Reply #1220: Homelessness and LGBT rights are inextricably linked

[Prism]

Most of my volunteering hours are spent working with shelters for LGBT youth. LGBT youth are affected by the callous attitudes that permeate society's general attitudes toward the poor - they don't count, who cares about them, they're on their own. They're cast off, unsightly, unwanted, unloved, and best ignored.

That attitude is an American problem that affects every struggling American no matter what their identity. It is the attitude that enables our government to worry about Wall Street first and foremost, with the scant crumbs left over flicked off the table at the hungry below.

Anyone who dismisses an individual from society because of their social station, class, or identity is not my friend nor my ally.

Poverty and outcasts are allowed in this country because we allow them, because we don't want to see what we've done, because we do not want to acknowledge how our actions and our willful blindness allow these conditions to go on and on.

We treat lives as if they're pieces in a partisan political game.

That is how cheap we've allowed lives to become.