The First Monday of Pride Month

Content Warning: suicide and homophobia…and a little sacramentality.

We have the cultural memory of a tsetse fly.

I don’t know why I wrote that other than to remind myself that every generation must be taught the lessons of the past. It’s that simple. We’re not born with the active memory of previous generations. We must be taught.

I remember.

I remember the AIDS epidemic. I remember when Reagan was President and the rhetoric from the Christian right about divine punishment. I remember their cruel god. I remember my friends in High School in rural Virginia who were terrified to be authentically themselves because of the vitriol and violence that would come their way. I remember the classmates who would rather be dead than be gay…and did something about it.

These were hard lessons to learn. They were costly. Too costly.

I remember but the folk younger than me do not.

I remember working on the AIDSRides and the elderqueers (nomenclature is fun) trying to educate the younger on the dangers of unprotected sex. The illusion of immortality is a quality many young people possess. “It could never happen to me” or plain old denial are powerful logics. Youth need their elders.

It is Pride Month and I am grateful for the witness of my LBGTQI2S+ friends and colleagues. I am grateful for their love. I am grateful that they are living into their fulness as human beings. I am grateful for their examples of courage and kindness.

I am grateful.

It is not enough, of course, to simply be grateful. In our current political climate, the anti-everything backlash is profound. The biblicists’ desire to make scripture into a science text book or a fascist treatise is strong. Once again, the rhetoric of a cruel god is front and center in public discourse. It won an election.

So, once again, those of us with privilege and position bear the responsibility to speak out, to offer refuge, and to love passionately those who are targets of social oppression.

Being queer is not a sin. Being homophobic is. We privileged must stand in the gap.

From Acts: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”

Anyone.

Every Sunday, we stand at the altar of God and remember together what God has done. That memory is sacred, holy, sacramental. The word is “anamnesis.” In our memorialization, the old is renewed and we are brought to the moment of surrender and holiness. God blesses us in memory and makes us all holy.

We’ve been arguing for millennia over who is in and who is out. Jew. Gentile. Slave. Free. Male. Female. Gay. Straight. It’s the same argument. No one is impure or unclean. No one. We are all, in our diversity, cast in the Image of God. We must remember our shared holiness.

The work of memory is never over. Those of us who remember must teach.

So, remember. Stand in the gap and teach.