Yes I am? Are you?

Because YES I AM!

I’m a straight ally because it is nobody’s business who bangs, loves, lusts after, or marries whom as long as it is consensual.

Yes I am. I’m bi and transsexual (but I came out ages ago).

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard – Me too!

Come out of the closet but don’t shout in my ear!!!!!

I’m here. I’m queer. I have better taste than you.

Yes you are and I am quite fine with that! I wished more people were too!

Yes I am an ally. I don’t like “straight”, but I use it for lack of a better term. Consensual love is the last damn thing in this world that needs to be discriminated against. If anything, the world needs more love, certainly not less. Equality is long, long overdue.

I support!

I’m about 80% straight and I’ve been an ally since about 1965.

Before that I was too involved in my own immediate concerns to care that much about anything else.

I’m an ally because I believe in equal rights for all innocent people.

Also, it seems that with the constant attempts to outlaw same-sex marriage and the homophobia that crosses ethnic, national, and religious lines, that members of the LGBTQ community bear the brunt of the most widespread discrimination.

Had to google what LGBTQ was.

yup, you have my support.

@flutherother‘s ear…

OKAY BUT I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT YES I AM! :-)

I’m bisexual and I am definitely an ally.

You have your big, ol’ lesbian right here!

I am an Ally. Love = good.

Absolutely. I donated my status on Facebook to the Human Rights Campaign. The other day a friend messaged me stating that while they will pass the message along, they do not support the cause because they view LGBTQ as “unnatural”. It was deeply upsetting.

I’m not one to label myself, but I’ll write a lovely purple “Q” on my wrist :)

BTW, how is the Q in the acronym distinguished from the other initials?

I support.

Sign me up as an ally. Many friends through the years, and some family, all brothers and sisters of mine.

I am with @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard on this one:)

@Brian1946 I’m positive other users here could explain it better, but I have seen the “Q” used to reference both questioning and queer. Queer has been used as a blanket for anyone who does not identify with heteronormativity, but not everyone uses it. Some prefer a label that they can associate with more closely. Personally, I do not have a distinct label for either my sexuality (though I can pinpoint my general location on the gradient spectrum) or gender. I have no qualms with identifying as queer.

I’m a person, fuck whether or not you’re gay or straight, don’t come out, keep it to yourself until you decide to kiss someone in public. Paying so much attention is not going to make discrimination any less. People with brains stopped being shocked a long time ago and now they’re just annoyed.

Sure, it needn’t be a jack-in-the box event, let’s stay cool, but obviously you have my whole hearted support.

@muppetish

Thanks for your answer. :)
I don’t identify with heteronormativity, so now I know that I’m part of the LGBTQ community. :)

I am in favor of anything that helps teenagers accept and love themselves for who they are and gets other people to leave them the fuck alone.

Straight, but never narrow.

Yes you are and I am all for everyone owning their own sexuality!

Of course I am.

I’m all for choice.

Ok, it’s time for me to come out:

YES, I AM A FLAMING HETROSEXUAL MALE. I have been since birth and its something I did not choose. It’s just that women I find attractive make me think sexual thoughts. Unfortunately, society seems to treat people like me in a less than kind way, often using terms like “pig”, “misogynist”, and “chauvinist” among others to publicly demean and berate people like me who were born with a Y chromosome and who can’t help themselves from appreciating the beauty of women and often find themselves physically drawn to them.

Well, I say enough. It’s time to come out, create a support group, and perhaps have a yearly heterosexual pride parade to raise awareness that appreciating a hot babe is not a perversion, it’s just the way we are. It’s high time the middle aged man embraces the fact that although he is aging, he is not dead and having these feelings is quite normal, and society needs to acknowledge this rather than ridiculing such individuals as “dirty old men”.

But seriously folks… who really gives a rats patutti who you choose to share your life (or for that matter, fool around) with. Do you really need a coming out day? As with racism, IMHO, the sooner you quit making it an issue the sooner it will cease to be an issue.

Just completely and magnificently LESBIAN and out and proud!

Controlling and legislating personal attraction seems about as useless as demanding that a turtle sprout wings and fly. Put me down in the support column.
Now, was I a “B” or a “Q”? Can I get an “A” for autoerotic?

@YoBob

Unfortunately, a lot of people do care whom you share your life with. Hence why gays can’t get married and why gay kids across the country are driven to suicide by constant bullying.

Yes, I am.

I feel pressured to come out to my friends in person.

@YoBob Thanks for giving me an excuse to post this Press Announcement by Michael Stipe. It’s always made me fall into an irrepressible fit of giggles.

Harvey Milk’s speech sums up why we need a National Coming Out Day:

“My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve democracy from the John Briggs and Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry…

On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country…Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying silently in our closets…We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.”

