To the editor:

There have been multiple letters printed recently against the support of LGBTQ individuals and the rights they have and deserve. These rights are inalienable and are not up for debate. The attitudes of some of our community members against these individuals, however, are.

Throughout history this same scenario has been repeated over and over, each time with a different group targeted, and often using religion as a justification. Similar arguments with religion as a base were used against women’s rights, people of different ethnicities, people of color, and people of different or no religious backgrounds to name a few. History reveals numerous examples of the same pushback when any marginalized group desires to have the same (not more or different) rights as white male heterosexuals. Today the topic is the rights, even the right to exist, of LGBTQ individuals. And the arguments are no different. Throughout history it has always come to be that once rights are afforded to all, we move on. Never has extending rights we, as a majority, already enjoy to “others” ended poorly. Soon LGBTQ rights will be as commonplace as a woman voting or an Irish person being eligible for employment.

If history repeats itself, and it surely will, the folks currently afraid and threatened by the LGBTQ community being given the same rights they themselves already enjoy will move on to a different group to target. Unless they eventually learn the lesson that rights for others do not equal fewer rights for them. Here’s to hoping perhaps this time the lesson will be learned.

The NUHRC

Executive Committee

Wendi Ringhofer

Kristin Sprenger