The movement for marriage equality has come a long way in securing the support of our larger LGBT community, as well as allied supporters, and a fundamental building block of that work has always been LGBT parents and their children.

Whether they are plaintiffs in historic legal victories (such as in the Goodridge case), or talking to legislators, media, family, friends, co-workers and neighbors about the harms caused by marriage discrimination, LGBT parents play a vitally important role in bringing the images and stories of our real lives and real families into the public spotlight.

Family Pride works every day to secure equality for LGBT parents and their children. We have fought off anti-LGBT, anti-family legislation that would prohibit us from serving as adoptive or foster parents. But we know the fight is far from over and, in fact, the worst of these attacks on our families from religious and political extremists may still lie ahead.

At Family Pride, we prioritize attacks on our ability to parent, such as anti-LGBT adoption and foster care measures and legislation that would deny access to reproductive technology to unmarried women. But we know that all of these attacks – including marriage discrimination measures – share a common goal: to deny the reality of our families. And we also know that ending marriage discrimination will improve all parents’ ability to protect their children. There is no argument that marriage equality is a family issue, and that is why Family Pride is so committed to ending marriage discrimination.

LGBT parents and their children make a vital difference in our fight for marriage equality. By sharing the stories of their lives (the good and the bad), they show just how important the legal protections and obligations of marriage are to their entire families. Marriage discrimination doesn’t just marginalize our adult relationships and relegate us to second-class status, it does the same to our children, who aren’t afforded all the same protections of children who have legally married heterosexual parents.

As I travel around the country, I hear the argument that children do better when they are raised in a “traditional” home with “married” parents. The truth is, the “traditional” definition of family (married heterosexual couple with 1.5 children) is only one of the many family structures that our country’s children are born into or currently being raised in. Studies have shown that the presence of a married father and mother is not a prerequisite to positive outcomes for children.

Family Pride’s Real Families, Real Facts public education campaign will continue to point out the hypocrisy of religious and political extremists who don’t want us to marry because they don’t think we should have kids, ignoring the reality that millions of us already are parents, but parenting without equal protections for our children.

The marriage movement knows what Family Pride knows – when we are normalized, they lose. When people see LGBT people in loving, committed relationships, caring and providing for their children, we win. It is real families and real facts that will change hearts and minds.

Jennifer Chrisler is the executive director of Family Pride, the only national not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to securing equality for LGBT parents and their families. More information is available at www.familypride.org.