Video: YouTube announces it is ‘Proud to Love’ the LGBT community

In a moving compilation video posted this week, video site YouTube has launched a campaign to feature gay pride videos, and has launched a campaign to inspire LGBT people and their allies to show their pride.

The video, accompanied by the equal marriage-themed song ‘Same Love’, by rapper Macklemore, features famous LGBT YouTubers, with clips of viral coming out videos, historic footage, and same-sex couples’ proposals.

It encourages YouTube users to “#ShowYourPride”, and features footage of Harvey Milk, President Obama, Ellen DeGeneres and many others.

The ProudToLove channel is featured on the YouTube homepage, with a rainbow coloured heart on every page of the site.

The video comes in the same week as the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which is widely regarded as the beginning of the gay rights movement, and in the wake of two key decisions by the US Supreme Court on equal marriage.

Both rulings saw 5-4 Justices in favour of same sex couples. The first case saw the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) struck down. DOMA, passed in 1996, federally defined marriage as between one man and one woman only.

In the second case, around California’s Proposition 8, the Supreme Court ruled that such a ruling was not in its jurisdiction, nor was it in the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court, which previously ruled, therefore deferring the decision to a previous ruling by a district court which decided the ban was unconstitutional. 

Following the US Supreme Court’s decision, many large brands, including Apple, Instagram, Google and Microsoft, came out to show their support of the decision.