June is Pride Month where we celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, and commemorate the LGBTQ rights movement throughout history. Pride month is full of massive rallies, pride parades, parties, workshops, concerts, and countless more LGBTQ+ events to attract participants from all over. Also, there are commemorations and memorials held for members of the community who have lost their lives to hate crimes and HIV/AIDS.
As far as safety aspects go for everyone, including those within the LGBTQ+ community, we at OneOp have recently been looking more into the research around safety within relationships along with dating abuse, domestic violence, and family violence. One of the key organizations we’ve come across that share resources and support on dating, healthy relationships, personal safety, and helping others is called Love Is Respect.
Love is Respect
“Relationships may be defined in different ways depending on who’s involved, but healthy relationships all depend on a few key elements: healthy communication, healthy boundaries, mutual respect, and support for one another.” This key statement from Love is Respect highlights the work that this organization does in building and maintaining healthy relationships. They have many great resources including warning signs of abuse, building healthy relationships, how to create a safety plan during domestic violence events, and how to support those around you who may be experiencing domestic violence/dating violence and abuse.
Love is Respect is a project of the National Domestic Violence Hotline that offers 24/7 information, support, and advocacy to young people between the ages of 13 and 26 who have questions or concerns about their romantic relationships. They also specifically have info for individuals experiencing dating abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships. These resources for LGBTQ+ communities show additional obstacles that LGBTQ+ youth face and provide direct access to 24/7 help from a qualified professional.
Love is Respect is one of many organizations out there that are shining a spotlight on dating abuse and violence as well as providing great resources to people of various backgrounds. Stay tuned with OneOp over the next year for upcoming programming related to this very important topic.
Blog Image: Photo from Flickr [LGBTQ+ Pride month concept by Marco Verch, April 6th, 2021, CC0]
