Former President Barack Obama has given a transgender activist in India an inspiring message of hope, after she asked him how she could find acceptance for her gender identity.
Last week, Obama hosted a town hall-style meeting in New Delhi, India, part of an Obama Foundation talk about activism and being an active citizen.
Akkai Padmashali asked Obama how she could find acceptance after facing discrimination and stigma.
“I was a sex worker, I was a beggar, I was rejected by all sections of society,” she said, before asking Obama, “How can I speak up in front of a society when I am a criminal under Section 377, which criminalizes you as a transgender, gay, lesbian, or bisexual? How do I raise [my] voice against this?”
Obama responded by telling Padmashali that she had already taken the first step by speaking out about it.
“It begins with what you just did,” Obama said, “which is to find your voice and to be able to articulate your views and your experiences and tell your story. And that’s true of any group that is marginalized, stigmatized. Finding that voice and being able to tell a story so that the perceptions that somehow you are different are broken down, because people start recognizing their own experiences in you — they see your humanity.”
Obama told Padmashali that by sharing her experiences, Padmashali could motivate others to do the same.
“Once that voice is there, hopefully others join you. And so now you have networks and organizations and allies,” Obama said.
He noted that it can be easy to become discouraged by incremental change, but that activists should take “some measure of hope” by looking at the advancement of LGBTQ rights in the United States and other countries.
“When I was in college, this would be back in the early ’80s, it was just beginning for persons who were openly gay or lesbian to have student organizations,” he said. “The laws on the books were still discriminatory across many states in the United States. Now there is just an open acknowledgement, even among many conservative parties, that we should not be discriminating agaisnt persons because of sexual orientation.
“And that happened, with respect to human history, amazingly quickly,” he continued. “In the span of 20 years basically. Now, in the span of one person’s lifetime, that can seem painfully long, but it requires a steady education of the public, and then a political strategy that puts pressure on elected officials. And that’s going to take some time.”
Akkai Padmashali, Credit: taalk com / YouTube
Padmashali, whose organization Ondede focuses on awareness of LGBTQ rights and people, told India’s The News Minute prior to the event that she wanted to use her opportunity to focus on the LGBTQ community.
She also noted the difference between Obama’s presidency and that of his successor, who has made attacking LGBTQ rights a core part of his first year in office.
“In the present situation in India and the United States, we don’t see an enabled environment where people have the right to expression, right to identity, right to privacy, all the fundamental, civil and human rights guaranteed to us,” she said. “We are not following that now.”
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Little Rock restaurant, with the owner citing concerns from LGBTQ employees over her political positions.
On March 13, Sanders dined at The Croissanterie, arriving unannounced with two guests, staff members, and her State Police Executive Protection Detail.
Her party had been seated for more than an hour and had already paid and tipped when she said the restaurant owner asked a member of her security detail to have them leave.
A Florida woman has been arrested on a felony child abuse charge after allegedly cutting a young family member with a knife upon discovering messages indicating he is gay.
According to South Florida TV station WPLG, police began investigating Grether Leidy Guadarramas Pena, 41, after the boy told a teacher what had happened at his home on March 14. The teacher then reported the incident to authorities.
An arrest report from the Florida City Police Department states that the boy -- whose age was not specified -- told detectives his brother discovered Discord messages about his sexual orientation and took the computer away. The brother then gave it to another family member, who "made him stand facing the wall" until Guadarramas arrived home.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little recently signed a bill into law adopting what may be the strictest bathroom ban in the nation, under which anyone who enters a bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth can face prison time.
Idaho already bars transgender students in public schools and universities from using bathrooms that do not align with their sex assigned at birth, and has a separate law requiring multi-occupancy restrooms in colleges, universities, correctional facilities, and domestic violence shelters to be restricted based on a person’s assigned sex at birth. But this new bill goes even further.
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