If I were president, I would start by addressing the violence against the LGBTQ+ community. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects (NCAVP), nearly one in ten LGBTQ surviors of domestic abuse have been sexually assaulted by those partners. Between the hypersexualization of people within the community, the stigmatization, and internalized homophobia, LGBTQ people are at a higher risk for assault, poverty, and violence. 

Within the LGBTQ community, transgender people and bisexual women face alarming rates of sexual violence, and it often begins before adulthood. The 2015 U.S Transgender Survey discovered that 47% of transgender people are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime, while transgender people of color, including Native Americans(65%), multiracial people (59%), Middle Eastern people (58%), and African Americans (53%) who responded to the U.S Transgender Survey, have most likely been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Nearly half of the bisexual women surveyed (48%) have been raped between the ages of 11 and 17. 

Due to the stigmatization of the LGBTQ community, people who are a part of it are often hesitant to ask for help from the police, hospitals, or shelters. According to the NCAVP, 85% of health care workers and victim advocates reported having worked with an LGBTQ survivor who was denied service because of their sexual orientation. This is extremely off putting, as this nation is supposed to protect every citizen, regardless of their sexual orientation. 

Unfortunately, it does not stop there, as the LGBTQ community has been denied services from stores, landscapers, and even wedding planners. Based on excerpts from the Religious Institute, Victoria Rodriguez-Roldan and her wife were forced to keep their relationship hidden for her wife to keep her job at a tutoring center.

“My wife actually had to make up a fictional male fiancé and later husband to account for the wedding rings to anyone who asked,” wrote Rodriguez-Roldan. “The business claimed to be supportive of us but did not want to ‘upset the parents.’” 

The continued mistreatment of the LGBTQ community is unnacceptable. As a nation, we should be able to support and encourage everyone’s differences. If I were president of the United States, these issues would be brought to light immediately, as everyone needs to recognize that who a person is and chooses to love is not, and will never, affect anyone else’s existence. The United States of America should be a safe place for everyone, not just for people who fit into society’s definition of “normal.”