What are our hetero friends, neighbors and family doing to act on their moral and ideological support? Are they saying something at their own weddings or putting quiet messages of solidarity in their wedding programs? Are they writing to their elected officials asking them to support marriage equality or bills like the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA)? Are they walking marching in local pride parades holding signs with messages like, "Husband and Wife supporting Marriage Equality." If you're like me then you're answer, unfortunately, is a resounding "NO!" I love my friends and relatives but emphatically believe that we're at a turning point now and it's we need our straight friends to come out in support of marriage equality in full force. Simply put, it won't happen without them.

For whatever reason, any movement by an oppressed group to gain equal rights can only go so far until members outside the oppressed group begin to ACTIVELY campaign for the group's rights. I may be going out on a line here but I keep thinking about Civil Rights in the 1960s. Black leaders and citizens worked tirelessly to build momentum and effect real change in state and federal laws in the USA. That effort was successful on many levels including encouraging non-blacks to join the movement. And one might argue that once non-blacks and blacks began marching hand-in-hand there was no turning back. A visible tide tide had begun to turn in support of major changes at least in terms of the laws of the land.

And now, thanks to the Tarek Farouk Maassarani and Holly DeeAnn Smith all of our straight friends and family have hetero role models they can look up to, so they won't have to lead the march on their own. Maassarani and Smith dropped their plans to get married near their home in Washington, D.C. earlier this year and then got married in Montreal as a way to support Canada's equal marriage laws and to protest the discriminatory marriage laws in the US. Maassarani explained the action stating, "Upholding a discriminatory institution bothered both of us," in the May 9, 2006 issue of The Advocate.

But the couple's efforts don't stop at getting married under the laws of our more civil neighbor to the North. Smith and Maassarani have announced that they will try to enlist the support o other like-minded heterosexual couples with their recently created group, Straight Alliance for Marriage Equality. And for the record, they will be accepting donations so that's just one more thing our lovely straight supporters can do to help.