By Kailey Franklin, staff writer
During the week of April 13th through the 17th, Indian Trail’s Gay and Straight Alliance will be holding yet another “Ally Week,” an event designed to celebrate the heterosexual supporters of the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Asexual community.
Ally Week is a district-wide event as well. The administration met with all of the high schools’ GSA clubs, and the clubs requested that there be an Ally Week.
While it’s definitely an issue that allies are being celebrated, it’s more of an issue that allies, who aren’t even members of the LGBTQA community, are the only ones being paid any attention at all.
The GSA club is supposed to be a club that educates and celebrates the LGBTQA community. However, the only publicized event, the only one given any importance, has been Ally Week.
Unlike actual members of the LGBTQA community, allies face no hardships for being who they are. In 29 states, there are no laws in place that protect against job discrimination for a person’s sexual orientation and in 32 states there aren’t any laws protecting people from job discrimination in regards to their gender identity.
On Feb. 10, 2015, Kansas governor Sam Brownback issued an executive order wiping out a previous order protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people from job discrimination.
Brownback commented on his order saying, “ensures that state employees enjoy the same civil rights as all Kansans without creating additional ‘protected classes’ as the previous order did.”
According to the Transgender Violence Tracking Portal, in the first four months of 2014, 102 acts of violence had been committed against transgender people, and about 10 percent of those crimes had been committed against trans youth.
Even more horrifying, psychologist Graciela Balestra says that the life expectancy of a trans person is only about 30 to 32 years.
But of course, let’s have Ally Week, because those are the people that need help, right?
Having Ally Week, rather than Pride Week or something similar, as an event is so that everyone can be involved, say GSA members.
“If it was a pride week, allies would feel left out,” said one member.
“It’s an inclusive group, we don’t want to exclude people,” said Shawna Ward, the advisor to the GSA club.
The issue is that no one needs to be convinced that heterosexuals aren’t inherently evil. No cisgender person is going to be fired for being straight. There is no lack of representation of straight and cisgender people in the media.
If an ally feels “left out” because of a Pride Week, that person can go practically any- where else in the universe and feel accepted.
LGBTQA people can’t do that. If they could, there would be no need for a GSA club at all.
Ward said it’s not that the GSA doesn’t want a Pride Week, it’s just that this year there’s an Ally Week.
“The club is not a static group,” Ward said. “It’s a dynamic group. We are open to doing a variety of activities.”
The GSA club also said that Ally Week is a way to help the club get more allies and members in general.
“If you don’t have allies, you don’t have anything,” said the club’s top officer.
While it’s true that most intolerant people won’t listen to LGBTQA people, and would most likely only listen to an ally, this doesn’t automatically mean that allies should get an Ally Week.
An ally’s job is not to speak for LGBTQA people. An ally’s job is to draw attention to what LGBTQA people are saying. If there were a Pride Week in addition to Ally Week, then maybe it would work out like this.
Indian Trail doesn’t need an Ally Week. Allies don’t deserve a cookie for being de- cent people and accepting that some people in the world are gay.
If the GSA really wanted to help the LGBTQA they’d do something of value, like educating Indian Trail’s students about the different identities of the LGBTQA community and spreading ideas of tolerance.