Twice in our lives, we’ve quit our jobs and travelled around the world for a year with whatever we could carry on our backs. So we love this year’s parade theme: Color Our World with Pride. After San Francisco Pride, we will be headed to Okinawa, Japan, to participate in the Pink Dot Okinawa pride events and speak at the very first Okinawa marriage equality rally, to be held in the center of the island’s largest city. 

In Japan, we will also continue our collaboration with Japanese LGBT activists in Tokyo and Osaka. Recently, Akie Abe, the Japanese First Lady, rode in the Tokyo Pride Parade accompanied by a fabulous drag queen, and proclaimed: “I want to help build a society where anyone can lead happy, contented lives without facing discrimination.”

Across two oceans, Luxembourg Pride will celebrate the tiny country’s giant news that earlier this month it became the 19th country with marriage equality. The fact that Luxembourg’s openly gay Prime Minister Xavier Battel will implement the law makes the landslide 56-4 vote in the Chamber of Deputies all the sweeter. And as soccer fans around the globe follow the World Cup this summer, we take pride that the host country Brazil, a nation of 200 million people, boasts marriage equality. Indeed, last December the Rio de Janeiro Superior Court of Justice conducted the world’s largest LGBT wedding ever, in which 130 couples tied the knot.

However, in other parts of the world, LGBT people are marching for their basic human rights and freedom. In India, Mumbai’s Pride Parade this February drew a record crowd gathering to protest the Indian Supreme Court’s upholding “Section 377,” a British colonial era law that criminalized sexual activity of LGBT people. The Indian Supreme Court’s decision has galvanized many Indian LGBT people and allies to stand up and fight back. In a rare move, the Indian Supreme Court has agreed to rehear the case.

Sadly, there will be no pride parades this summer in many parts of the globe where LGBT people are struggling simply to survive. In nine countries, LGBT sexual activity is punishable by death. One image that remains emblazoned on our minds is a 2010 photograph of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who were arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison in the East African nation of Malawi for being gay and announcing their engagement to be married. The photo shows Steven and Tiwonge—alone and handcuffed together in the back of pick-up truck—being hauled off to jail, surrounded by a mocking and jeering crowd. We will hold their image in our minds as we ride down Market Street, celebrating the one-year anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s overturning DOMA and Prop 8, this past year’s historic string of marriage equality victories, and the wonderful degree of freedom we have attained in San Francisco.

We must create global collaboration and community to truly color the world with rainbow pride. Perhaps no country speaks better of the potential of such collaboration than South Africa. In 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world to gain marriage equality—before every other state in the United States except Massachusetts—thanks to specific sexual orientation protection in their constitution. Two years ago, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg praised the South African Constitution—a true product of international collaboration—as “a fundamental instrument of government that embrace(s) basic human rights,” and calling it “a great piece of work that was done.” This year’s Pride celebrations remind us that we have much more great work to do together.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, June 26, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/color-our-world-with-rainbow-pride/ A photo of Gaffney and Lewis also served as the cover for that issue.

When Ryan Kendall, a young gay man living in Denver, heard the news back in 2008 that the Califor­nia Supreme Court had ruled in fa­vor of the freedom to marry, he was so excited that he had to participate personally in the movement. He reached out to us as leaders of Mar­riage Equality USA, and we soon learned that Ryan as a 14-year-old boy had survived brutal so-called “conversion” therapy to change his sexual orientation. When Ryan’s parents had learned he was gay by secretly reading his journal, they shipped him off to a conversion program in Southern California.

In 2010, a witness was needed at the Prop. 8 trial to testify about the fact that people can’t change their sexual orientation, and Ryan did something heroic. He testified about the most vulnerable aspects of his life with a hostile opposition attorney poised to try to destroy him on cross-examination. That attorney failed, and Ryan’s testimo­ny had a profound impact on the trial. Judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over the trial and decided the case, stated recently that Ryan’s testimony was “the most touching” of the entire trial.

