I am writing this post from my deeply personal place and the opinions expressed here are my own. I speak as a white person with many privileges.

What do I want Non-LGBTQ+ people to know and to do.

Pay Attention to LGBTQ+ issues

You don’t need to know or understand everything. But have a basic understanding of what rights LGBTQ+ people have and which they don’t. Be aware of what rights are being attacked and removed. The Supreme Court has stated (Thomas) that they are going after gay marriage, the privacy of sex, and birth control (Obergfell, Lawrence, and Griswold). You know who has known this for years. LGBTQ+ people. We have been saying it. But many Non-LGBTQ+ people have not been listening. I don’t have the time or the energy to be educating people on this. In my mind, if you cared we would already know what was happening. I have plenty of people in my life that do.

Understand and Validate Our Feelings

My primary current emotion is rage. There can also be depression and sadness and anxiety mixed in. I deserve space for all of that. Let me have my feelings with you listening or validating them. Don’t try and make me feel better. You can’t except by  listening. Most Non-LGBTQ+ people don’t know what it is like to have a right given or taken away by the courts (unless you are of color and then you know for sure). I got married in 2004 in San Francisco. It was an amazing experience. Something I never expected in my lifetime. It got overturned by the courts. Not unexpected but still devastating. More devastating was 2008. I got married in the time frame between when CA legalized marriage and Prop 8 overturned it. From 2008 until 2015 when Obergfell was ruled on I was married in CA but not in the eyes of the federal government. Try filing those taxes. It was devastating. For weeks after the election, I looked at everyone I passed on the street and wondered did you vote against my civil rights? At the time, straight people in the Bay Area were shocked it passed. Gay people were not. We know.

Also, I love when I hear my Non-LGBTQ+ friends and family express rage at the attacks. Sometimes it feels like we are all alone in this.

Do Something to Support Us

Give money to causes, challenge transphobia or homophobia when you hear it, put your pronouns everywhere you can, vote like our lives depend on it, post supportive things on social media, tell us you love us and that you have our backs, and mean it. But do something. 

Understand Our Trauma and How it Affects Us

Every LGBTQ+ person has trauma from being part of a marginalized community. That is in addition to the normal life traumas they have. I am a white privileged person who lived for many years in the Bay Area. I have faced being called derogatory names, told I was in the wrong bathroom or glared at in the bathroom, had a negative word scratched into my car, had a house where the deed said I was unmarried when I was married, had friends and families not validate my relationship and marriage, had one marriage overturned and one that was in an in-between state for 7 years (married in CA but not federally). This is what I can come up with off the top of my head. Imagine being in an unsafe area of the country or being trans-identified or being Black or of color. It is never-ending. For those of us that are older, we remember having to be in the closet. We were scared of having any job that involved working with children because we could be accused of being abusive. We all have many stories. Those traumatic stories affect how we move through the world. Understand that. Never invalidate us by saying it’s not that bad or things won’t really happen. Because they are happening. As we predicted. 

This is a really tough time for LGBTQ+ people. The overturning of Roe is devastating to this country and we also see what is coming next. We are often not okay. We need Non-LGBTQ+ people to step up their game if they haven’t already. We cannot fix this on our own.