LGBT vs. asexuality

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Some people include an "A" in the LGBT acronym to include asexual people. However, do asexuals really get the same discrimination that LGBT people get? I'd think that asexuals are typically only seen as being odd or strange. I don't think they get all the hatred that LGBT people get because they're not into sex, nor do they typically get beat up or job discrimination because they're not into sex.

Not touching that one.
No pun intended.

As someone who is homo-romantic asexual and experiences both homophobia and acephobia I believe that asexuals do belong in the community. Asexuals experience the same heteronormativity and often have to come out same as other LGBT people. Who cares if they don't experience it the same way. I have no idea what it's like to be transgender, but we still belong under the same acronym.

Onto the discrimination thing I'd mostly agree with you. From my experiences aces are less at risk, but less accepted. Let me explain.
Worst case scenario for coming out as gay would have been to have been beaten, maybe even killed. Conversion therapy, disowned. Pretty sh***y all around. Thankfully my parents aren't satan and this didn't happen. Coming out as ace doesn't carry these risks. Worst thing that could happen would be to be raped in an attempt to correct this or to prove that I am not in fact asexual. I also carry this risk however due to being a lesbian. (fellow aces are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong in this)

Despite this I am more comfortable coming out as gay rather than asexual. Everyone knows what gay means. I don't have to explain it again and again only to be told that it's not a thing, despite being living breathing proof that asexuals exist. Basically more people are familiar with and accepting of gay people than ace in your typical social scenario. There is also the point that gay people have the community to fall back onto without any doubt of their belonging (of course bi and trans people have historically been rejected) wheras here we are debating whether ace people deserve that kind of community and to be able to march in our parades.

That. Or receiving constant unwanted sexual advances because people view a declaration of asexuality as some kind of sexual challenge or invitation. That they are being invited as the one to "turn" the asexual person. A conquest.
The other discrimination asexual people get is being invalidated and their legitimate sexual orientation dismissed as a mental or hormonal sickness. Which of course, it is not. They can be discriminated against because of their lack of sexual proclivity - for example if someone was to be honest about being asexual in a pre-job psychiatric evaluation, they may well be cut out of the running because they have "mental problems."
I'm not asexual because I do experience sexual attraction - just don't desire sex with other people for all sorts of other reasons. I think aces belong in the acronym as much as transgender people do - because being trans isn't a sexual orientation, whereas lesbian, gay, bisexual and asexual are.

Good point! There really are parallels between how aces are dismissed as mentally Ill and/or sick and how gay people were (often still are) and like I said a lot of the way people try and "fix" aces or see us as a challenge is identical to how lesbians (probably men too) are treated

Some people assume asexuals are gay & in the closet so asexuals can still face the same discrimination. I'm on the asexuality spectrum & lots of my classmates thought I was gay & treated me like I was..