Right now Ryan lives in Texas, and last Saturday the Texas Republican Party enshrined a pro-conversion therapy plank in its party platform. After testifying at the Prop. 8 trial, Ryan has testified before legisla­tures across the country and has been instrumental to passing state laws protecting LGBT youth from conversion therapy. Here’s his reac­tion to Saturday’s news:

I began today like any other: I woke up, went to the gym, and af­terwards I decided to relax at home with a good book. Then I learned the news of the Texas GOP’s re­pugnant actions. It felt like a hot knife slicing through my soul. The pain of this act was visceral, and it is all too real for too many LGBT children and adults. As a young teen, the vile practice of so-called conversion therapy destroyed my life, tore apart my family, and near­ly killed me. I have spent the majority of my life working to overcome the horrific consequences of conversion thera­py, and I have dedicated my profes­sional life to eradicating this ter­rible practice. Let me be perfectly clear: Conversion therapy is junk science that kills children. Often, those of us who advocate against conversion therapy struggle to find survivors to speak out about their experiences because people sub­jected to the therapy are either too emotionally damaged to bear it, or worse yet, they did not survive. Put simply, conversion therapy is a very real threat to the lives of countless LGBT people in Texas, the United States, and abroad in places like Uganda and elsewhere. We will not sit silently while Texas and its officials abuse members of the LGBT community. This must stop.

With voices like Ryan’s, it will stop, and we as a community will achieve both legal and lived equality.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, June 12, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/taking-on-conversion-therapy-in-texas/ 

And then there were three.

Just a few weeks ago, there were five states either without marriage equality or without an active lawsuit for equal marriage rights. But the pace of change continues to accelerate with the filing of a new case for equality in Georgia, and the announcement that South Dakota will be next.

That will leave only three states—Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota—without either marriage equality or marriage lawsuits for the time being. Yet even Alaska’s Supreme Court just issued a unanimous ruling in favor of equal treatment for same-sex couples under Alaskan tax law. In its decision, the Court articulated that “[m]any same-sex couples are … just as truly closely relat[ed] and closely connected as any married couple, in … providing the same level of love, commitment, and mutual economic and emotional support … and would … get married if they were not prohibited by law from doing so.”

You could almost hear former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin exclaiming, “I can see equality from my backyard!”

Equality is also in the backyard of the couples who are stepping forward to challenge South Dakota’s marriage ban. They are marrying in nearby marriage equality states—Minnesota (where the Mayor of Minneapolis is performing one of their weddings) and Iowa (which recently celebrated 5 years of marriage equality since the Iowa Supreme Court’s historic ruling in 2009)—and then challenging South Dakota’s refusal to recognize their marriages.

Ten years ago, during San Francisco’s Winter of Love that brought marriage licenses to over 4,000 same-sex couples in City Hall, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist famously accused San Francisco of igniting a “wildfire” that was “likely to spread through all 50 states.” With equality or active lawsuits in 47 states, Bill Frist’s prediction is coming to pass today. Even deep in the heart of Texas, equality is advancing in unexpected ways as another judge just ruled that a lesbian couple’s divorce case could proceed because the Texas ban on recognizing such unions was unconstitutional. And Bill Frist may have known best when he said, “Recent court rulings have created a legal domino effect.”

It’s interesting to read these words today knowing that the tide has turned. When Mike Huckabee recently addressed the topic of whether he was on the “wrong side of history,” he said, “I’m not against anybody; I’m really not. I’m not a hater. I’m not homophobic. I honestly don’t care what people do personally in their individual lives.” We’ll let you decide whether he doth protest too much. While Gavin Newsom’s comment “whether you like it or not” may not have been well-timed, he did point out a conundrum for those who are against the freedom to marry: seeing historic change happening before their eyes, they have a choice to rage against it, or to embrace our common humanity. We know which side we’d rather be on.

In the meantime, the countdown to equality nationwide continues.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, May 1, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/countdown-to-equality/

The State of Utah’s stunning admissions in last week’s oral argument before the Tenth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals and in briefs filed with the court make one thing abundantly clear: the state should drop its appeal of the federal district court’s ruling last December in favor of marriage equality. We’ll never forget the joy we felt seeing over a thousand LGBT couples dash to their local clerk’s offices in Salt Lake City and other Utah environs during the winter 2013 holiday season before the district court’s order was stayed. It’s time for those weddings to begin again.

