Did you see the news about sexual minority soldiers and the presidential nominee’s utterance? The recent exposure of homosexual soldiers in the military started a debate on the topic. The discussion has become heated and the rights of sexual minorities in Korea continue to be contentious. The topic has once again risen to the surface. Prejudice and negative perceptions are prevalent among people about this topic. So, we did interviews with representatives from Quest(an LGBT group) to learn more about sexual minorities.

When we think about sexual minorities, there are many prejudices and misunderstandings. We wanted to do our part to help end prejudices by conducting an interview with queer group’s representative. First, there is some confusion between the terms sexual minority and homosexuality. Sexual minorities not only includes homosexuals, it also includes many gender identities. So, we should not think that homosexuality always equals sexual minorities. Second, there is a common misconception that the cause of AIDS is homosexual love. AIDS occurrence among homosexuals is higher than among heterosexuals, but it is no way caused by sex among homosexuals. AIDS is caused by the HIV virus which can be spread by anyone having unprotected sex. Finally, most people think that feminine guys and manly women areal ways gay. But, that is not true. Sometimes, masculine men feminine women are gay.

Hand-written posters are popping up to educate people about sexual minorities at university. Queer group’s representative said “A hand-written poster’s purpose is having a voice in an oppressive society.” Some people ask a question here. “People usually raise the pros and cons about sexual minorities, why do they use the sensational presentation from a hand-written poster?” Queer group’s representative said we wanted to visualize the sexual minorities to non-sexual minorities, so it was not writing to favorable for non-sexual minorities.

What do they want society and colleagues to do? They want to change the word ‘homosexuality’ to ‘sexual minorities’ to people and admit to the existence of sexual minorities. Society usually excludes sexual minorities from human rights policies. So, one of their goals is the inclusion of sexual minorities in human rights policies.

Like this, there are many facts that we don’t know about sexual minorities. They are the same as other people, therefore they have human rights like other people. They have human rights like ours, can we deny their existence? We should take double standards off and give them the same line of sight.

                                                                             L.L.F reporter Ha-yeong Yang