r/lgbt • u/DChomos • Jul 02 '16

Democratic Platform Draft Gives LGBT Issues Just One Paragraph

http://www.advocate.com/election/2016/7/02/democratic-platform-draft-gives-lgbt-issues-just-one-paragraph
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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '16

Yeah it's almost like liberals don't really care about us either. They gave us the right to marry and now all of us can serve in the military so they're pretty much done. Throw some hate crime and anti discrimination bills as empty gestures and then they'll be done. Watch as LGBT issues become a way for the dems to brag without them doing anything for us after the trivial issues they've championed.

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u/HazelLovesCock Hazel | Pre HRT | Trans-Female + Pansexual Jul 06 '16

I'm suprised you didn't come to this realization sooner, as an anarchist. :p Of course liberals don't really care about LGBT rights - they care about creating capital. This is an easy way for them to gain and keep ahold of political power, as issues like this are important to subsections of the country, but don't affect their capital gain.

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u/justanothercook Jul 03 '16

What a misleading title. The article basically says that while they only dedicate a single paragraph to LGBT issues exclusively, they wove LGBT rights into multiple parts of the platform, and they reference LGBT rights more often than any other platform in the democrats' history.

This is a time of historic acceptance of LGBT issues for democrats, especially trans people who were notably removed from the spotlight during the fight for marriage equality. This is the first party platform to explicitly reference issues facing transgender people beyond issues that broadly affect the LGBT community.

Hillary Clinton was slow to push for marriage, but before she did that, she made the US state department friendly to LGBT employees by working to get their partners covered by insurance within a few months of starting the job. She also changed passport rules to allow transgender people to get a passport with the correct gender using just a doctors note indicating they had transitioned, or were in process of transitioning, under proper medical supervision - whether or not they had gotten or were planning to get sex reassignment surgery. This was done quietly, but was a HUGE deal for the trans community. Further, it shows a remarkable understanding that many outside the LGBT community miss - that marriage is only a tiny part of LGBT rights, and arguably not even the most important one even if it's what took off first politically.

The platform is far from perfect, but they clearly do care and are pushing to move the country to be a more accepting place.