When you first found the courage to be who you are, who stood beside you?
Not the people who tolerated you from a safe distance. Not the ones who offered a quiet nod and then changed the subject.
I mean the person who actually showed up. The friend who spoke your name in a room where you had no voice. The colleague who refused to laugh at the joke. The stranger who became family.
You remember them, don’t you? Of course you do. Because for LGBTQ+ people, an ally is never an abstraction. An ally is oxygen.
That’s why I want to talk with you about International Allyship Day, observed every year on August 8. And I want to make a bold claim: Our community may have more reason to embrace this day than anyone else on earth.
It is a day built on a simple but radical idea.
International Allyship Day is young. It was founded in 2023 by the Integrating Women Leaders Foundation, a group devoted to lifting women and underrepresented people into leadership. The date itself was chosen with intention, the number eight chosen to speak of balance, unity and connectedness across cultures and traditions. Turn it on its side and you have infinity. A loop with no end. A promise that never runs out.
Isn’t that a beautiful image of what allyship is meant to be?
And here is the part that should stop us in our tracks. This day doesn’t ask for sympathy. Sympathy is cheap. Sympathy costs nothing and changes nothing.
The real power of allyship
International Allyship Day asks for something far harder: Consistent, meaningful action. It asks people to move their feet, not just their feelings. To lend their voice, their privilege and their presence to those carrying a heavier load.
Now tell me honestly. Who among us understands that better than LGBTQ+ people do?
We know what it costs to advocate alone.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting for your own right to exist. Many of you know it in your bones. It is the weariness of explaining yourself again and again. The fatigue of being the only one who speaks up, the only one who corrects the record, the only one who must be brave again today when you would rather just be tired.
Marginalized people so often carry the burden of advocacy alone. That is the quiet cruelty of it. And here’s the thing about allyship: It shares that weight. When someone with a bit more safety, a bit more standing, decides to step in beside you, the load gets lighter. The road gets shorter. Progress, which felt impossible yesterday, suddenly moves.
We didn’t get here by ourselves. Every right we hold, every space where we can breathe freely, was built by people inside our community and people outside it who decided our freedom was worth their effort. Can you name yours? I hope you can. I hope you’ll thank them.
The number of allies in our midst tells a truth we already feel deep in our guts, deep in our souls.
Why even one ally is plenty
Sometimes the heart knows what the data later confirms. Consider this: Research shows that 92% of people say allies have been valuable to their careers. And people with even one ally in their workplace are nearly twice as likely to feel a genuine sense of belonging.
Read that again: One ally. Not a movement, not a march, not an institution. One person willing to stand up nearly doubles another person’s sense of belonging.
Do we grasp what that means? It means your ordinary courage is not ordinary at all. It means the small, unglamorous act of speaking up in a meeting, defending a name, making room at a table, can transform whether another human being feels as if they belong on this earth. If a single ally can do that much, what is your silence costing the people around you right now?
We must celebrate the ones who have stood for us!
So let this day be a celebration. Let August 8 be the moment you turn to the people who chose you when they didn’t have to. The parent who marched. The teacher who protected. The coworker who used their privilege as a shield instead of a weapon. The neighbor who simply refused to look away.
Tell them what it meant. We are quick to name our wounds and slow to name our blessings. This day flips that around. It invites gratitude that is loud and specific and unashamed.
And then, my gentle folks, it’s now our turn to become allies.
Saying thank you by paying it forward
But this is where the road bends a little, and where I must push you a little. Because the greatest honor you can offer your allies is not a thank-you note. It is your imitation.
We know the ache of needing someone to stand up. That knowledge is not a scar to hide. It is a calling. Who is waiting for you to show up now? The trans kid who feels invisible? The immigrant learning a new language and a new fear? The person of a faith, a color, or an ability that the world keeps pushing to the edges? They are all on the hillside, and they are listening for a voice that says, you are not alone here.
Will you be that voice?
Allyship is not a spectator sport, and it’s not a one-day gesture, either. It’s a lasting pledge. So let’s do more than just remember our allies. Become one. Educate yourself about struggles that are not your own. Listen more than you speak. Amplify a voice that keeps getting talked over. Challenge the bias you’d rather ignore. Mentor someone whose path is steeper than yours was.
We of all people know how much a single stubborn act of love can change a life. We received that gift. Now let’s give it away, again and again, in a loop with no end.
The eight lies on its side and becomes infinity. Let our allyship do the same.
Who will you stand up for?
Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta, Rev. Paul M. Turner (he/him) grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994, have been in a committed partnership since the early 1980s and have been legally married since 2015.