Waiting for the St Pete Pride Parade to begin, I was regretting my fashion choice for the day. It was hot. I was a bit cranky. My black clergy shirt felt like it was baking my body. I told my husband, “I am never again wearing a clergy shirt to Pride.”
Of course, I was being far too melodramatic about my suffering. Honestly, if there’d been a cross, I quite possibly would have climbed on it, martyring myself in the name of clergy-wear. Instead, I tucked an ice cube behind the little plastic white tab at the front. Yes indeed, those tabs are made of plastic. Also, they do a pretty good job at holding ice cubes to cool off a cranky pastor.
Once my church group made its way through the parade route, I found I was grateful to be clad in this clergy garment. I saw two groups of protesters as we walked, both led by street preachers shouting into bullhorns. They were spewing hate, at this celebration of community and love.
As I walked in the parade with my faith community, I was waving a trans flag, holding my husband’s hand and wearing clothing that advertises that I am pastor. I no longer regretted the shirt. It helped me demonstrate something very different than the message of the bullhorn-wielding hatemongers.
Hate-spewing preachers are not in any way trying to share the message of Jesus. They are sowing the seeds of destruction that been the burden of Christianity ever since followers of Jesus became an organized community.
Power dynamics and a sense of superiority have plagued Christianity since the very beginning. In our modern context, this has resulted in much of Christianity becoming an echo chamber of hate, egregiously making homophobia, transphobia and sexism synonymous with Christianity itself. Frankly, the misuse of scripture by these hatemongers is completely exhausting. But I don’t really care what they have to say, I only care that it might hurt people’s hearts to hear their words.
Whether it’s street preachers, politicians or community leaders, people with an agenda of exclusion will always find a microphone or a bullhorn to amplify the sound of their hatred. We can’t always stop them, but we can stop their painful words from seeping into our lives.
How can we build up an armor of protection around ourselves so that the arrows of hatred cannot reach us? I believe the answer is simple, it’s found in community. I was impressed by the crowd watching the parade near the places where there were protesters. They did not let their celebration get derailed by the sounds of hate behind them, but instead focused on the parade in front of them. As a community, we do well when we turn our attention toward the celebration and turn our backs on the source of abuse and hate.
We must pull together in a way that silences oppressors and lifts up the most marginalized. Right now, the LGBTQ+ community is under attack legislatively in ways we have not seen before. I urge all of us to stand for solidarity with those who are feeling the weight of homophobic and transphobic legislation.
In some responses to the current political attacks on our community, I have noticed a particularly unhelpful trope justifying LGBTQ+ rights. Many people attempt to validate LGBTQ+ folks by arguing that we don’t choose to be the way we are. Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that we do choose our sexual orientations and gender identities, but rather that our right to exist should not be tied to whether we choose to be who we are.
The “I didn’t choose this” rhetoric is damaging to the fight for equality — it forces dependency on an idea that we are helpless and implies that we don’t want to be who we are. When we position ourselves as victims of the circumstances of a queerness beyond our control, we risk undermining our own sense of worth. This is the antithesis to self-acceptance and it is counter to the whole point of celebrating Pride.
If our sense of worth is wholly tied up in validation via victimhood, then equality for all of us feels like a threat to some. This is the genesis of sexism, racism and the ever-growing “LGB without the T” movement. I hope with a culture of solidarity, we can bring healing and connection into the lives of people who see division and marginalization as their only option. I must believe it comes from a place of their own pain and that it can be healed.
I feel so grateful to be exactly who I am, to live the way I live and love the way I love. If there is any choice involved, this is exactly what I would choose! Even when I’m miserably overheated and my clergy shirt is making me cranky, I am grateful for the opportunity to wear it and to stand up for our community in this state, where life feels so complicated for our community right now.
When we fully embrace the work of solidarity, our armor becomes impenetrable. The hatemongers can hurl hatred at us and instead of offering up the most vulnerable among us to catch the arrows, we stand strong together and not let any part of our community be harmed.
When each of us comes to the realization that our lives and wellbeing are enmeshed with the lives and wellbeing of the whole community, we experience what Pride is all about — not only in Pride month, but all year long.
Rev. Jakob Hero-Shaw is the senior pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Tampa, MCCTampa.com. He and his husband are the proud fathers of two wonderful children.
