Fighting Injustice: Intersectional Approaches to LGBTQIA+ Advocacy

The movement promoting rights for the LGBTQIA+ has moved forward significantly in the past few decades. The legalization of same-sex marriage in many parts of the world, the rise of the conversion therapy bans, and public acceptance of a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities growth.

Nevertheless, there is still injustice and discrimination, usually more pronounced to the LGBTQIA+ population and further complicated due to racial, economic, and other structural oppression. The intersectional perspective recognizes the multidimensional nature of people's identities and lives and is crucial for building significant social transformation.

Thus, intersectionality holds that identity factors such as race, class, gender, sexuality, disability status, and age are not stand-alone; they are connected and interact. A black lesbian encounters oppression, unlike a white gay man or a Latino person with a disability who does not identify as either male or female. As identity is multilateral, injustice comes in many ways.

Focusing on the voices of multiple marginalized is one of the ways that intersectionality can be practiced within LGBTQIA+ advocacy work. Rising viewpoints from the Trans Women of Color Collective or the Audre Lorde Project, for instance, look at trans people of color who are usually subjected to severe violence and erasure. Elevating indigenous two-spirit and LGBTQIA+ youth into leadership positions also serves to accentuate their unique struggles.

Furthermore, complete advocacy also needs to investigate how mainline LGBTQIA+ organizations might unawaresly exclude people due to race, income, immigration status, disability, age, and many more. The critique of corporate Pride is that it ignores ongoing needs in the community, makes wheelchair-accessible community centers, and offers materials in more than one language; inclusion work is a work in progress.

Structural and cultural levels, the winning of LGBTQIA+ rights can also be disentangled from the struggle with racism, poverty, mass incarceration, xenophobia, ableism, and other systems of oppression. Regardless of whether advocating for the adoption of the Equality Act or the prohibition of conversion therapy for minors, messaging should underscore how such changes would benefit those who live at the margins. Let me say that when policies such as bathroom bills or immigration bans target trans and queer people of color, being vocal is necessary.

Working with other social justice organizations also multiplies the effect. The 1970s collective helped progress both Black feminist and lesbian feminist goals, while today, alliances between racial justice groups, reproductive rights groups, and LGBTQIA+ groups make solidarity across movements. Shared vision and non-single-issue politics are a way to provide a foundation for the undermining of the intertwining systems that support injustice.

The intersection of identity and oppression does create complexity, but this complexity only requires advocates to approach the issue critically, humbly, and comprehensively. An intersectional LGBTQIA+ movement strengthens the bottoms. It is about dealing with the entire truth of racism and hetero-cis sexism that is integrated within policies, institutions, and culture. Despite the task's difficulty, we are approaching true freedom with each new 'we' that has been accepted.