Pride Month 2021

Some things aren't negotiable

I remember when I was a young teenager hearing a screed from a pulpit about how unholy homosexuals were in God's eyes. It came out of the mouth of a loving and godly man. Someone who, for years, had taught me much more from the New Testament than the Old. Specifically, he'd taught me the Great Commandment which can basically be boiled down to "love God and love your neighbor and everything else is secondary." He was a good man and while I haven't talked to him in decades I cannot conceive of him being anything less now.

I remember being just baffled. This wasn't a message of love. I might have been a kid but I recognized hate when I saw it. To look at someone and say "you are less in the eyes of God" was hateful. Indeed, probably the very week before that there might have been a sermon about how everyone was a sinner. And sins, at least as far as I knew, didn't have levels. There are not greater and lesser sins. There's just sins. So I asked my mom how to reconcile these things, why this particular sin was being singled out, and she didn't have an answer either. I've spent my entire life seeking answers to a million hard questions I carry around in my head and I carried this one for some time.

A decade later was when I actually met my first "neighbor" in college that was openly gay. And soon after one of the people I love most in this world trusted me enough to come out to me also, followed by yet others. There are some memories that I'll carry with me my entire life, and that I was trusted enough for these conversations will always be with me. I think it's fair to say I even take some pride in being that trusted, I feel like I got at least something right back then because of that.

I think the world has come a long way from when I was a young teenager hearing a message of hate from a loving man. I think the world has come a long way and it's easier now to find a loved one who will listen during a vulnerable conversation in a bedroom where someone is scared but brave enough to no longer hide who they are. But I'm also aware that "we've come a long way" is pretty cheap coming from a straight dude. We have a long way to go yet, and right now most of us still have loved ones that deal with inequality and they shouldn't. They shouldn't. Today that's what I think of when I think about Pride month. A journey we're still on even if I'm thankful my son will grow up in a world with less hate.

So while I will entertain dissenting opinions about very many things, I felt like speaking up about this one today during Pride Month as a grown man confident that I'm right rather than the child I was. If you believe that someone is less than another because of who they love or who they are then you are, quite simply, wrong. Don't let anyone tell you that a neighbor is worthy of less love. We are all in this together and we are all worthy of love.