I have been noticing an interesting thing on Facebook over the last couple of months. There have been a lot of statuses about marriage equality and gay bullying in my feed. This is not particularly surprising considering I am gay. What is surprising though is that most of these statuses are coming from straight friends.
For example, since Monday several things around gay marriage have been in my news feed posted by friends who are not gay. The Australian marriage equality commercial that has been making its way around, Chick-fil-a and their anti-gay views, and the Iowan who was raised by two moms testifying about marriage equality were all mentioned several times by my straight friends. If I think back 6 months, I cannot recall any of my straight friends posting about gay issues on a somewhat regular basis.
To me, this is evidence that gay people in this country are continuing the hard slog to equality. The estimated 5% of LGBT people in this country are not enough to change the hearts and minds of the entire country. It takes these straight allies becoming more outspoken to continue to make momentum. Seeing these statuses on Facebook gives me new hope that someday we will be equal, and for this I want to thank every straight ally out there who is outspoken about gay equality.
These straight allies have also inspired me to become more outspoken. Before I would very rarely post anything to Facebook about gay equality to Facebook. Now I plan to talk about it a lot more on Facebook. I have long talked about it in person, on this blog, and in comments on other blogs. But due to not being out to my parents, and a desire not to alienate some of my old friends I have avoided discussing gay issues extensively on Facebook.
We need to thank our straight allies and support them. Like their statuses, leave supportive comments, and defend them when that inevitable troll tries to call them douche bags. We can not be afraid to talk about gay issues on the social media forums.