"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 deeper 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 is the 55th Anniversary of that event on Christopher Street in New York.  The Stonewall Uprising refers to spontaneous rebellion by the LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ  community rose up in protest that night and for several nights following.  It was a time when those in the LGBTQ 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.

Thanks to the work of many activists, we have made some progress on this issue, though with MAGA always lurking in the background, we never seem to be on solid ground.  SCOTUS voted in a 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that states cannot deny same gender couples the right to get married, but some justices are grumbling and seeking to revisit that decision.  For those wondering about this, there is almost a straight line between the movements for racial justice, gender justice, sexual justice, and economic justice.  From Trump’s venom on immigrants to Harrison Butker’s demeaning of women to the murder of Black people by police and white vigilantes to the oppression of people who love others of the same gender, there is a long and continuing voice of oppression, violence and death.  And, make no mistake about it, the MAGA movement is intent on taking us back to the 1890’s when white men were firmly in control.

PRIDE Month gives us an opportunity to give thanks for those who continue to enrich our lives with the diversity of the great garden which God has created among us.  I know that my life and my perspective have been deepened and challenged and instructed by friends who love people of the same gender.  I am grateful that they have taken the time to engage me and to care for me, that they have deemed me worthy of the struggle to convert me.  So, in this PRIDE Month, let us give thanks for those who see a different world, who see a world where all are welcomed and valued because of God’s grace in their lives and in all of our lives.  May we join in that vision and in that ongoing struggle for the dignity of all, for the blossoming of the idea that we are all children of God, no matter who we love, or what we look like.  Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?  But, we are in a battle for our lives and for the idea of equality.  It’s up to us to find our places as witnesses to this ongoing struggle – may God give us eyes to see and hearts to act.