Protecting the Right to Vote: The Only Way to Safeguard LGBTQ+ Rights
Republicans in nearly every state have introduced legislation to restrict voting access. These laws, which target primarily communities of color, people living with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ same-gender-loving community, and low-income people, make it harder for people to vote by mail, make early voting more difficult, impose harsher voter ID requirements on people with unstable housing and the inability to update their name, and make faulty voter purges more likely.
Each of these barriers to voting weakens our democracy, centralizing power among a privileged few who do not represent or care about the needs of the communities they’re supposed to serve.Unrelenting attacks on the fundamental right to vote are part of a larger, broader attack on our democracy — one that impacts the rights of Black people and the LGBTQ+ community (both of which are beautifully diverse and intersectional).
While the majority of Americans have intersectional identities, those of us with multiple marginalized experiences (including those within the white LGBTQ+ community) are affected by these challenges to democracy at an even greater rate.
Dr. King and Fannie Lou Hamer remind us that none of us are islands, but we are impacted by the things that happen to others in our community, throughout the country.
