Thread by @brwneyedamzn

🧵 I know a lot of us straight/cisgender folks are trying to find a way to respond to the #SCOTUS appointment by showing our support to our LGBTQ+ community members.

For some reason that is, overwhelmingly, coming out in the form of offers to officiate weddings.

I hear you and that's kind. Be there when the moment comes for those couples but let's figure out how to be there for all the other moments too. All the other rights and opportunities that are threatened.

There are so many LGBTQ+ people that are less concerned with a wedding than they are with access to safe housing, to a job, to healthcare, to adoption rights, to freedom from police brutality, to an end to the threat of violence and death as a result of who they are.

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to participate in an event called "Being Out While Being Inside: LGBTQ+ People, Incarceration, And Reentry".

Hearing from queer women that were incarcerated for 9, 15, and so on years share about their experiences with the justice system (a system that unfairly targets their community)...

...and their struggle to move forward with their lives after reentry was a stark reminder of why we cannot forget that marriage is not the be-all-end-all of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

There are many ways that we, as straight/cisgender individuals, can move in solidarity that doesn't engage in the erasure of all the single/unmarried LGBTQ+ ppl trying to survive under an increasingly violent system.

Think bigger. Get creative. Ask questions. Follow don't lead.

Some great suggestions from a FB friend:

“We need to see more people saying, ‘I'll help you set up power of attorney, write a living will and medical proxy, establish a beneficiary for your IRA, and everything else you'll need if you're stripped of marriage-related legal...

... protections.’ And we should be doing that for single folks, polycules, chosen families, and anyone else who might need protection.”