I bet you’re all very excited to hear about sexuality from a heterosexual cis-female. The fact of the matter is: we are all impacted by this change in varying ways. On the bright side, that means we can all do something to make things better.

There is no denying that there have been drastic changes within the past few years regarding the topic of sexuality and the presence of the LGTBQ community in the news. I guess we can all thank Caitlyn Jenner for blasting this door wide open, but this was an issue long before it was made into multiple reality shows. I didn’t know many people that were personally impacted by these issues until I entered college but my perspective has not changed and it goes a bit like this: identify as whatever feels right to you, love whoever feels right to you, and express yourself however feels right to you.

The difference in world views between older and younger generations has always been apparent to me. In regards to views on sexuality and gender, however, there could not be a bigger generational divide. I understand that my parents and my parent’s parents probably never thought that there would be a gray area between or beyond the two societally-accepted genders. I understand that hearing or seeing something like that would be confusing and, at first, perhaps hard to accept.

But, moms, dads, grandmothers, and grandfathers, do you remember the golden rule that you taught all of us? And for those of you in the younger generation that criticize others because you cannot relate, do you remember it? “Treat others the way you would want to be treated”. Why have we all suddenly forgotten that?

No, I am not directly affected by LGTBQ rights because I am “lucky” enough to identify with and express the gender that I was born with as well as have the acceptable sexual preference for that gender. I say “lucky” because I don’t think these are choices that people are making – they’re personality traits that are going to fall as they may. And I say “lucky” because I wouldn’t want to be treated the way some of these individuals have been.

I genuinely don’t understand why we feel the need to restrict aspects of other peoples’ lives that have nothing to do with our own. How someone dresses, identifies, or who they marry doesn’t put me in danger or affect me. The real danger comes when you oppress the rights of individuals and they feel the need to rise against either society or the government to be heard.

Just calling a group of people you don’t understand “dangerous” isn’t going to make the problem go away. It’s not like you can have them all locked up and separated from society. What you’re doing is ostracizing a group of individuals within the society and denying them their rights. What’s that thing about history? It repeats itself?