anti-Defamation League. I was accepted into a top 10 business school, and am a college athlete. I plan on attending law school after I graduate. The things I care most about are my friends, family and community. Also, I am gay.
I chose to list my accomplishments first because I want to show my depth as a person. I want to be known for my triumphs and my passions. But even though I resist it, I know I will often be seen only as my sexual orientation. You cannot over-achieve your way out of being in a minority group. Trust me, I’ve tried.
When I brought my girlfriend to a high school dance, I was asked why I had to “make a political statement”. I didn’t understand how me taking part in a normal experience was threatening to others. I felt subtly ashamed by this accusation; shame that LGBT people are exposed to constantly. And like water and wind wear away at a stone, this wears away at us.
For people like me, the path to achieve our goals has some implications. There are laws in place throughout the U.S. that allow businesses to fire employees based on their sexual orientation. Statutes exist called “Gay Panic Laws,” across this so called, “home of the brave”. They provide a valid legal defense for anyone who kills a gay or trans person. The killer can claim that a person’s LGBT status sent them into an uncontrollable hetero-panic-killing-frenzy.
I am tough, and I can live with knowing that these things are a reality in my world.
But I can’t live with knowing that hundreds of kids kill themselves because society says they don’t matter enough to be protected.
I can handle dealing with some extra challenges, but I can’t handle seeing my dad in tears when another gay couple is assaulted, because he fears I will be next.
I am so desperate to tell him these things won’t happen to me. He just cant understand how someone would want to harm me.
After all, I’m his youngest daughter.
I’m the child he watched take her first wobbly steps.
I’m the girl he witnessed clambering onto a school bus for the first time.
I’m the rebellious teenager he stayed awake worrying about late at night.
I’m the young woman he waved to as he drove away from her dorm, praying that she remembers the lessons he tried to teach her when he had the chance.
I crave the ability to comfort him; to tell him he’s paranoid. I want to assure my dad that my character is enough to protect me from maliciousness. I want his love and guidance to be enough to keep me safe, but we both know it is not.
Hate and violence take no time to understand their victims.
We might have marriage equality, but my classmates at my so-called diverse institution use the words “faggot” and “dyke” as insults. In 2015, my high school may have chosen a gay homecoming king and queen, but an auto shop ten minutes from my house legally refused service to gay people.
Marriage doesn’t change that a row of men holding guns could line the front of my high school’s theatre while others preached that people who are like me are rapists and perverts. Marriage doesn’t change that adults yelled gay slurs at me as I sat with others in the theatre because we were too stubborn to fully surrender our space to hate. It doesn’t take away the sound of a woman’s muffled scream that plays again and again in my mind because a man grabbed her neck when she yelled dissenting words. It doesn’t erase the memory of policemen running down the aisles or the sickening fear I felt in my bones thinking that someone was going to get shot. It doesn’t eliminate the disturbing goosebumps that travelled up my back as the speaker on stage led the hate mongers in the audience in singing Amazing Grace as the woman was being strangled. It doesn’t dry the tears that ran down my face when I couldn’t take stay inside any longer and walked out. It doesn’t remove the feeling of weakness I felt when I let untrue words get to me; because surely they were wrong.
Marriage doesn’t change that so many kids like me grow up feeling invaluable and broken.
It isn't a bandaid that heals wounds that are agitated everyday. This is some of my story, and many in my community have suffered more than I have. I am sharing this because we must make this horrible reality end. We’re still not covering the basics. Marriage equality is a starting point, but when so many people are hurting, we can’t stop to celebrate for long.
There’s more work to do.
