COLCHESTER – A class action lawsuit filed this week by several letters of the alphabet is claiming that the LGBTQIAPK community has shown discrimination by not including all letters equally. The suit also claims that favoritism is shown to certain letters, such as ‘L’, in terms of placement and exposure.
The lawyer representing the alphabet say that they were contacted originally by ‘O,’ hoping to be included to represent omnisexuals, but that many other letters quickly jumped on board.
“As soon as O started talking, I knew we had something big here,” said Don Binary, who has been working on the case since its inception. “I said, ‘Hold on O,’ and I immediately got on the phone with W, who I had worked with years ago in a case against the NBA, and things just took off from there.”
Binary says that the struggle for inclusion has long been an issue in the LGBTQIAPK community, not just from the larger society, but internally as well. “Do you know how long it took T to get in there? And while I’m including P and K in my list, they’ve told me privately that they are not always included, and are sometimes just represented with a plus sign. Do you know how it feels to be told, here are the most important orientations, and the rest of you can just be labeled as ‘and everyone else’? Every single orientation is as important as every other. In a perfect world, that list would be over seven billion letters long, because nobody can truly be defined by someone else’s experience. Shouldn’t we all have our own letter?”
“I don’t understand why I don’t count,” says M, who had applied to be admitted with the hope of representing the metrosexual community. “Yeah, it started out as a joke, or an insult I guess, but so did most of the other terms, and now they’re symbols of pride. If Q got in, I think there’s a case for me too.”
L, which stands for lesbian in the acronym, has faced the most public pressure to step aside and let one of the other letters have top billing for a time, but they say there are important reasons why this should not happen.
“Look, I didn’t want to be first, believe me,” L said. “It’s basically just a huge headache. But people know the acronym now. They use it. It’s branding. We can’t just call ourselves something else. Some people don’t even use the new letters we have added. Can you imagine if we changed them all around. At the beginning we played with different letters in different spots. We just didn’t want to sound like a Transit Authority of some sort. Or a sandwich.”
Regardless of the outcome of the case, everyone involved agrees that the publicity is a good thing.
“I’m just happy people are reading and talking about us,” said X, who hopes to be included to represent unknown sexuality. “Most people haven’t put me in the conversation at all, and they keep using that stupid plus sign. Um, really? There’s already a perfectly good letter to represent an unknown value. But now people are learning what all the letters mean, or want to mean anyway, and I hope it will bring acceptance in the end. And even if we don’t win today, I hope someday when future generations look back to see a turning point when all people were recognized and accepted for who they are, well, I just hope I’ve helped mark the spot.”
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