The State of Utah put forth many baseless, unpersuasive, and convoluted arguments before the court. The one that perhaps struck us most was the State’s concession that children of same-sex parents would likely be better off if their parents were able to be married. But instead of caring for those children by embracing the right of LGBT couples to marry, the State callously said that their “principal concern” in the case is “the children of heterosexual parents,” leaving the children of LGBT parents in the dust. When questioned at oral argument, Utah’s counsel matter-of-factly wrote off the needs of children of same-sex couples by saying that laws involve “tradeoffs.” Not only does their argument suggest a remarkable lack of human empathy, but it is also unsound as a matter of law.

One thing that rings loud and clear from last summer’s United States Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor striking down section 3 of DOMA is that Justice Kennedy and the majority of the Supreme Court are very concerned about the effects that discriminatory marriage laws have on LGBT families, especially the children on LGBT parents. The Court held that DOMA “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples….mak[ing] it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Further, the Court stated that “DOMA instructs … all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others.”

The saddest aspect of Utah’s legal argument is that it fails to recognize that marriage equality is not a zero-sum game. Ending the exclusion of LGBT couples from marriage robs no one else of their freedom to marry. Far from hurting anyone else, protecting and caring for kids of LGBT parents benefits everyone, not just LGBT families. Recognizing our common humanity lies at the heart of the marriage equality movement. In an attempt to appear compassionate, Utah wrote in its brief that it “respects and values [LGBT] citizens and their children as … equal before the law ….” If that’s the case, we urge the State of Utah to drop its appeal, end the marriage ban, and pass legislation to make full LGBT equality a reality in Utah.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, April 17, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/utah-should-drop-its-appeal-and-let-the-salt-lake-city-weddings-begin-again/

Last year at this time, the United States Supreme Court had just finished hearing oral arguments in two LGBT cases that resulted in landmark marriage equality rulings striking down Section 3 of DOMA and Proposition 8. Although LGBT rights are not before the high court in 2014, this year promises to be a barnburner of a year for marriage equality litigation in lower courts with a dizzying sixty cases pending in thirty states or territories of the United States. Consider what’s ahead in just the next six weeks:

On April 10, all eyes will be on the Tenth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals when they hear oral argument in the Utah marriage equality case, Kitchen v. Herbert. In December 2013, the federal district court in Salt Lake City struck down Utah’s exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, and hundreds of LGBT couples married in Salt Lake City and other parts of the state before the decision was stayed pending appeal.

A week later, on April 17, the Tenth Circuit will also hear arguments in the Oklahoma freedom to marry case, Bishop v. Smith, where the district court in Tulsa invalidated that state’s ban of marriage for LGBT couples. On the same day, a state court in Little Rock will hear arguments in same-sex couples’ lawsuit seeking marriage equality in Arkansas, Wright v. Arkansas.

Less than a week after that, on April 23, the federal district court in Eugene, Oregon, will hear arguments in LGBT couples’ challenge to Oregon’s denial of marriage for same-sex couples. The Governor and Attorney General of Oregon have stated in court filings that they consider Oregon’s marriage ban unconstitutional and are ready to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if the court strikes down the ban. In addition, the LGBT community and allies in Oregon have collected sufficient signatures to qualify an initiative to reverse the ban on the November 2014 ballot. The community has until July 3 to decide whether or not to pursue the measure, and if the district court strikes down the ban and marriage equality becomes the law in Oregon, the community will likely not submit the initiative for the ballot.

And three weeks after that, the action moves east to Virginia where, on May 13, the Fourth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals will hear arguments in Bostic v. Shaefer, a challenge to Virginia’s exclusion of LGBT couples from marriage. In February 2014, a federal district court in Norfolk ruled the state’s marriage ban unconstitutional. Same-sex couples in a separate class action challenge to Virginia’s ban, Harris v. Rainey, will also appear in the appeal. Virginia’s Governor and Attorney General are not defending the ban, but other state officials are pursuing the appeal.

