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From the Editor: Why it’s imperative we find common ground

From the Editor: Why it’s imperative we find common ground

Holly Hatch

Each January is a fresh start – full of excited promises we’re making to ourselves and hope for change developing during the coming year. Our resolutions are commitments and promises to continue improving our bodies, souls, faiths and psyches.

Toward the beginning of each new year, our self-improvement agendas may seem inspiring, even if a little daunting. We hope to build our strength and self-image by joining a new fitness center (See pages 23 and 38 to learn about new workout centers in the community), we vow to keep up with the latest trends in order to boost our career and social lives (see page 37 for new fashion), yet the largest and last part of our lives that ultimately escapes control is physical health. We all age, we all get sick – we all sooner or later encounter the health care system, and put ourselves into the hands of someone else.

Some of us take for granted that our health is under our own control. We take for granted being able to see a doctor when we’re sick. We think nothing of the ability to medicate away that headache or sniffle, cure that ache or rush a prescription to the Queen Soopers pharmacy and fill it for less than $12. But for many folks in the LGBT community, basic health care is not a guarantee – it’s a daily struggle, financially and emotionally draining.

Where does one find health care providers or insurance companies that will cover us if we are transgender, if our partner’s employee benefits don’t cover us, or if we have a pre-existing condition?

Where does “equality for all” end, or begin?

Hopes and fears abound surrounding Obamacare – the Affordable Care Act – the political buzzword of a decade. The law, to some, gives hope of catching those falling through the health care system’s cracks, while to others it’s a matter of uncertainty and worry about how we’ll be affected by its complicated provisions. In our cover story on page 20, many experts say the ACA will mend some concerns about access to health care in the LGBT community. But we still have a ways to go ensuring those in the trans community can get medical support through their transitions, those with HIV get the best life-saving care, and the whole community has access to LGBT-friendly doctors.

I urge all of us in the LGBT and allied community to take a stand for the under-represented and under-served.

Lesbian and gay couples who’ve been covered by one partner’s insurance policies might think the struggle for fairness is over. Yet it’s imperative that we stand up and continue to fight for everyone to get the best resources for a healthy and vibrant life. We are all in this together, after all, in ways extending far beyond our need for better public health.

We’ve heard from trans folks in the community – those like Julia Hatch, whose Speak Out column in our Dec. 5 issue detailed her frustration with segregation between lesbians and gays and the transgender population. We’ve also heard frustration from those who are cisgendered about segregation and discontinuity in our community. When did our promise to support and include one another turn into a bad episode of Gossip Girl?

At Out Front, we see and hear about these gaps in equality, and our commitment and our goal is to be a platform for all voices in the LGBT community. We hope we see our struggle as a common one, not just a “gay” struggle or a “lesbian” struggle or a “trans” struggle. Our promise to the community is that we will continue to take all issues within the LGBT community to heart, and fight to create change and opportunity for everyone, whether it is same-sex relationship recognition, trans equality or anything else affecting our community’s diverse members.

A friend, Summer Snover, once told me about her work as a masseuse. Over a beer at a local tavern I asked her if it was difficult to deal with such different needs and body types, or stay energized with five hour-long massages in a row. Her response changed the way I look at people who society deems “different.”

She said: “It used to be really hard, especially if there was someone who neglected to take care of their body, because my job is to revive what they’ve neglected. But I realized that if I found something – even if it’s small – to love about every person on my table, I could more easily give them a better experience. I began to love what I do on a whole new level.”

Perhaps the message for this arrived year is just that: To learn to love something about the people we struggle with, or don’t feel like we can connect with, and relinquish our stereotypes to our basic human connection. Love is our commonality.

Let us take the time to love those we don’t understand, and realize that someone else’s struggle or fight, is also our own struggle. We all deserve the right to equality.

We can do better. And we will do better as we continue to fight the challenges we all face on a daily basis. That is, after all, the goal of our existence as humans.

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