Inhumane Acts of Society

Artist Statement

The Inhumane Acts of Society

Lillyana

My piece is a painting with a few of the LGBT flags. There are quotes from different people including Pink, Daniel Radcliffe, and others all relating to the simple fact that we are all equal no matter who we love. We shouldn’t need to worry about what others think just because of our sexuality.

I chose this subject because I noticed that people in the LGBT community are constantly having to worry about discrimination. In many other countries if you are found as part of the LGBT community you can be killed, and even here in America people in the LGBT community are constantly facing discrimination at their workplaces. Even children are being put into conversion therapy, which is a type of therapy that uses many different unproven practices, verbal abuse, and sometimes even physical abuse. After people go through conversion therapy many of them run away or commit suicide, all because people did not accept them. I want to stop these unjust acts.

After I conducted research towards this topic I found that 15% to 40% of gay and transgender people have experienced discrimination of some kind at their workplace. I also found that 40% of homeless children in the U.S. are LGBT that ran away from home because their parents rejected them or made them undergo conversion therapy. Each year about 5,000 homeless young people will die because of assault, illness, or suicide while trying to survive. If you do the math, that's about 2,000 LGBT people dead each year because people would not accept them for their sexuality. 41 states in the U.S. allow conversion therapy, which is causing more and more children to run away from home and commit suicide.

With this piece I am trying to say that we need to bring awareness to the LGBT communities and in particular to how much of a threat they face. No matter where you go there are homosexuals, and heterosexuals constantly battling for what they think is right. If we all just did what we think is right and not worry about other people, this world would be a better place.