Penny Gardner
The Michigan Disability Rights Coalition, educates and advocates for people with disabilities (PWD). In the interest of this work they are reaching out to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights organizations to build bridges to common ground.
Within LGBT communities many people with disabilities are not safe – not safe because they get the message to "stay out". Every time access to all is not available at events, meetings, or social gatherings, people are excluded and are sent the message "you are not welcome".
And, within PWD communities, people who identify as LGBT and who have one, or several disabilities are not safe in the disability communities. One who is LGBT learns quickly to be suspicious of being accepted, respected, and treated well should they reveal who they are to their health care providers, care takers, or personnel within service organizations.
Powerful and insidious tools of society divide us one from another, some of which are stereotypes and labels; lies and misinformation; distortions and invisibility. These tools are used to deny PWD, and LGBT people basic human rights including the dignity of being full members of the human community.
In the shadow of these discriminations and prejudices we learn to distrust ourselves and others who do not conform to a physical, sexual, cognitive, independent, programmed ideal of a "whole" human being. We do not understood yet how in each of these communities we are fighting for the same basic human rights.
Just as LGBT people fight to be all of who they are in this land of opportunity for some, people with disabilities fight also for this same basic freedom.
Just as people with disabilities struggle to be safely visible, out, and proud, so too do the members of the LGBT communities struggle for the same human right to be.
Just as LGBT people fight to marry, to raise their children, to strengthen their family relations, so too do chair users, the chronically ill, the people who's disabilities are invisible fight institutional disincentives against them marrying, seek to overcome bias' and prejudices that claim their unfitness to raise children and or have strong family relationships.
Just as people who are LGBT, in our heterosexual culture, are often marginalized and devalued based on a characteristic of sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, people with disabilities are also marginalized and devalued because of a characteristic which may require special needs, and accommodations in an ablest society. A society which over values independence, self reliance, and pulling your own self up by your own boot straps.
Just as people with disabilities live with the core bias against abnormality, so too do people who are LGBT. Both disability and sexual orientation are part of the human condition. Just as people with disabilities know that their disability is not what needs to be overcome, and that it is society which creates the barriers that limit, exclude, discriminate against, people with disability.
It is also true for LGBT people that it is not who we are that is the problem, it is our society which devalues its members who's sexuality, gender identity and/or expression do not fit into the defined parameters. It is our society that must remove barriers to our freedoms, not the other way around. It is society's lack of humanity and desire to correct itself that is what must change to insure that all members have the same access to opportunities to prosper, to thrive, to live at peace, no matter their unique human characteristics.
It is through the generosity of the Arcus Foundation that the MDRC is inviting leaders and activists to attend retreats to explore and gain understanding of our mutuality. MDRC is planning another retreat in the fall. They are also exploring ways to engage people who are unable to get away for a weekend. They want your participation, your best thinking, your ideas.
You may contact Carolyn Lejuste at MDRC for further information or with ideas to build bridges, close gaps, and establish common ground between the disability rights organizations and communities and the LGBT rights organizations and communities.