@YoBob walk a mile. Walk a bloody freakin’ mile.

@mama_cakes I rather have. I worked my way to college playing in bands, the most successful of which sported a lesbian couple, one of whom was the rhythm guitarist and the other a vocalist. Combine that with the fact that I was a music major at a university that sported a rather large gay population (it being one of those “artsy” schools). The end result was that I spend most of my 20s rather immersed in the gay community.

@muppetish LOL! Thanks for the link to the video.

@YoBob You just really don’t get it do you . . . that’s too bad because I have very little time anymore to explain it to folks like you. There was a time in my youth that I bothered to try and explain it to folks—some came around and gradually understood what it might be like to be a member of an oppressed group of folks and others just really couldn’t empathize or get beyond their own issues to be able to see when other folks are hurting. Eventually I learned that someone either can empathize or you can’t and there is nothing I can do to help you grow a heart or gain one iota of compassion for what other people go through in just trying to get through life.

I am out and I let other folks know that so if someone is hurting, they know they have found a compassionate ear. I am not out to be bashed. I am not out to be belittled for who I am. I am out because people like you can no longer make me feel ashamed for being different, or for just being who I am. I am out so there are no more kids who kill themselves because of people like you. I am out to everyone in my life so I don’t have to lead a pretend life or a double life.

I will quit making it an issue when it ceases to be an issue. But today, on the heels of at least 4 known gay kids committing suicide because they couldn’t “cease to make it an issue,” I am so out. Today, when I lack the same civil rights you enjoy, I can’t “cease to make it an issue.” Today, when I know I can lose my job, my house, and my life, I somehow just can’t “cease to make it an issue.”

I am not impressed that someone once knew a gay person or had a gay friend (or even had gay people in their band, having played in an all lesbian band myself).

But believe you me, when I can just be myself without threats of loss due to lack of legal standing in so many venues, and when people like me quit killing themselves out of fear and self-hatred, I can assure you that I too will “cease to make it an issue!”

When kids are getting killed or hounded to death for being who they are, we need whatever it will take to stop it. A day of support is a small thing to offer.

@Kayak8 My point is that you really should feel a need to have to explain things to “folks like me” (thanks for relegating me to some sort of sub-classification with the implication that I am somehow less noble than the average homosapien)

As for when you can just be yourself without threats of loss, etc… How about today?

We can’t even have one thread where bigoted, ignorant assholes just back the fuck off? Mods: please clean-up this thread. Everyone who didn’t answer the question should be modded.

Have been for while.

Oops, correction, what I meant to say was that you should not feel a need to explain things to “folks like me” (apparently a “bigoted, ignorant, asshole”, assuming that @tinyfaery was referring to me)

The point I am trying to get across is that I support a world where there is no perceived need for a coming out day. After all, isn’t that the goal here? Alas, being a the very definition of politically incorrect (a middle aged heterosexual male) I appear to be instantly perceived as the enemy.

You’ll be happy to know that I intend to quit following this thread…

@YoBob

Do you really need a coming out day? As with racism, IMHO, the sooner you quit making it an issue the sooner it will cease to be an issue.

As @Kayak8 said, it’s not us making it the issue.

As for when you can just be yourself without threats of loss, etc… How about today?

Indeed, how about today?

The point I am trying to get across is that I support a world where there is no perceived need for a coming out day. After all, isn’t that the goal here? Alas, being a the very definition of politically incorrect (a middle aged heterosexual male) I appear to be instantly perceived as the enemy.

That is the goal – but if you look at the above link, it’s just not here yet.

When it is, I’ll be happy to see NCOD boxed up and put on the holiday shelf.

@tinyfaery

I don’t see any “bigoted, ignorant assholes” clearly just yet. Who are you talking about?

I suspect the world will always have an abundance of assholes.

Regardless of your race, creed, color, or sexual preference I’m sure it somewhere out there somebody is willing to kill you for it. Frankly, I think it a total waste of time to try to convince wackos otherwise.

@iamthemob, I look forward to joining you in celebration of the day when there is no longer a perceived need for a NCOD.

@YoBob

It’s not about convincing wackos though – for us, it’s about not being afraid of who we are. Being queer is unlike other minorities, as we don’t always obviously show our sexual preferences. In order to make it accepted, it has to be visible.

This is transitional work. And we emphasize our differences to celebrate diversity. Diversity and equality are cooperative structures. Without diversity, true equality is an illusion.

Yes, I’m gay.

ugh, figures

Straight but in full support. Makes my stomach sick when people are treated differently for any reason.

My best friend and his husband live in a redneck fishing town on the shores of the Chesapeake. When they first moved there, I was worried when they joined the town council and started taking an active role in local politics. I was afraid someone would come along and torch their house. Well, it seems they have been accepted as equally as any other couple in town, for which I am grateful.

