OPEN at Kirkland City Council for Pride Month

OPEN’s Executive Director, Jessa Davis, was invited to accept the Pride Proclamation from the City of Kirkland, a city of over 95,000 residents located just outside Seattle, WA.

Her comments to City Council follow here:

Good evening and thank you to the City of Kirkland for this proclamation, and for recognizing Pride not just as a celebration, but as a commitment to dignity and equity for all. 

My name is Jessa Davis, my pronouns are she/her, and I serve as the Executive Director of the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN). I’m also here as a transgender, non-monogamous, and queer woman, and as someone whose life has been shaped, sustained, and quite literally saved by my community.

Because for many of us, Pride doesn’t begin with parades. It starts with finding each other.

Long before there were protections in the law—or even language to describe our lives—queer people built what we needed to survive. 

We built networks of care. 

We built support systems. 

We built chosen families.

As Armistead Maupin wrote, “You don’t get to choose your biological family, but you do get to choose your logical family.”

That idea isn’t just about the vibes for us. It’s a lived reality.

Your chosen family is the friend who shows up when your own relatives won’t. 

It’s the community that makes space for you when the world tries to erase you. 

It’s the people who see you, who affirm you, and who stand beside you—not because they have to, but because they choose to.

And that act of choosing one another is so powerful. It’s also deeply human.

At OPEN, our work is grounded in that truth: We advocate for legal recognition and protections for people whose lives and relationships don’t fit into narrow, outdated definitions of family. Because the law still lags behind the reality of how people actually live, love, and care for one another.

And that gap has consequences.

When our chosen family isn’t recognized, people can be excluded from hospital rooms, from housing protections, from the right to make decisions for the people they love most. That’s not just a policy failure—it’s a moral injustice.

And it’s happening in a broader context that we can’t ignore.

Just this year, Tennessee declared June a so-called “Nuclear Family Month.” On its surface, that might sound benign. But it’s part of a much larger effort to define which families are valid—and those that are not.

Because when we look closely, the same movements targeting transgender people are also working to roll back marriage equality. They’re attacking bodily autonomy. They’re challenging the very idea that consenting adults should have the freedom to build their lives and relationships on their own terms.

Unlike lawmakers in Tennessee, the City of Kirkland cares about protecting families—all families. 

But the so-called family values crowd only cares about enforcing a single vision of what a family is allowed to be. And they intend to punish all those who live outside of that narrow ideal. 

And history tells us something important: when rights are taken from one group, they rarely stop there.

And that’s why Pride matters.

Pride is not just a celebration of who we are: it’s a declaration that our lives, our relationships, and our communities are worthy of dignity and protection.

It’s a reminder that the diversity of families in this country isn’t a threat. It’s a strength.

And it’s a call to action—for all of us—to build a future where no one has to rely solely on their own resiliency to be able to survive.

So tonight, I accept this proclamation not just with gratitude, but with resolve.

Resolve to continue this work.

Resolve to protect the communities that have protected me.

And resolve to ensure that every person—no matter who they are, whom they love, or how they build their family—has the freedom to live openly, and in safety, and with dignity.

Thank you for standing with us.

Jessa Gavrielle Davis (she/her)
Executive Director, OPEN