Decisions in the district and trial courts could come immediately, or shortly after the hearings. Decisions in the federal appellate courts (the Fourth and Tenth Circuits) will likely come within months of the oral arguments. The case for LGBT equality has never been stronger. Stay tuned.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, April 2, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/a-whirlwind-six-weeks-ahead-for-marriage-equality/ 

Arizona’s recently failed attempt to enact a law permitting restaurants, hotels, and other businesses to deny services to LGBT people, under the guise of religious liberty, rightly raised the ire of LGBT people and all those who oppose discrimination. The nationwide attention the bill received also has a silver lining.

It awakened Americans to the fact that LGBT people currently have no protections against discrimination in public accommodations under federal law, and that only 13 states prohibit such discrimination against LGBT people (and another 8 states outlaw such discrimination against lesbian and gay people). In other words, even without the failed legislation, businesses in 29 states, including Arizona, currently can discriminate against LGBT people with legal impunity (if no local ordinance exists) because these states have no statutes prohibiting such discrimination, and federal law contains no such prohibition.

Ironically, our opponents’ efforts to enact this draconian legislation have educated Americans to the fact that LGBT people need these legal protections nationwide. It’s time for those who oppose discrimination in all its invidious forms to demand federal legislation to prohibit such discrimination against LGBT people.

The vetoed Arizona legislation also reminds us once again that we are all in this struggle together. Former Congressman Norman Mineta, speaking to the Japanese American Citizens League about marriage discrimination against same-sex couples, said “a threat to anybody’s civil rights is a threat to the civil rights of all Americans.” Nowhere is this insight more evident than the Right Wing’s efforts, under the guise of religious protection, to undermine gains in equality that LGBT people, other minorities, and women have gained over the last six decades.

Later this month, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in cases where owners of public businesses claim that their religious views about contraception should take precedence over the medical choices that female employees and their doctors make about what is in the best interest of the women employees. A decision in favor of the owners could dramatically narrow women’s opportunities in the workplace, and limit their autonomy over medical decisions – all under the guise of religious freedom.

Similarly, interpreting the First Amendment to allow business owners to use religion to justify discrimination could open a gaping hole in many other statutes that prohibit discrimination again minorities and women in employment and public accommodations.  After all, the trial court judge inLoving v. Virginia, the case in which the US Supreme Court ultimately overturned laws that banned interracial couples from marriage, ruled in favor such bans, proclaiming: “Almighty God created …(different) races …and placed them on separate continents…(this) fact…shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Religion could once again be used in innumerable contexts to justify discrimination.

The backlash against the Arizona bill is already causing other state legislatures to rethink passing similar measures. It’s time to seize the moment and enact federal legislation to protect LGBT people from discrimination in public accommodations nationwide.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, March 6, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/reflections-on-arizonas-vetoed-anti-gay-legislation-time-to-seize-the-moment/

My 89-year-old dad passed away last week. He was a marvelous person – and an intrepid love warrior throughout his life. When I was born in 1958, my dad told my mother that he would like to be the one who got up in the middle of the night to feed me. My mother agreed, and my dad always described our time together during those feedings as sheer joy. “We were having so much fun that you didn’t want to go back to sleep, and neither did I.”

Many years later, Stuart and I married at San Francisco City Hall on February 12, 2004, and I called my parents in Kansas City that evening to let them know. Before I could get a word out, my dad interrupted, exclaiming: “We saw what was happening in San Francisco on the news. Were you there? Did you get married?!” Just a few weeks before, my dad had heard then-President George Bush’s anti-gay pronouncements in the 2004 State of Union address, and I remember him telling me that it felt as if the President of the United States had attacked our family before the nation.

I came out to my parents back in the early 1980s. In many ways, I had it very easy: my dad was then a professor of counseling psychology with semi-out colleagues; and my mother, also a university professor, had hung out in gay bars in Amsterdam with her gay friends in the 1950s. Despite my parents’ experience and intellectual understanding, my coming out process, however, presented challenges for them emotionally. Over time, they overcame them, embraced Stuart and other friends, and for years sent me clippings of every gay-related article they saw in the newspaper. They even apologized to me for failing to be sensitive to what I had experienced growing up and asked my forgiveness.