They have some land in Hawaii, we’d often asked why they didn’t get married there. They told us they wanted to do it in their own state. One day—I don’t know if this was expected, or not, Washington DC passed a law legalizing gay marriage. In three days, they organized a wedding ceremony. A stealth ceremony.

We met at a parking lot in a park—no one knew the final destination for the ceremony. They hadn’t had time to get permits or anything. I wouldn’t have been there except by a fluke we happened to be in the area that day. We drove to a spot, piled out of cars, arranged ourselves in a semi-circle, and the officiant married them in record time. Two minutes. I know, I recorded it.

And not a moment too soon. The park cop showed up, told us to get out of the park or we’d be arrested, and herded us all to the exit—not even time to open a champagne bottle.

Why all the hurry and stealth? They know that laws legalizing gay marriage have been passed one day and then, days or weeks or months later been unpassed. They wanted their certificate before Washington DC revoked gay marriage.

It may have been only two minutes long, but my wife still cried. “It’s a wedding,” she said. “People always cry at weddings.” It was real enough, just like their marriage is real enough, and for that, I am grateful. Of my college cohort, they are the couple that has been together the longest.

I understand the difficulty involved in coming out. I have my own issue where I have yet to come out. I understand the fears involved—worrying if your family or community will ever talk to you again. I know it can be dangerous, too. I know that many people feel like they have to move halfway across the country to find a place where they feel safe to be who they are.

I totally honor everyone who has had the strength to come out. You are heroes, in my book. You are very brave. And yes, I support you!

Straight (mainly) and I support gay rights. Fuck homophobia and any other forms of discrimination

I’m a straight ally. Just one more cheerleader in the land of old rednecks and Mickey Mouse.

Mickey Mouse (and Disney Corp.) is very gay friendly.

I dont know if am or not:/ Though am always ending up staring at peoples butts.

No I am not, but I AM on your side! Who the heck are WE all to judge anyway!!!!

Straight,but I support! I have many gay and lebsian friends and love them!!

I’m not gay, but I’m willing to try.

On a serious note, as I’ve said many times: Guys – you should like homosexuals; they leave more women for us.

We already outnumber you, @zen_ , but the sentiment still kinda rocks. ^_^

Straight ally.

@zen_

You do realize that women are homosexual too – I think the argument falls short. ;-)

@iamthemob way to keep the scales balanced. lol. GA

I have nothing against it as long as it is never made compulsory.

Mostly straight, 100% supportive. Gay rights are human rights. Everyone should have the same ones, damn it. It’s high time everyone realized that, and make it so.

I had to check the dictionary for the meaning of ally, I obviously knows what it means when it is said out loud, but gee it looks funny written, I was thinking of the word all with a y on the end.

Anyhow, yes I am an ally. I don’t care who does what with whom as long as you all are having fun. But I don’t want to watch any of you doing it in public no matter what kind of plumbing the participants have and I will reciprocate and not do anything in public you would not want to see. I am an equalist for all genders, colors, races, creed or sexual orientations.

I like girls.

@rangerr Really?

@mama_cakes And boys.. but I’ve had my fair share of.. playtime with girls. Y’all are cuddly :)

Because you are a human, you deserve to live your life like a human. Welcome : )

I am not. I am indifferent.
I have my own causes to to fight for.
But you do not bother me, so have fun.

No I’m Not but perhaps I ought?

Bi here, and I support all choices.

Fluther, it’s about time I came out of the closet. I’m beardsexual. I support you because a good beard (or mustache) is sexy, as is it’s owner, regardless of whether it’s on a man or a woman.
Though I’m not likely to meet any lovely bearded ladies, le sigh.

I’m not gay or bi. I don’t like the word ally, so I won’t adopt it. I’m a little queer in some ways, but haven’t really figured out yet how to articulate it, let alone come out about it—maybe later.

@fundevogel Its, not it’s = it is.

@lapilofu Do you like Streisand? Me, too. So what. ~

@zen oh my stars and garters!

come out come out where-ever you are, some people need outing, like this British politician. And our future king Charles.

@fundevogel Don’t get your panties in a knot. ;-)

I’m a bisexual ally and I support National Coming Out Day because I want everyone, regardless of their sexuality, to be able to hold their head up high.

@zen_ I like Streisand!

@Leanne1986 Barbara Streisand is seriously hot

I said it first.

@mammal Barbra Streisand? Eeeww

@josie back in the day silly

Straight with lots of Gay and lesbian friends. I’m with ya! Human is Human, Love is Love, sex is sex….. be yourself, true friends and sensible people don’t give a damn…it’s the close minded pricks you have to look out for. I have no problem letting it be known when I think another girl is sexy, people are people!