Happy Pride Month, y’all! It’s a great time to give the LGBTQ people in your life some support and work on becoming a better ally for the community and their needs. I personally have been trying to work on using more inclusive language and talking to my friends who identify somewhere in the LGBTQ spectrum about what type of support is most important for me to give to them.
Luckily, there’s a wealth of people in the spotlight to look to for inspiration. Obviously, first, we should look to celebrities who themselves are LGBTQ and serve as voices in the community—but there’s also many famous voices who aren’t LGBTQ themselves, but have used their positions to speak up.
Famous voices like…
DUA LIPA
The singer recently released a video for her song “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” that includes androgynous models and rainbow pride flags. “I feel like I wanted to touch on so many different things, quite serious topics happening in the world, but without making it too political or too serious. I wanted to do my form of representation, and to have fun with it. Like, I took quotes from the Mean Girls movie and instead of saying, ‘You can’t sit with us’, I changed it to, ‘You can sit with us’. There were loads of different things in that video that were about girl power and gay pride and showing support for the LGBT+ community,” Dua recently told GayTimes.
JAMES CORDEN
The Late Late Show host has publicly donated to LGBTQ rights organizations and used his show to perform a song in protest of Donald Trumps’s 2017 ban on transgender people serving in the military. “It was so well written. As soon as [the writer] told us at 11am, it was a scramble to record it, find a studio, dancers, a tux, an old-style Sixties bandstand with LGBT on it,” he told Attitude. “I was very proud of it.”
JK ROWLING
Harry Potter’s creator is, of course, a huge proponent of being who you truly are, having revealed several years ago that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. “It has certainly never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man could love other men,” she told a press conference in 2007. She also replied to criticism on Twitter with messages of support and hope.
.@claraoswiin But of course. pic.twitter.com/Galu47MT4X
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 16, 2014
ANNE HATHAWAY
Hathaway, who talked about her gay brother in a 2008 speech at the Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles Dinner, has aligned herself with many LGBTQ causes, even donating money from photos taken at her wedding to the Win More States Fund (which helped lobby for legalization of same-sex marriage). “In my household, being gay was, and is, no big deal,” she said. “When my brother came out, we hugged him, said we loved him, and that was that.”
AMY SCHUMER
The comedian acknowledges that supporting the LGBTQ community is important and should be a given, telling PrideSource she “couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t.” She also said of herself and Snatched co-star Goldie Hawn, “We’re both people who will stand up to the death for our gay friends and gay people and what’s going on in Chechnya and the fear of the what will happen in the coming years. We’ll be there to fight alongside our gay friends.”
ARIANA GRANDE
Billboard named her the “Gay Icon of Her Generation” for a reason. Besides vocally supporting her older brother, social media superstar Frankie Grande (a gay advocate), she also wrote a letter crediting her career to the community and thanking them for their support. “I am eternally indebted to and inspired by the LGBTQ community. I hope to create anthems for you that wrap you up with comfort and make you get your best life for as long as I live. Thank you for celebrating me the way I celebrate you.”
DARREN CRISS
He’s notably played gay characters before, from Kurt’s loverboy Blaine on Glee to serial killer Andrew Cunanan on American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, but even outside of that, he’s used his star to give visibility to the community that has inspired his performances. “It’s not necessarily about allies between the straight and gay communities, it’s sort of just championing connectivity and compassion,” he told Fuse. “I think one has to be educated and mindful of as many things as you can about other people’s experiences so that there’s a sensitivity and compassion you can apply to being on their side. My particular torch that I’m carrying happens to be for that because the luck I’ve had with playing certain characters on television and being able to be a symbol for that.”
MAREN MORRIS
Though country music isn’t traditionally the most LGBTQ-friendly genre in the world, “The Middle” singer Morris has been trying to use her youth and stardom to change that. She said in a Billboard love letter to the LGBTQ community, “The LGBTQ community was so embracing of me and I felt this precious responsibility to be a voice in country music for them, because it’s a genre that historically has not. In 2018, things are changing. Walls are coming down, tolerance has turned to acceptance and incandescent support. However many revolutions we get around the sun, we’re all here to love and be loved.”
JOSH HUTCHERSON
The Hunger Games star has connected with organizations such as The Trevor Project and Straight But Not Narrow, and even helped launch a campaign called Power Out, giving LGBTQ kids living in rural communities the tools they need to connect with each other. He even donated one of his own computers to the campaign. “It’s awesome to know that it’ll be used to help a young person out there who, before this campaign, wasn’t able to get access to information and resources that could really help them,” he told Out. “I’ve always respected the work that The Trevor Project does, and to have an opportunity for Straight But Not Narrow to collaborate with them on a campaign like Power On is exciting.”
RIHANNA
Rihanna’s never afraid of speaking her mind, and she puts that to good use when supporting her LGBTQ fans and criticizing institutions that incorrectly treat the community. When performing in Indiana in 2015, she criticized the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration act, which allowed businesses to deny service to customers for any reason, which could be interpreted to include their sexuality or gender identity. She also called out brands who use transgender people as a marketing ploy to sell their products.
When I thought she couldn’t teach me more… @rihanna ❤ pic.twitter.com/iAX3kJBAr1
— savage (@lbertootero) November 29, 2017
Take some inspiration from these stars and be a good LGBTQ ally not just this month, but every month!