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Comment by jmcgough | Hacker News Reader

As a queer person watching a slew of recent anti-LGBT laws pass, I wish I could have the luxury of just ignoring the news and not caring. Aaron was 20 when he wrote this and it shows.

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What, specifically, would have happened to you if you simply ignored it all? Would you have accidentally violated one of these new laws (in the place where you live) because of not reading the news?

I think his perspective is a bit more nuanced than this; the complaint is with "real-time" news (somewhere on his blog, Aaron wrote about how he preferred to read post-event summaries in the New Yorker rather than being up-to-date every day).

I'm not aware of any recent laws that restrict the rights of LGBT individuals, could you please name them?

Both ACLU and HRC have convenient tracking for these bills.

Last year over 300 bills were introduced, and 29 were signed into law (still far too many).

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-wor...

https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-the-aclu-tracks-a...

Just one example:

Tennessee has recently passed a law banning “male or female impersonators” from performing in public places. Tennessee also does not alter sex on birth certificates for trans people.

Arguably this means that Tennessee banned trans people from performing in public in any capacity.

You do know that LGBTQ refers to 5+ different things, right?

Of course I do. What’s the purpose of this question?

seems to be about the Ts rather than about the Ls, Gs, and Bs.

LGBT as an umbrella term has never made any sense to me. One of These Things Is Not Like the Others.

as well as individuals being different to each other. lots of different lesbians, with lots of different ideas, opinions.. everyone is an individual. it's not like one heterosexual is the same as another.

I am trying to understand this. People can be different from each other but still share relevant attributes. For example, two women can have different ideas and opinions, but they are both women. I don’t see the problem here

I don’t see how you can come to that conclusion. “Male and female impersonators” as written in the law was meant to refer to drag shows, which are definitely not just trans people.

Do you think things would change if you stopped following the news?

If you take the time you follow the news now and spend it voluenteering at an LGBT group, do you thing that would do more or less for your cause than watching the news?

Not lgbt, but had the same takeaway. Can't blame him. It's funny that at 20 we know everything. By 40 we barely know anything.

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