LGBT Tuesday: LGBT History Month!

Welcome back to Unabridged Andra's LGBT Tuesday! This is the place for your reviews and interviews about books, characters, authors, and themes that revolve around the LGBT community. Why? I believe that books, any books, help people empathize and understand people in a way that they couldn't normally. When reading a book with an LGBT main character, the reader gets to be inside their head, and experience what they think, feel, and know. In this way, straight and gay readers alike can really learn what's going on in the lives those who identify as something other than straight. Like you learn courage, bravery, and justice from Harry Potter as he battles Lord Voldemort, so too do you learn courage, empathy, and compassion from going through the trials of being transgender when you read Luna (This week's LGBT review!).  The Re-Launch of this bookish event couldn't have come at a better time. While the US is still in hot debate in places over the issue of Gay-Marriage, the overall tide of the debate has turned a corner. More people in the United States support gay marriage than don't and on a global level, things look good for the progress of LGBT relations.

The UK- being vastly ahead of the US in the past on issues such as slavery, interracial marriage, etc.- has already passed a measure to make gay marriage legal which will be enacted in 2014. That being said, February is the UK's LGBT History Month! The LGBT community has gone through a lot, and has such a long way to go in order to achieve equality on all fronts, but we're getting there. This month is important to commemorate the terrible losses and discrimination that those who are gay have faced, as well as directing hope towards a future that focuses more on human rights and equality than on than on petty differences.

Still, some setbacks, such as the criminalization of "Gay propaganda" in Russia persist in our world. It is my hope, that through literature and thoughtful discussion, this blog can play some small part in opening up minds and hearts to equality. This week's post is a short one. I have only just re-launched my blog and the new direction that I am planning on going. Check in next week for links, history, articles, reviews, and maybe a giveaway or two!

Also! Come back next week as I bring up MY Top 10 Moments in LGBT History!