My mother had passed away by the time Stuart and I were able to wed legally in June 2008, but my dad proudly attended the celebration at City Hall. Last March, I visited my dad at his retirement community in Chicago before going to Washington, DC, for the Supreme Court hearings in the marriage equality cases. My dad had told all his friends and many staff all about it, and that I had co-authored an amicus brief before the Court. When I arrived, marriage equality and LGBT rights seemed to be the talk of the community. His friends now refer to Stuart as my husband.

The Lewis family came to America from Wales in the late 17th century to escape religious persecution as Quakers. When they arrived, they started a book in which they wrote down every member of the family born in the New World. My dad has the book today. In one of our last conversations, he asked me to get the book and to make sure that Stuart’s name was included in it. It is.  My dad, born a kind, joyful, caring, and thoughtful spirit, was a love warrior to the end.

By MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, February 20, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/my-dad-an-intrepid-love-warrior/

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of San Francisco’s “Winter of Love,” in which 4,037 same-sex couples married at San Francisco City Hall from February 12 to March 11, 2004.  Those extraordinary days took the movement for marriage equality in California to a whole new level and inspired thousands of people to get involved.  We now have the freedom to marry in our state.  What the “Winter of Love” sparked remains highly significant as we continue the struggle for full LGBTIQ equality.

We began our involvement with the marriage equality movement on February 12, 2004, when we got married at City Hall. The experience was especially profound for us because it gave us the feeling of equality as members of the LGBTIQ community.  From the beginning, we have always considered the movement for the freedom to marry to be linked inextricably to the struggle for LGBTIQ equality in all aspects of our lives.

The Winter of Love ultimately led to the California Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in In Re Marriage Cases, establishing marriage equality in California before Proposition 8 and recognizing that commonality of purpose. It established that any California law discriminating against lesbian and gay people in any aspect of their lives, not just marriage, was presumptively unconstitutional unless the government could provide the most compelling of reasons for the law. The decision protects lesbian and gay people in myriad aspects of their lives from education to employment to the criminal justice system.

As public attention and opponents’ efforts focused on marriage, the California Legislature also quietly enacted laws establishing many important rights and protections other than marriage for LGBTIQ people. The 2010 Proposition 8 trial presented testimony about the gross harm that so-called gay “conversion” therapy exacts on lesbian and gay people, and the California Legislature went on to ban such therapy for minors.

Soon we may be faced with another challenge at the ballot box in California regarding LGBTIQ rights. On January 1, 2014, the School Success and Opportunity Act (Assembly Bill 1266) took effect. It requires that all California public schools respect students’ gender identity and ensures that students can fully participate in all school activities and facilities that match their gender identity. Opponents (many of whom backed Prop. 8) collected petition signatures to attempt to repeal the law on the November 2014 statewide ballot.

The state is now conducting a full count of signatures, and the referendum may or may not qualify for the ballot. If it does, we must share our lives and tell our personal stories to show the world, as we did during the Winter of Love, that laws excluding LGBTIQ people harm real people – in this case, transgender students.

We must remember that discrimination in any aspect of our lives and against any members of the community affects us all. And we must invoke the spirit and enthusiasm that the Winter of Love evoked to defeat the referendum if it appears on the ballot, or prevail in whatever challenge lies ahead for our community.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, February 6, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/the-relevance-of-the-winter-of-love-to-the-entire-lgbtiq-community-today/

Last weekend, our community lost one of our most powerful advocates and a truly wonderful person: Marvin Burrows.

