"PRIDE MONTH"

“PRIDE MONTH”

            This month of June has come to be known as “Pride Month.”  It started as Gay Pride Month, and then it went to LGBTQ Month, and now it has settled into being “Pride Month.”   Though as a Calvinist, I am a bit squeamish when it comes to affirming “pride,” I understand this to be something else than puffed-up ego.  This is a month of celebrating the gift of God’s creation of people whose sexuality and sexual orientation is different than heterosexuality.  In the last decade we have all become aware that there are many permutations of sexuality, and the old norm of heterosexuality is beginning to be expanded to include many other orientations.  We are also recognizing how much oppression and shaming there is of people of alternate sexualities.  “Pride Month” is a time for all people to affirm that there are a

variety of sexual orientations, and we are all asked to give thanks for God’s gift of sexuality in our lives, no matter what the culture tells us, or what we tell ourselves.

            The month of June was chosen as “Pride Month” because it was the month in which the Stonewall Uprising was held in New York in 1969.  So, yes, this month will be the 50^th Anniversary of that event on Christopher Street in New York, and there will be huge celebrations there.  The Stonewall Uprising refers to spontaneous and violent riots and rebellion by the LGBT community in response to the police harassment of them.  The match that lit the fire was a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar on June 28, 1969.  Stonewall was a gathering place for gay men, lesbians and transgender folks, and in the early morning hours of that night, police raided the bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.  Rather than allowing themselves to passively be arrested for their sexuality, the LGBT community rose up in protest that night and for several nights following.  It was a time when those in the LGBT community sought to regain and to re-affirm their God-given sexual selves and to let the heterosexual world know that they would no longer slink back in hiding.  They would claim themselves and would seek to force themselves into the consciousness of the world.

            I was not aware of the Stonewall Uprisings in 1969.  All I remember about that summer was that I was working for Operation Breadbasket in Nashville, seeking to influence mostly white merchants in black neighborhoods to offer quality food at decent prices and to pay their black workers decent wages.  I had made significant progress on the power of racism in my life, and I was beginning to seek to shift on the power of patriarchy, but I was not on the radar on LGBTQ life.  My other main memory of that summer is being stuck in JFK airport on the way to a seminarians’ conference in New Hampshire – it was the day after Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon ( July 20, 1969 – another 50^th anniversary this year).  I heard him quip his famous lines many, many times that day, and that’s a story for a blog in July on that anniversary.  In regard to questions of sexual orientation, I was a good “liberal” in 1969.   I was into “live and let live,” but I did not understand the depths of oppression and the self-hatred that such oppression often caused.  I still thought that there was something a bit “abnormal” about people who were attracted to other people of the same gender category, but I had learned enough about myself in regard to race and gender to recognize that there might be more to the story.   At that point, though, it was an “oughtness” with me and not a passion.

            My life changed on this in 1976 in Norfolk, Virginia, where Caroline and I were co-pastors in a small church in a low-income apartment complex.  We recruited people from all over the city to seek to assist in the ministries there.  One of those people was a married, heterosexual woman, who embodied the faith and sought to live it out.  I have met very few people in the church who were as compassionate and as competent as she was.  So, soon after she had joined the church, we asked her to allow us to nominate her to be an elder of the church.  When I called her to ask her about that, she said that she wanted to come talk with me.  She came in to see me, and she indicated that while she wanted to say “yes,” she could not, because she was a lesbian.  My mind and heart went “Wow!”  Her sharing revealed to me how captured my imagination was – I would never have thought of her as a woman attracted to women.  Though the phrase has been overused, she did blow my mind.  And she did convert me – my misgivings on the issues of sexuality largely disappeared that day – if she was not worthy, none of us were.  I surprised myself when I told her: “If you’re willing to put your name in, we are certainly willing to support you.”  She was, and she was elected an elder, and she has been stunning people like me ever since.  We began ordaining people regardless of sexual orientation since 1978, some 41 years ago, and I credit her willingness to be who she was and to engage me on it.

            So, in this Pride month, let us celebrate God’s gift of sexuality in all its complexity and power.  I’ve thought about this a lot, and my conclusion is that God doesn’t really care about who’s loving whom – all God cares about is faithfulness and loving and justice and compassion.  Thanks to those Stonewall uprisers and thanks to those willing to engage those of us captured by heterosexuality.  May we hear God’s voice in this month of Pride.