The Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, a queer-straight student organization at Georgia State, hosted event was geared towards answering and addressing any and all questions, assumptions and thoughts on members of the LGBTQIQA community and their allies.
Founded in 1982, the Alliance is one of the largest chartered student organizations at GSU with over 700 members and is the oldest queer-straight alliance in Georgia. LGBTQIQA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Queer and Asexual.
The Alliance has been recognized by the Human Rights Campaign, FOX 5 News Atlanta, the Southern Voice and the City of Atlanta for their presentation “Talk About It: The Power of Being Out” from 2005. In 2001-2002 they won the GSU Royal Flame Award for Organization of the Year and have also won the Social Program of the Year Award for their annual drag show, ‘The Exhibition.’
For the first part of the event the attendees were split up into ten different groups, one for each letter of LGBTQIQA, and had the opportunity to discuss each topic in depth. Each group was led by GSU students who could answer said questions without judgement and educate other students. For the second part everyone participated in a mass discussion and overview of the different identities. After, all in attendance were invited to dinner at the Midtown Cafe with the Alliance members. The event was intended to be a safe place for members of the LGBTQIQA community and their allies to get any questions they may have answered and the event was a success in that sense.
The Alliance meets every Thursday from 7pm to 9pm on campus. To find out where the meetings will be held this week check their facebook page, facebook.com/wearealliance, or their twitters, https://twitter.com/allianceatgsu.
I think the group is probably needed to open people’s eyes to the diversity of the sexual orientations of other people in the community, however if the label (LGBTQIQA) gets any longer we will have the whole damn alphabet in it. I think we can use more common sense in the label representation. You do not have to have everybody included in it. Transsexuals, Asexuals, Questioning, Intersex and who ever can —— have their own label.