Marvin came out 62 years ago – in 1951 – at age 15. A couple years later he met Bill, whom he would marry at San Francisco City Hall on February 13, 2004, 51 years later. In his own words from testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee: “I met the love of my life, William Duane Swenor, in 1953. He was 15 and I was 17. My father found out and told me to leave home if I continued to see Bill. After my dad kicked me out I had no place to go, and I was still in high school. I stayed with my grandmother until Bill could ask his mother if I could move in with them. She gave her permission, I moved in, and from that time on we lived as a committed couple.” After 51 years together, Marvin described his wedding to Bill as “the best time in our lives…”

But the courts declared Marvin and Bill’s marriage and the marriages of over 4,000 other same-sex couples who married in San Francisco in 2004 “null and void.” And as Marvin and Bill began to fight back with thousands of others, Bill died suddenly. Because their marriage had been declared to be illegal, Marvin was denied the legal rights and dignity that every American should have. The indignity began almost immediately after Bill passed away. “When Bill passed I called the cremation service that had taken care of my mother…However, they told me that I did not have the right to dispose of (Bill’s) body…(because they) considered us to be only ‘roommates,’ basically legal ‘strangers.’”

That was only the beginning. Soon thereafter, the Social Security Administration denied Marvin spousal survivor benefits and Bill’s labor union denied Marvin survivor pension benefits because the law would not recognize their marriage, even after 52 years together. Marvin was forced to move from the home that he and Bill had shared for over three decades. In Marvin’s words, “I lost my lifelong partner, my home, our animals, income, my health insurance, and even my bed and furniture all in one fell swoop.”

Marvin fought back in every way and with everyone he possibly could.

Over the years, Bill and Marvin had built strong personal relationships with many of Bill’s fellow local union members – all of whom identified as straight – and the union members had deep respect for Bill. They and many others stood up with Marvin, and after a 3-year struggle, the national union finally relented and awarded Bill’s pension to Marvin, saying it was “the right thing to do for a fellow member.” The victory was a public policy breakthrough for same-sex couples everywhere.

Marvin was a wonderful friend, and an inspiring activist with organizations including Marriage Equality USA, Lavender Seniors, GLOBE, Meals on Wheels, and California Senior Leaders at UC Berkeley, just to name a few. His legacy inspires us all to continue to stand up together and never give up.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, December 18, 2013: http://sfbaytimes.com/marvin-burrows-love-warrior/ 

As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk, our recent trip to Japan to speak about marriage equality made clear how Harvey’s call to come out is just as important as ever.

Significantly fewer LGBT Japanese have come out than their American counterparts, and LGBT Japanese are a much less visible part of society and the media than in the U.S. The Japanese people we met gave us insight into how coming out in Japan is similar to, and different from, America.

One Japanese activist told us that he came out to his parents in high school after his first date with a boy, because he did not want to keep a secret within himself and wanted his parents to know him as he really was. His parents were very accepting. But another activist described how 20 years ago, his father and brother beat him when he came out and threw him out of the house. He found his way to the office of a Tokyo LGBT activist organization that let him sleep on their floor until he could get on his feet. He has now worked for that organization for over 10 years and is a leading advocate for people with HIV/AIDS in Japan.

We met a bisexual student who wants to design LGBT manga cartoons to support the movement, but was afraid to come out to her father. We encouraged her to come out if it was safe, so that she could lead a life that was true to who she was and contribute her creativity and talent to help others.

Coming out appears to be particularly difficult for many Japanese LGBT people because of the importance of social conformity in Japan. Many college students told us that they had known perhaps only one openly LGBT person in their entire lives. We were the first openly LGBT people some had ever met. Activists told us that the pressure for conformity can lead to greater internalized homophobia, and that coming out can lead to significant social isolation and loneliness.

However, our speaking about Harvey Milk’s call to come out – both for one’s personal well being and for the benefit of the movement – seemed to resonate everywhere we went. Activists believed that more Japanese LGBT people coming out was critical to advancing legal, social, and political change, including marriage equality.

After hearing our marriage and coming-out stories, one student decided it was time for him to come out, too — but not as LGBT (he was straight) but as a Japanese person of Korean ethnicity, a group that faces significant discrimination. When he came out as Korean-Japanese and told his personal story of exclusion and discrimination, he received enormous support from his classmates.  In so doing, we hope he made his own life better and, at the same time, took an important step to help the movement for human dignity and equality for all – an act with which we believe Harvey would have been very pleased.

By MEUSA National Media Director Stuart Gaffney and MEUSA Director of Legal & Policy John Lewis 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, November 28, 2013: http://sfbaytimes.com/coming-out-for-marriage-equality-in-japan/