LGBTQIA

Try and say that title 3 times, fast. It's do-able, but difficult. This acronym is a newly founded way of describing the changing the gay, transgender community. The "L,G,B,T," most of you probably know, stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. However, many of the people in the gay community do no identify with any of these names, so they added, the "Q, I and A". The "Q", stands for "questioning" or "queer," the "I' for "interest" or someone who does not recognize themselves as a male or female, and the "A" stands for "asexual" or a person who does not have a feeling of attraction. Through the addition of words to this acronym, the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A is trying to envelope more people who feel uncomfortable in their own skin.

While reading this article in the "New York Times," I immediately began thinking of a saying I once heard that talked about the correlation between the more words a society has to describe something, the more important that something is. In this situation, I think this applies perfectly. In earlier times, there weren't even words to describe the LGBTQIA community. Many people thought people who were gay were sick or even a part of dark magic. Then as time went on, we came up with the words gay and lesbian. However, as this article pointed out, even those words don't suffice. Nowadays, there are more and more people who are coming out, not only as gay, but as transgender, or something unidentifiable. This issue is not only becoming more talked about with more words, but it's also becoming more prominent in our society today. My question is, so you think more people now are identifying as LGBTQIA or are they just taking this time to speak up?