What allies mean to the LGBTQIA+ community [Video]

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — When Script Journey Marketing and Writing Consultants owner Michael Quintana started his masters degree in San Jose, California, he felt like a fish out of water. 

He was starting his first day of school with classmates much older than him in a town thousands of miles away from home, and he was gay. As other students started to pick their seats at the large table in the classroom, he worried there was not a place for him. He wondered if his classmates would accept him for who he was. 

Then, he saw a Pride flag pin on one girl’s backpack.

“I knew that if I just sat next to her, I would be okay,” he said. “And that’s, that’s the power of an ally; that outwards representation of, ‘I’m a lighthouse for you.’ …