Messages from Seven Straight Nights: Yet here you are

So many times the fight for freedom is a lonely one. The need to fight at all is a constant reminder of what almost every LGBT person would rather forget: that we are different, often hated, never able to just live our lives like everybody else. Maybe that's why there are so few LGBT activists - when the nature of your minority status is one that can allow you to pass, it is even more difficult to stand up for yourself... what sane person would ever step into a fire of misunderstanding and hatred when they could choose not to?

And yet, here you are - a straight person, surrounded by other straight people, joining that lonely fight. You don't have to. It would be so easy to walk away, to focus on any of the dozens of other issues and challenges that demand your attention, to stay safely on the sidelines of what many will say is not your fight. Yet, again, here you are. There is a divine madness in that. Thank you for walking this road with me, for standing in the fire for the sake of my right to love... for taking up this cross in a way that I can't, speaking to audiences who simply don't have the ears to hear a lesbian, or a gay man, or a transgender person.

Speak strongly. Love those who persecute us. Know that whatever happens, just by standing with us, you've made a difference. Thank you.