Supporting the Freedom To Marry

Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments that could lead to 50-state marriage equality. There have been a lot of good and positive messages of support as that date approached (and some awful ones), so I thought I’d share some of the best videos I’ve seen lately.

First up, Freedom To Marry is running the ad at the top of this post. It simply argues, "It’s time. America is ready for the freedom to marry." They’re absolutely right: The USA definitely IS ready, even some loud-mouthed extremists aren’t.

Next up is an ad from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which has been doing some great video messaging in recent months, many of which are on their YouTube Channel). This ad features various people known from various, chiefly entertainment, fields. It has a good message that’s presented well. I know some people hate ads like this that use “celebrities”, but the approach does help get the attention of some people, which may make them actually hear the message, so I don’t have a problem with it.



Finally, I wanted to share a video from PFLAG Canada, “Nobody’s Memories”, which, they say, “is our tribute to all those in the past who were never allowed to marry by law – and to everyone who is still denied the right today.” It’s a beautiful ad. But for some bizarre reason, it's private. The link should be viewable on YouTube. Normally, I'd have skipped over them when the video wasn't available, but it really is beautiful and deserves to be seen,

The messaging on the pro-equality side is light-years ahead of where it was in 2008, when LGBT people were conspicuously absent from ads against California’s Proposition 8. Our adversaries, meanwhile, tend to rely on their religion as their only argument against us, sometimes, sadly, resorting to lies, smears and defamation to try to hide the fact that they have NO secular argument against marriage equality.

To me, ads like these are a bit of an antidote to the bile spread by the opponents of equality and freedom. I think we’ll need a lot more antidotes in the months ahead, so I’ll probably share more positive messages like these. I bet there’ll be plenty more of those, too.