Pride Is Family, Too: A Response to Nebraska’s “Marriage and Family Month” Proclamation

On June 3, 2026, Governor Jim Pillen signed a proclamation designating June as “Marriage and Family Month” in Nebraska. Nebraska Family Alliance described the proclamation as the first of its kind in the state’s history, and public reporting noted that the proclamation centers the “nuclear family” as one husband, one wife, and their biological, adopted, or foster children.  

As a gay dad, an attorney, and the owner of an LGBTQIA+ affirming business, I want to say something clearly:

I believe in marriage. I believe in family. Deeply.

I believe in the daily, ordinary, sacred work of raising children. I believe in packing lunches, signing permission slips, sitting beside a sick child in the middle of the night, showing up to school events, teaching kindness, enforcing bedtime, apologizing when we get it wrong, and trying again the next morning.

I believe mothers matter. I believe fathers matter. I believe children matter.

And I believe LGBTQIA+ families matter, too.

That is why this proclamation deserves a response, especially during Pride Month.

If the proclamation were simply a celebration of commitment, caregiving, marriage, parenting, and the wellbeing of children, there would be plenty to affirm. Those values are not controversial to me. They are values I live every day as a parent.

But when the state chooses June, a month long recognized as Pride Month, to elevate one narrow version of family while leaving out countless others, the message is hard to miss. The Associated Press has reported that several Republican governors have issued alternative June proclamations centered on “nuclear family,” “strong families,” or “fidelity,” in moves widely viewed by both supporters and critics as counterprogramming to Pride.  

So let’s be honest about what many LGBTQIA+ Nebraskans are hearing.

We are hearing that our marriages are less worthy of celebration.

We are hearing that our children’s families are somehow less ideal.

We are hearing that the state can praise love, commitment, parenting, and family while quietly implying that our love, our commitments, our parenting, and our families do not fully count.

That message is not pro-family. It is selectively pro-family.

Pride is not the opposite of family. Pride exists because too many families, churches, schools, workplaces, courts, and governments once told LGBTQIA+ people that they had to hide who they were to be safe, loved, employable, respectable, or legally protected. Pride is the answer to shame. Pride is the answer to silence. Pride is the answer to being told, over and over again, that our lives were too much, too different, too political, too visible, or too inconvenient.

And for many of us, Pride is also about family.

It is about the same-sex couples who waited decades to marry.

It is about the trans parent who deserves dignity at the pediatrician’s office, the school office, and the courthouse.

It is about the bisexual parent whose identity is not erased because of the gender of their spouse.

It is about queer youth who deserve homes where they are not treated as a problem to be solved.

It is about intersex, asexual, aromantic, nonbinary, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and two-spirit people whose families may not fit a political slogan but are held together by love, responsibility, sacrifice, and care.

It is about chosen family, too. Not because chosen family replaces other families, but because chosen family has saved lives when other systems failed.

As an attorney, I also know that symbolism is not the same as law. The Nebraska Governor’s own proclamation guidance says gubernatorial proclamations are honorary and do not carry the force of law.   And under federal constitutional law, same-sex couples have the right to marry. The Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages.   Congress later passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which became law in 2022 and provides statutory protections for same-sex and interracial marriages.  

But government messages still matter.

They matter because children hear them.

They matter because families hear them.

They matter because LGBTQIA+ people in Nebraska, including young people, parents, spouses, teachers, business owners, workers, and elders, deserve to know that they are not invisible in their own state.

As a gay dad to a daughter, I do not experience family as an abstract political debate. My family is not a culture war talking point. My daughter is not confused by love. She knows who shows up. She knows who keeps her safe. She knows who reads the bedtime story, who makes breakfast, who worries, who laughs, who teaches, who protects, and who loves her without condition.

That is family.

And my family does not become less real because someone else chooses not to name it.

The irony is that LGBTQIA+ people have spent decades fighting for the very things this proclamation claims to celebrate: marriage, commitment, stability, parental responsibility, legal protection, and the dignity of family life. We fought to be spouses. We fought to be recognized as parents. We fought to visit each other in hospitals, inherit from each other, protect our children, file taxes, make medical decisions, adopt, foster, and build homes where love is not treated as less legitimate because it is queer.

So during Pride Month, our response is not to reject marriage and family.

Our response is to tell the truth:

Marriage includes us.

Family includes us.

Nebraska includes us.

Pride includes parents pushing strollers, grandparents supporting queer grandchildren, teenagers finding community, spouses holding hands, friends who became family, and children being raised in homes full of love.

There is room to celebrate mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, foster parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, single parents, blended families, queer parents, and every household where people are doing the hard and holy work of caring for one another.

A state that truly values families should not need to narrow the definition of family to prove it.

To every LGBTQIA+ Nebraskan, every queer parent, every same-sex spouse, every trans person building a life, every young person wondering whether there is room for them here, and every family that felt excluded by this proclamation:

You are not an exception to family values.

You are not a threat to family values.

You are family.

And during Pride Month, and every month, you belong.