In celebration of diversity, freedom and human rights, October represents a month of awareness to gay/lesbians and is highlighted by last Saturday’s National Coming Out Day.

NCOD is aimed at raising civil awareness not just for gay/lesbians but also: bisexual and transgender individuals.

“I think the significance of it is just a way for us to celebrate being out and not having to be ashamed of who we are,” Michael Henderson, 20, sociology major and member of the Gay/Straight Alliance, said. “It’s nice that there’s a whole month as well as a whole day.”

NCOD was founded by Dr. Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary in 1988, one year after 500,000 people marched in Washington D.C. for gay and lesbian equality.

“Our society has built up this world where you need to be heterosexual to get by and live a ‘normal’ life. There’s no real definition of normal; it’s like we have to fit in, we have to be straight,” Henderson said. “If they’re not straight, there’s something wrong. There’s this whole stigma about people being gay.”

To celebrate the month of October, centers like the one in Long Beach hosted film festivals to help raise awareness to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. The celebrations for the day this year were few because of the looming threats of both homophobic threats and the emergence of Proposition 8.

The many people who oppose the sexual preferences of these individuals in the gay and lesbian community also stand as a large roadblock.

These difficulties escalate when murders of gays and lesbians are reported.

“There was a kid, Lawrence King, who was an openly gay boy at his school and he was murdered,” Michael Henderson, 19, sociology major and member of the Gay/Straight Alliance, said. “He asked a boy out to a dance and he was murdered; he was in middle school.”

King lived in Oxnard, CA and succumbed to fatal gunshot wounds from a weapon that 14 year-old Brandon McInerney used on Feb. 12, 2008.

McInerney was said to be bothered by an advance by King, but speculation over the ultimate cause of the brutal slaying looms.

He is being charged as an adult with premeditated murder, is being held in lieu of $770,000 bail and faces 50 years to life in prison if he is convicted.

Hate crimes, in any form and to any one should not be tolerated and are not be viewed as an option no matter the situation. Crimes that involve violence is never a good choice.

In addition to hatred from others, gay and lesbians suffer from the their own families rejection to their sexual preferences. According to a study done in 2006 by National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 26 percent of gay teens surveyed that came out to parents and guardians were ask to leave home. In addition, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual youths leave home for reasons of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

For others, hostility from family members is still evident, but have support systems available to them like friends or in some cases, family.

“The thing I deal with most is my family and not so much my friends because all of my friends are really cool with me being who I am,” Henderson said. “If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be their friend.”

Family denial and acknowledgement may inevitably play a role in an individual’s quest for acceptance from loved ones, Henderson said.

Vanessa Durand, 19, English major and member of the Gay/Straight Alliance also feels that family tension has been one of her worst experiences as an openly lesbian woman.

“Instead of taking the time to get to know what you’re about and what being gay or being in a relationship means, they just tend to push you away a little,” Durand said.

In addition to hate crimes, work for the gay and lesbian community is suffering from the lack of equality that the straight community enjoys. Of all the Fortune 500 companies, 47 percent still do not provide benefits, like healthcare, for gay/lesbian employee’s partners.

And with Proposition 8, California has the opportunity to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, threatening to end any progress that homosexuals have made over the years to gain acceptability.

Even with all these problems, the gay and lesbian community can still celebrate this month of awareness and progress.