Straight ally



Straight ally is a colloquial term that describes a heterosexual person who supports equal civil rights, gender equality, LGBT social movements, and challenges homophobia and transphobia. A straight ally believes that LGBT people face discrimination and thus are socially and economically disadvantaged. They aim to use their position as heterosexual and/or cisgender individuals in a society focused on heteronormativity to fight homophobia and transphobia.

Most LGBT organizations have straight members involved; others actively encourage straight participation. A Gay-straight alliance is a student-run club that brings together LGBT and straight students to create a platform for activism to fight homophobia and transphobia. There are also some groups that unite the LGBT community to work together with straight allies. Founded in 1973, PFLAG Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is the original straight ally organization, started by Jeanne Manford, mother of the Straight Ally movement. Based in the United States, PFLAG unites parents, families, friends, and straight allies with the LGBT community to move equality forward for LGBT people. In 2007, the organization launched a new project, Straight for Equality, to help more straight allies become engaged in the LGBT movement in the workplace, healthcare, and now in faith communities. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) is another organization specifically formed to group allies of this cause.

Prominent examples of strong allies include President Barack Obama, Elton John's lyricist Bernie Taupin, singers Cher, Dannii Minogue, Cyndi Lauper, Barbra Streisand, and Liza Minnelli, actors Jennifer Aniston, Cybil Shepherd, Judith Light, Paul Newman, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Darren Criss, Pauley Perrette and Stuart Townsend, director Jonathan Miller, comedians Kathy Griffin and Chelsea Handler, comedy writer Seth MacFarlane, musicians and spoken word artists Henry Rollins Jello Biafra and Neil Peart, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, writer Anne Rice, evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, former English rugby player Ben Cohen, Footballer Philipp Lahm, philosopher Daniel Dennett, United States Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, United States Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, policy analyst and Florida gubernatorial candidate Michael E. Arth, Robert Lewan president of the Michigan GSA, former Australian Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Julian Bond, linguist Noam Chomsky, historian Richard Carrier, and mothers Betty DeGeneres and Judy Shepard.

Some children of LGBT couples are straight allies, notably Iowan Zach Wahls, the son of two lesbians, though he has expressed a different view of his relationship to the LGBT community: "To be clear, I don't consider myself an ally. I might be [a] straight cisgender man, but in my mind, I am a member of the LGBT community. I know the last thing that anyone wants is to add another letter to the acronym, but we need to make sure as a movement we're making a place for what we call "queer-spawn" to function and to be part of the community. Because even though I'm not gay, I do know what its like to be hated for who I am. And I do know what its like to be in the closet, and like every other member of the LGBT community, I did not have a choice in this. I was born into this movement."