The Empire State Pride Agenda is firmly committed to all people having the right to sexual privacy and control of their own bodies, including full access to reproductive healthcare and safe abortions.
At the most basic level, we recognize that reproductive choice and LGBT equality are connected because LGBT people have reproductive healthcare needs and are making decisions about having children. Six million children, in fact, are being raised by same-sex couples across the United States, dispelling the myth that LGBT people do not have children and thus have no connection to issues involving the bearing and raising of children. Breast cancer and cervical cancer remain pressing issues for lesbians, as well as part of the complex spectrum of healthcare issues facing transgender people. LGBT youth need inclusive sex education, especially to prevent STDs and HIV/AIDS. This becomes more apparent in an age of “abstinence only” sex education, which leads to an ironic outcome for LGBT youth: since they cannot get married, they can never have sex, which of course is part of the goal for many of the proponents of “abstinence only” education.
From a legal and governmental policy perspective, choice and LGBT equality are connected because they both ask the fundamental question of whether individuals or the government will have the power to determine their own sexual and romantic lives. LGBT people understand that giving government control over sexuality is giving up the freedom to decide the most intimate and important decisions life has to offer. This dynamic is understood by our opponents as well, who want to control the sexual and romantic lives of all Americans under the guise of morality.
The liberty of both women and LGBT people is also threatened when governmental support of families is based solely on marriage or when marriage is promoted as the only legitimate setting for reproduction, which leads to the related argument that marriage exists primarily for reproduction. Instead, reproduction itself should be a choice available to all but not forced on anyone, and certainly not seen as a necessary outcome of expressing sexuality.
Finally, reproductive choice fits into the Pride Agenda’s vision of equality and justice, in which every individual and family has the freedom and tools to achieve personal fulfillment as they see fit, limited only by where another’s similar rights begins. The issues of choice and LGBT equality and justice, like all progressive issues, are based on universal values of fairness, equal opportunity, human dignity, integrity of self, compassion, empathy and love.
In furtherance of these goals, the Pride Agenda is a member of Causes in Common, a working alliance between LGBT activists and those fighting to maintain and expand reproductive justice. We support efforts to secure equal access to safe and affordable reproductive technologies. We also work in New York State government in alliance with choice organizations such as Family Planning Advocates of New York State on issues including availability of comprehensive, LGBT-inclusive sex education for New York’s public schools.