[OPINION] You Are Welcome. You Are Valued. You Belong.

Adam Drake, his wife Lindsey and their children Malin and Parker have lived in Westport for 11 years. He is a member of Westport’s Representative Town Meeting (RTM), serving District 3

Adam is a writer and co-founder of Reflekta, a company that preserves family stories and intergenerational memory. The other day, he posted this piece on his personal website.

Today — as Westport prepared for its town-wide Pride celebration (12 p.m., Jesup Green) — it’s a great time to publish it here.

I made the mistake of reading the comment sections from local communities’ Pride flag-raising events, and grew disheartened with many of the messages shared there. They were rude, hateful, and incredibly ignorant. (Though I was thrilled to see one commenter end up being arrested for disrupting a Pride event in his town.)

But I had to take a step back, take a breath, and realize that the people saying these things are so filled with hate and anger that to live that way must be horribly suffocating. Imagine going through life carrying that much vitriol in your heart, and the only way to ease your pain is through the suffering of others?

Adam and Lindsey Drake and their children, at 2025 Westport Pride.

I have always believed something very simple, and I mean very simple, which is helpful because I am often at my best when the moral math does not require one to open Microsoft Excel.

No one should ever tell you who you can and cannot love.

That’s it.

That’s the whole idea.

I don’t think love needs a permission slip. I don’t think someone’s identity should be treated like a zoning variance. I don’t think a person should have to walk into a room and silently calculate how much of themselves they are allowed to bring with them.

And as an RTM member in Westport, as a friend, as a father, as a neighbor, and as someone who has spent a lifetime trying, sometimes clumsily, to become a better human being, I think allyship starts right there.

It starts with us saying: You are welcome here.

Not conditionally. Not quietly. Not in a “we support you, but please don’t make anyone uncomfortable” kind of way.

We need to do this fully.

Adam Drake was in the crowd earlier this month, when 1st Selectman Kevin Christie and Westport Pride president Brian McGunagle raised the rainbow flag at Jesup Green.

The LGBTQ community is not an abstract issue. It is not a debate topic. It is not a political wedge or a cable news chyron. It is our friends. Our family members. Our classmates. Our coaches. Our teachers. Our doctors. Our artists. Our business owners. Our kids. Our neighbors standing next to us in line at Coffee An’, or Trader Joe’s, or the dump, where, incidentally, all Westport residents eventually meet and silently judge each other’s recycling habits. (I promise to tie up my cardboard next time.)

And if you live in a community long enough, you learn that belonging is not created by proclamations alone. It is created in the small moments. The way we speak. The way we listen. The way we show up when someone is being targeted. The way we make it clear that nobody has to shrink themselves to fit into the town they already belong to.

I wrote about this in an op-ed for the Westport Journal a few months ago when a fellow RTM member had some questionable takes on celebrating a member of our community who also happened to be gay.

The numbers matter here. Gallup has reported that 9.3% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ+, nearly double the share from just a few years ago.

In Connecticut, UCLA’s Williams Institute estimates that roughly 170,500 adults identify as LGBT.

These are not small numbers. These are not “somewhere else” numbers. These are our communities. These are our towns. These are people sitting beside us at meetings, cheering at games, volunteering at schools, serving on boards, running businesses, raising families, and making Westport better.

A broad range of Westporters welcomed Pride Month at Jesup Green.

And yet, despite all the progress made, the burden remains real. The Trevor Project’s 2025 survey found that 44% of LGBTQ+ young people who wanted mental health care in the past year were not able to get it. That statistic alone should stop all of us in our tracks. Because when young people are struggling, when they are wondering whether they are safe, accepted, loved, or understood, the adults in the room have a responsibility. Not just the parents.

All of us.

The neighbors. The coaches. The elected officials. The people with microphones at public meetings. The people who write fever dream posts on Facebook who are no doubt inspired by whatever propaganda they saw that morning on Fox News.

Being an ally does not mean being perfect. Which is great because I would have been disqualified sometime around 1987.

It does not mean you always know the exact right word to use or that you never make a mistake. It means you care enough to learn. It means you care enough to apologize when you get it wrong. It means you care enough to stand beside people even when it would be easier to stay quiet.

Westport walked the talk when it approved a rainbow crosswalk. An actual rainbow over Jesup Road is a nice touch. (Photo/Svea Vocke)

As an RTM member, I believe local government has a role to play in making people feel seen and protected. That does not mean every meeting needs to become a culture war cage match. In fact, I would very much prefer fewer cage matches in general, White House front lawn, or otherwise.

It means we should speak with care. It means we should remember that our words travel farther than the room. It means that when we discuss people’s lives, identities, families, and dignity, we do so with humility.

Westport likes to think of itself as welcoming, thoughtful, educated, and engaged. Most of the time, I believe that is true. But being a welcoming community is not a trophy you win once and put on a shelf. It is a practice. It is something we have to keep choosing.

We choose it when LGBTQ kids see adults defending them, not debating them.

We choose it when same-sex couples feel as ordinary and celebrated as any other couple holding hands on Main Street.

We choose it when transgender and nonbinary neighbors are given the dignity every person deserves.

We choose it when we refuse to let cruelty off the hook as “just an opinion.”

And we choose it when we make a safe place for joy, not just tolerance.

Saugatuck Church celebrates Pride with fun and joy. (Photo/Lois Himes)

That matters because tolerance is not enough. We need to move away from “Fine, you can be here,” to “We’re glad you are.”

That is the kind of community I know and want Westport to be.

I want LGBTQ people to know that they do not have to earn their place here. They already have it. I want young people to know that the adults around them are not waiting to judge them, but ready to support them. I want families to know that love, in all its forms, is something this community should celebrate loudly, warmly, and without apology.

And yes, sometimes awkwardly. Because let’s be honest, some of us are going to overthink the wording, make the sign too small, clap at the wrong time, or wear a rainbow pin slightly crooked. But I will take awkward love over polished indifference every single time.

Being an ally is not about being the hero of someone else’s story. It is about making sure nobody has to stand alone in theirs. So I’ll come back to where I started. No one should ever tell you who you can and cannot love. Not a government. Not a neighbor. Not a school board. Not a stranger on the internet. Not anyone. Love is hard enough without asking people to defend it.

In Westport, and everywhere else, we should be brave enough, kind enough, and decent enough to say what should never have been controversial in the first place:

You are welcome.

You are valued.

You belong.

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