Gay men and lesbians have secured for ourselves more rights and protections in a shorter period of time than almost any other historically persecuted group in the history of the planet. I think Christians under Constantine did better. One day the religion is illegal, the next day it’s the official church of the state.

Gays and lesbians didn’t do quite that well; it took about 70 years to go from a crime and a mental illness to marriage equality and adoption. There’s plenty we could still do and things aren’t perfect, but as a cis gay man, that’s like 95% of my agenda.

We did this well because our theory of activism is solid and we followed it almost perfectly. Here it is.

If you want change, you need money. If you want money, you need donors. If you want donors, you need volunteers. If you want volunteers, you need allies. If you want allies, you need good messaging.

Gays and lesbians started with “someone you know and love is gay,” “we are born this way,” and “our love is the same as yours.” We came out and built alliances, the allies organized volunteers, the volunteers organized donors, we raised piles of money. We never stopped educating the public. We got a bunch of politicians elected and made others change their positions.

This theory gives rise to three cardinal rules, which I give you in no order because they’re all equally important:

• Do not burn out your volunteers
• Do not piss off your allies
• Do not become problematic for your donors

When I see a movement struggling or just not making progress, reliably, they’ve been breaking one or more of these rules.