LGBT | TRANSGENDER | ALLYSHIP

It Isn’t About YOU At All

To be an ally means knowing it’s really about them

We’ve been talking about how you can become an ally to the LGBTQ person in your life, how you can be an ally to ALL LGBTQ people. We started with the acronym ALLY and talked about coming Alongside someone, about Loving someone, about Learning their language. Today we will wrap it up talking about YOU.

I saw your eyes light up a little when I said this would be about you. Even though you read the title, you still got a little excited thinking I was finally ready to talk about what a struggle your loved one’s coming out has been for you. I hear you, I do. But no, that’s not what we’re going to talk about here.

When someone decides to come out and tell anyone or everyone they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, it’s easy to get caught up in how it feels to hear that news. Especially if you carry religious beliefs that condemn gay and lesbian lives, it can be beyond unnerving to realize that you now have two options. 1. Discard the person you love. 2. Discard the belief that it's your decision how someone else should live.

It’s quite that simple, although it most certainly doesn’t feel simple. It can be complex, wrong, appalling, or scary. And the truth is, you’re gonna feel the way you think. And no one, especially me, can tell you that’s wrong. I want to offer a word of advice, though.

If your feelings are negative, please try to express them outside the presence of your LGBTIQ loved one. For them, this revelation has nothing to do with right or wrong, normal or abnormal. It has to do with their very identity, their existence, their personhood.

Try to stop just for a minute and imagine how it would feel for someone to tell you your very existence is wrong, or immoral, or a sin. Your very existence is wrong.

Many cultures consider any sexual behavior or thought outside of a male/female marriage wrong. Others aren’t as concerned with marriage, but they are still quite sure that the only acceptable type of romantic or sexual love proper is heterosexual, male and female. There are places in this world where the government, your family, or your neighbor will kill you if your sexual orientation is outside their view.

I understand that every culture needs its norms. We do need to define what is acceptable and what is not. However, when we decide to label an entire population as unacceptable merely because it is not OUR NORM, aren’t we then deciding that we are somehow better than others? That somewhere we have the authority to determine which people have value and which ones do not?

I don’t want that kind of responsibility. I cannot bear the burden of deciding which lives are disposable. If I did, what would prevent you from choosing my life discarded as unworthy. My parents raised me with a Christian worldview. While my worldview is more humanitarian these days, there is a teaching referred to as the two greatest commands of them all-the first is to love God.

The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the one I want to guide my life.

Your big takeaway here is this really isn’t about you at all. It’s about that person you’ve loved for so long. It’s about a profound truth they need you to know. It’s about how the fear of rejection has kept them hidden away, even from you, for all these years.

The single most significant thing you can do as an ally is to understand; this whole thing is not about YOU at all.

Thank you for reading.

If you would like to know a little bit about why this topic is so important to me, I suggest you start with this:

Along the way, my desire to advocate for the LGBTQ community took me to Kenya, Africa, and a group of beautiful people who need our love and our help in a big way. Here are a couple of stories about that journey:

and

or head on over to this one, that begins the story of WHY I became an LGBTQ advocate: