As always, I try my hardest to stand up and support LGBT rights, as I am a member of the community myself. As far as we have gotten with our rights, it is sad to see that there are still so many people out there who will never change and will continue to be judgmental.

One thing that bothers me is that when I go up to a friend or someone I know and they are with another person I do not know, the other person automatically makes a comment something to the effect of “Who’s that gay guy?” or “Why is he talking to you?”

People come on, we are in 2018 and you should know better than to treat people of the LGBT community like this. We are humans just like you.

As I have said before and will continue to say, the only difference between us and you is that we are either attracted to someone of the same gender as us or some of us feel that we are not the gender we were born to be.

Why should my sexual preference define who I am? It is simply a preference, just like when someone prefers Coke over Pepsi. I do not see people defining others based on preferences like that.

One of my goals in life is to continue to stand up for LGBT rights and hopefully some day it will not be an issue for people. I understand there will always be people out there that seek to hurt and judge us, but we have to stand strong and show those people that we are not “sick” or “weird.”

I wake up every day and although my sexuality does not define me, I am proud to be who I am and proud of my sexuality. I respect people like me who have had to deal with the constant judgement, attacks, brutality and hatred. It is simply not right for us to have to go through this.

My younger self would have just walked away and let people treat me like this, but not anymore.

I have grown older and wiser, and I will stand up to any one person who makes a comment towards me that is rude or who attacks me.

I am not afraid to be who I am and I am not afraid of what other people think.

I think that we have to let go of our fears and stand up to people and let them know that we are not going to let them get away with this.

We have to fight and although it may seem like a never-ending fight, it is a battle worth fighting for. We have to self-respect and self-worth and we cannot let the haters take that away from us.

Andrew Paisley is a junior journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at abpaisley@eiu.edu.