For IDAHOT 2017, we celebrate families in all their forms. This is a great opportunity to go and find out what campaigns have been done on this around the world.
Here are six campaigns on inclusive families:
PFLAG New York: “Stay Close”
In this campaign, PFLAG NY features straight celebrities with their gay relatives.
PFLAG NY recruited talented individuals from various fields to work pro bono on the awareness effort, which became known as the “Stay Close” campaign, which was three years in the making. The message is simple: Stay Close to your loved ones because relationships are too precious to lose.
Not exactly an easy action, but it would be much easier to develop a similar one with “normal” people. In order to benefit from the “adhesion factor” that celebrities provide, the “celebrity” aspect can be replaced by moral authority. For example, the straight relative can be clerics, community leaders, firemen, or others with strong moral authority in your context.
Asian Pride: Family Is Still Family
For the Pride 2015, the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance joined with the Asian Pride Project for, to release encouraging videos of parents and their LGBT children as Public Service Announcements throughout the US. Featured on both Asian TV stations and YouTube, a total of nine videos – narrated and subtitled in varying languages and dialects – were promoted for LGBT Pride Month.
The “Family Is Still Family” TV Campaign offers a powerful message: offer your LGBTQ child a lifeline, support their coming out, and keep the family strong and unified. It’s composed of several videos in various Asian languages.
Toronto PFLAG: What Matters
In Toronto, PFLAG developed a campaign that creatively uses new technology, as viewers have to flash a poster to uncover the hidden words. The #WhatMatters poster begins with the words Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Straight, Queer, Two-Spirited in rainbow stripes, but when students take a photo with flash, a new set of words appear beside them: Partner, Teammate, Buddy, Friend, Ally, Supporter, BFF.
J. Walter Thompson Canada created the posters using a special printing technique called pro bono, and BMO Financial Group helped cover the printing costs.
This is a rguably not an easy action to replicate, but a great way to face the extreme challenge of getting the attention of teenagers.
Texas: Coming Out Ad
In Texas, a mother placed an ad in a newspaper’s “Celebrations” section to announce her son’s coming out. A great idea for individual action on IDAHOT and something easy to suggest to your supporters. If you manage to get many people to do this, you could actually get some media coverage. It’s similar to the gay “storming” technique (by which a group of LGBT people take a homophobic place or institution by storm), but in a friendly way.
Brazil: Equality Moms
Equality Moms (Mães de Igualdade) is a group of strong, proud Brazilian mothers who fight for the rights of their LGBT children. They teamed up with street artist JR to create a powerful display of portraits.
Again, something difficult to replicate. Though you might want to just roll up your sleeves, put your best smile on, and contact JR. After all, that’s how this one got started!
Italy: “Tell me!”
Agedo, an Italian NGO led by parents of LGBT people, sponsored this funny but also extremely moving campaign for International Coming Out Day. In the video, they tease their children for their clumsy efforts to hide their same-sex partners from the family. At the same time, they deliver heartfelt messages, encouraging them to come out as what they are, in the name of that undying and unconditional love that only parents have for their children.
