How Allies Can Show Support During LGBTQ+ History Month

Richard Chapman-Harris discusses the importance of commemorating LGBTQ+ History Month, providing advice for how the community can learn from history, and useful structures informing allies how they can show their support.

Celebrating LGBTQHM often involves looking back; remembering people and events which have shaped our current reality. It can also be a time to reflect on where we are now on our journey towards equity, and even a month to imagine what might be coming next. When thinking about this LGBTQHM, it’s important to recognise that our history is happening now. It is very live and very real.

With that in mind, what can we do now, each day, to move us forward on inclusion? I’d like us to wonder how our everyday actions, how each moment, could help shape a more LGBTQ+ inclusive future. One structured way of doing this is by leveraging our ALLY Continuum technique which applies to everyone as we can all be members of a community and an ally depending on context.

This technique highlights that we should recognize and Acknowledge what is unfair, we should seek to Learn more, take actions to address the unfairness or ‘Level up.’ Then it is important to reflect whY we took that action and explore if our allyship has worked or if we need to revisit our approach and begin the ‘continuum’ again.

This LGBTQHM, acknowledge that inequity and indeed discrimination is experienced by many in our local and global LGBTQ+ communities. This bias can impact organizational processes, affect team dynamics, and even unfairly influence our everyday interactions with each other. Even if this can be an uncomfortable truth, it is important to recognise these inequalities and acknowledge that the experiences of other people may differ from our own even if we have not experienced bias and discrimination ourselves. A key example I’d like to share is on how much has been achieved in many countries, notably marriage equality and workplace protections but also remind us of the widening gap between the experiences of LGBTQ+ globally. There are seventy three countries where being gay is criminalised, and indeed where some members of the LGBTQ+ community are not even considered enough to be legislated against.

There is always more to learn, and we need to be proactive in keeping ourselves up to date and informed. Members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies all have an opportunity to educate ourselves and ensure we are not blinkered by our own experiences or limiting ourselves to biased representations – or underrepresentations – of one demographic in our LGBTQ+ community. Speaking as a Cis, White Gay man,