Love Not Debate IDAHOBIT: Love Is Not a Debate: What

Love Not Debate IDAHOBIT sits at the heart of this DG Speaks story, where culture, travel, food, and personal reflection meet.

Focus Keyword: IDAHOBIT Day
Slug: idahobit-day-lgbtq-rights-belonging-reflection
Meta Description: IDAHOBIT Day, observed on May 17th, is a global call for acceptance and equal rights. This personal essay explores what it means to stand for belonging in a world that still asks too many people to justify their existence.

May 17th is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, known as IDAHOBIT Day. It is observed in more than 130 countries. And every year on this day, I find myself sitting with a feeling that is equal parts hope and exhaustion. Hope because so many people around the world are fighting, advocating, celebrating, and refusing to be diminished. Exhaustion because we are still having the same foundational conversations about whether certain human beings deserve to exist fully and freely in the world.

The answer is yes. It has always been yes. And yet, here we are.

Why This Day Exists

IDAHOBIT Day was created in 2004 to draw attention to the violence and discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ people worldwide. The date, May 17th, was chosen deliberately. It marks the anniversary of 1990, when the World Health Organization finally removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The fact that there was a list. The fact that it took until 1990. The fact that the consequences of that classification – in law, in medicine, in how families treated their own children – lasted for generations.

These are not ancient history. They are living memory. And in many parts of the world, criminalization of LGBTQ+ identities is still very much the present reality. That is what IDAHOBIT Day asks us to hold alongside our celebrations. Not just the progress. The distance still remaining.

What Belonging Actually Looks Like

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between tolerance and belonging. Tolerance says: I will allow you to exist. Belonging says: this place is yours too, and we are glad you are here. Those are not the same thing. Not even close.

For LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are also navigating race, ethnicity, disability, or any other layer of identity, the gap between tolerance and belonging can feel enormous. It shows up in family dynamics. In faith communities. In workplaces. In countries that technically have legal protections but culturally make it clear that some people are still being permitted rather than genuinely welcomed.

I have seen what genuine belonging looks like, in communities and friendships and spaces that get it right. It looks like people showing up whole, without calculating what version of themselves is safe to bring into the room. It looks like ease. It looks like the particular relaxation that comes from not having to manage someone else’s discomfort about who you are.

That ease should not be a privilege. It should be a baseline.

The Intersection I Stand In

As a Black and Latina woman, I know something about being asked to justify your full existence in spaces that were not originally designed for you. I know what it is to walk into a room and do an immediate, unconscious calculation about what it will cost to be fully yourself. I know the particular weight of navigating identity in a world that prefers its people to be easier to categorize.

That shared experience of being othered does not automatically create solidarity. But it does, for me, create a point of empathy and connection with communities facing their own forms of that same pressure. When I see LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are also Black, also Latino, also existing at multiple intersections – fighting for the right to simply be – it is not abstract to me. It resonates somewhere specific and familiar.

Standing with this community on IDAHOBIT Day is not an act of charity. It is an act of recognition. We are connected in this project of insisting that every person deserves to occupy their full humanity without apology.

Travel Has Shown Me Both Sides

Travel, for all the ways I love it, has also made visible to me how differently LGBTQ+ people are treated around the world. I have been in cities where queer culture is visible and vibrant and integrated into the fabric of public life. And I have been in places where the silence on the subject is so complete it communicates its own message very clearly.

Those contrasts stay with me. They make me think about what the experience of traveling, which I associate almost entirely with freedom and pleasure, might feel like for someone who has to research in advance whether the country they are visiting might criminalize their identity. That is a dimension of travel I get to not think about in the same way. And I try to hold that awareness with some humility.

What I Am Doing With This Day

I am using it to say clearly, in my own space, with my own platform: I believe in belonging. I believe that every person’s dignity is non-negotiable. I believe that love, in whatever configuration it takes between consenting adults, is not a debate I am interested in having.

I am also listening. IDAHOBIT Day is not a day for allies to center themselves. It is a day to amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ people, especially those whose voices face the most risk. To donate if you can. To show up in the rooms where the conversation is happening. To make your own home, your own table, your own community a place where belonging is the standard.

That work does not end on May 18th. But today is a good day to recommit to it.

How are you observing IDAHOBIT Day this year? Share in the comments, or simply share this with someone who needs to read it.

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