“Straight Up Thanks” from LGBT Americans

My brother David shared a link to this great new Tumblr, “Straight Up Thanks”, in which LGBT Americans are expressing their gratitude to “straight” Americans who supported equal marriage in the recent election:

WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT THEM.

We are LGBT people who want to thank the straight people who helped us win marriage equality in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state, and who helped us defeat an anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota.

If you’re a queer person whose straight friends worked hard to win marriage equality—worked phone banks, knocked on doors, spoke out, gave money—send us a photo and a couple of sentences about what your straight friends did. Click on SUBMIT, upload a photo, and thank your straight friends publicly!

If you’re a straight person who worked for marriage equality… THANK YOU!

While many of us who consider ourselves “straight allies” around the world don’t expect gratitude for supporting human rights, this is still a great project.

From a social marketing point of view, this is a “consolidation” campaign. Back in August 2011, on my agency’s blog, I observed that equal marriage rights had already passed a an irreversible tipping point in the United States:

Despite fierce resistance from reactionaries, equal marriage is now supported by over half of Americans. I like to imagine that this was an effect of the 10% (assumed) of the population who are gay coming out and speaking out as a result of pride movements. Once their friends and family learned to accept this reality, homosexuality was on its way to being normalized in the society as straight people started to speak out for equal rights as well, spurred on by movements like It Gets Better, fckh8 and George Takei’s hilarious social media rants. This created a ripple effect which took public opinion from President Bill Clinton’s restrictive Defense of Marriage Act to President Barack Obama (in a dramatic turnaround) publicly calling for its repeal as more and more states legalize same-sex marriage.

This is the ideal time for LGBT champions to celebrate unity with “mainstream” society. Not because they should be grateful to be invited in, but because there is still a lot of work to be done to entrench equal rights at all levels of government, in most of the world. But at least there is momentum.