And so on, and so on...

An old advertising campaign for hair products used to say, to paraphrase, "You tell two friends – and they'll tell two friends – and so on, and so on…"
Joe Solmonese suggests we tell at least three.
In his interview on page 8, Solmonese stresses the importance of straight allies in our fight for civil rights. He tells us that it is because we have become so successful that social conservatives have ratcheted up their rhetoric. And he tells us that the moderate straight majority have started to notice.
As well they should. As go our rights, so, too, may go theirs – their right to birth control, their right to choose an abortion, even their right to make medical decisions for loved ones who can't make them for themselves. All of these rights are on the same potential chopping block as our right to marry, to serve in the military, to be ourselves and still keep our jobs.
We truly have more allies than we know. All we need to do, as Solmonese says, is to tell our stories. To show our allies and our potential allies – our straight family members, co-workers, neighbors, friends – how politicians backed by religious extremists are damaging our lives just as those same people want to damage theirs.
If you think that straight people don't get it, look at the National Day of Silence and think again. As we report on page 7, on April 13, over four hundred thousand students at over four thousand schools took part in the national effort to make our schools safer places for LGBT students. The corresponding right-wing Day of "Truth" netted a whole 1,150 participants in 350 schools.
That's right. Our allies outnumbered them almost four hundred to one. And in individual schools, the number of students who stood for real truth instead of the right's falsehoods averaged 40 to each school – as opposed to a little over three per school.
On issues of basic fairness, our allies outnumber them by almost four hundred to one. That's four hundred to one who believe that we are human beings, that we have rights, and that our rights are just as important – and just as threatened – as theirs.
Now, just imagine what can happen – what will happen – if each person reading this paper tells three friends, and urges them to tell three friends…
And so on, and so on.
In a few short years, four hundred to one will seem like the small number that it really is.