Supporting equality issues is important for everyone
A full-page ad that ran last week in The Spokesman- Review picturing a mother, father and three teenage children got me thinking about the A in LGBTQA in a whole new way. The copy surrounding the family photo read, “Our community is stronger when everyone is treated fairly. That is why we, as straight people, speak out today in support of equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”
The ad ran Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day. And that’s exactly what this family did – come out. The “allies” in the gay community who choose to be public about their support risk assumptions, stereotypes and general ill-will being levied toward them as much as any gay person.
The most obvious assumption is that the ally is in fact gay. Whether talking at work or at a dinner party, supporting equality issues can lead to suspicions. Asking outright if someone is gay is not standard practice in our culture, so the fall back is to assume, especially if the person is single.
Women regularly ask out Brooke Powers, a staff member at Inland Northwest Equality. If she works for an organization promoting gay rights, she must be a lesbian, right? Powers says she finds ways to decline the invitations without making her straight-ness an issue.
Knowing that these assumptions are common, even within the gay community, allies willingly put themselves in potentially uncomfortable positions. More ominously, allies are openly aligning themselves with a minority group that is frequently vilified or discriminated against. It is an amazing act of generosity.
Thankfully, I have yet to hear any horrible and degrading names attached to gay allies like those used in the 1950s and ‘60s about white Civil Rights advocates. Threats, though, seem to be fair game.
Equal Rights Washington, a statewide nonprofit, hired two contract lobbyists last spring to work in Olympia on behalf of the anti-discrimination bill, HB-1515. The lobbyists, Vicky Austin and Kim Hoff, were in Spokane for the “United We Win: Organizing for Equality Power Summit” last week, and Austin told a chilling story. When they began their work at the capitol, detractors of the proposed bill threatened to use the lobbyists’ work with ERW against them and get Austin’s and Hoff’s other clients to fire them. The threat with loss of jobs and loss of income has made Austin and Hoff more determined to steadily, respectfully change the minds of legislators.
To gather strength and find unity, the LGBTQ community knows allies are its greatest hope. Social justice is the right thing to demand on behalf of all, not just one particular group. The best way to ask for equality for everyone is to have everyone asking.