Celebrating Families – Supporting LGBTI Children

In 2017, IDAHOT invites you to celebrate Families, in all their forms.
To inspire your creativity, we are bringing you a selection of campaigns and actions that have happened on this issue around the world in the past.
Do you know of any other interesting campaign on the issue? Please tell us so at contact@dayagainsthomophobia.org
 

“What does family mean to queer and LGBTIQ communities?”

is the question that a creative bunch have given answers to with a queer quilt made of patches of family photos:

Ask and Tell

Artist Tatjana Plitt photographed same-sex couples and families in the military to honor the soldiers who served in silence under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

 Invisible parents

A campaign by the LGBT advocacy group AllOut, which is pushing for the recognition of same-sex parents in the European Union.

Resist Conversion Therapy

Staging a performance against conversion therapy. In 2014, Yang Teng, 30, sued a clinic in China over gay conversion therapy. He said he voluntarily underwent the therapy in February after receiving pressure from his parents to get married and have a child

LGBT parents at the workplace

Talking about ones’ family adventures after the weekend with colleagues at work can be a challenge for some LGBTIQ persons. In 2014 a coalition of Swiss (Geneva) based actors decided to raise awareness about the challenges LGBTIQ parents may face in the workplace

 

Homelessness

The Depaul Trust, an international charity initially founded in the UK, working with young homeless and vulnerable people, commissioned these print advertisements in 2006 challenging people to think carefully about the origins of homelessness

 

All Children – All Families

Human Rights Campaign’s All Children – All Families project was developed to promote LGBTQ cultural competency among child welfare agencies due to the high number of LGBTIQ youth in foster care. As part of the project, a series of innovative resources were developed

 

Respect Your Elders

The campaign and education program is part of The 519’s drive to secure LGBTQ inclusive environments for older people

“Stay Close”

PFLAG New York launched “Stay Close” featuring straight celebrities with their gay relatives.
PFLAG NY recruited talented individuals from various fields (advertising, PR, law, media) to work pro bono on the awareness effort, which became known as the “Stay Close” campaign.  After three years in the making, PFLAG NY launched “Stay Close” featuring straight celebrities with their gay relatives. 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, he “celebrity” aspect can be replaced by moral authority. For example the parents can be clerics, community leaders, firemen, or other people who have a strong moral authority in your context.

Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community

The “Family Is Still Family” television PSA 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

 
Stonewall’s Different Families, Same Love campaign for primary schools was developed to show that “Families come in all different shapes and sizes, from the conventional nuclear family to single parents, adoptive parents and children being raised by grandparents.”

UN Stamp

In February 2016, the UNPA (United Nations Postal Administration) in partnership with the Free and Equal Campaign led by the OHCHR (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) issued the organization’s first-ever series of LGBT-theme stamps, including families

Asian Pride

For the month of June 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 – have been promoted for LGBT Pride Month.
https://vimeo.com/127559946
 

#Whatmatters

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, Bi-sexual, Trans, Straight, Queer, Two-Spirited in rainbow stripes, but when students take a flash picture  a new set of words appears beside them: Partner, Teammate, Buddy, Friend, Ally, Supporter, BFF.
J. Walter Thompson Canada created the posters and special printing technique pro bono, and BMO Financial Group helped cover the printing costs.
Arguably not an easy action to replicate, but a great way to face the extreme challenge of getting the attention of teenagers


 

 Celebrate your Child

A mother placed an add in the “Celebrations” section of a Texas newspaper to announce her son’s coming out. A great idea for individual action on IDAHOT and something easy to suggest to your supporters. If a certain volume can be achieved, ie dozens of this kind of announcements posted on IDAHOT, the action could actually get some media coverage. It’s like the gay “storming” technique (by which a group of LGBT people take a homophobic place or institution by storm) but in a friendly way.
Read more 

 

Brazil’s Equality Moms

Equality Moms (Mães de Igualdade) is a group of strong, proud Brazilian mothers, fighting for the rights of their LGBT sons and daughters. They teamed 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!

“Tell me!” Parents on the coming out of their children

Agedo, an Italian NGO composed of parents of LGBT people, sponsored this funny but also extremely moving campaign for the International Coming Out Day. In the video, they tease their children for their clumsy efforts to hide their same-sex partners to the family but they also make a thoughtful appeal to them, encouraging them to come out as what they really are, in the name of that undying and unconditional love that only parents have for their children
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O3EOmmVNdc