Date: Feb 14–Engage in Public Witness Staff Member: Director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries Carey McDonald Description: Whether it’s today--National Standing on the Side of Love Day--or in the days before or the weeks after, amplify your voices for love with groundbreaking public witness. To Do: Click here to add your events to our calendar. On Facebook, change your profile picture to the Standing on the Side of Love logo and explain what love means to you in honor of National Standing on the Side of Love Day. For today's final post of the Thirty Days of Love, I am proud to tell you about my involvement with Trust Women Week. Two weeks ago I participated in the National Online March for Trust Women Week, which aimed for one million signers to proclaim their support for of reproductive rights and respect for women. This issue is important to me because my support is one of the ways I live out my religious values of working towards a world that is more just and compassionate and affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is particularly important for me, as a man, to be public in my support for respect for women. It recognizes that these aren't just "women's issues," but that their impact is felt by everyone. As a man, it matters to me whether my sister, wife, mother, friend, partner or daughter has access to contraception and the ability to make healthy reproductive choices. And it matters to all of us when the rights of any of our neighbors and fellow Americans are maligned or threatened. Indeed, this type of coercion is really part of a spectrum of ugly gender biases, barriers and stereotypes, a spectrum that leads to violence against women and others who don't subscribe to masculine ideals. I'm proud to show my solidarity and support for trusting women as an expression of my self-identity as a man. In a recent article in the New York Times about incidents of machismo bravado, and the bullying to which it often leads, Charles Blow asserts that "The truest measure of a man, indeed of a person, is not whom he lies down with but what he stands up for." I couldn't agree more. – Carey.