Our church has always put up a table at the event, so I wrote an email to the other members of my church's Affirming Ministry Team, confirming the sad news and also mentioning a recent poll describing flagging support for 2SLGBTQIA+ people (despite the same poll stating that 12 % of Canadians identify as a sexual minority in Canada, and 22% of those younger than 35.
Our minister asked if I could perhaps speak to this as part of our Pride Sunday observances this morning, and I said I would be happy to. Well, not happy, precisely, but certainly willing to draw attention to it!
As we heard, June is Pride month in North America in part because of commemoration of the riots that took place in June of 1969 following police raids at a gay bar in NYC. Police raided the bar, called the Stonewall Inn, ostensibly for serving liquor without a license, but the crowd on hand pushed back and eventually trapped the officers inside the bar for a time.
Almost everything in Stonewall was broken and the windows boarded up the night of the riot. By the next day, graffiti supportive of the LGBTQ community appeared on the boards, and a demonstration arose there later in the day. Hundreds of protestors, both gay and straight, protested there off and on until the fifth of July.
Since then, Pride has become a global movement, celebrated in some areas with joy, sombrely observed with activism in others. Urban legend has it that the first Pride parade in Edmonton was a number of gay men running down Jasper or Whyte Avenue with paper bags on their heads, as being gay had not yet been decriminalized, but a proper Pride movement was born in response to the Pisces Spa raids in 1981
But we probably won’t have a Pride in the Park event in St. Albert this year, because OutLoud, the support and activism group that organized it, was forced to close its doors just a few weeks ago.
Edmonton moved its Pride events to August but hasn’t had a parade since 2018. And I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, I really appreciated the opportunity for a public show of support for sexual minorities, reflected in both delighted parade watchers, but also people marching in support of gay rights and equality, like our own United Church.
But on the other hand, with hate crimes on the rise, and bigots seemingly feeling more emboldened every day, part of me is glad I won’t have to worry about marchers being jeered, or assaulted, or driven into, or worse.
It feels weird to see all this opposition to what feels like a simple proposition: that love is love. That adults should be allowed to love other adults of the same gender. Or of a changed gender. Or of no gender at all.
And yet we see it. We see it all the time.
You hear it too, right? People at the grocery store, or the water cooler at work.
“I don’t know why those people need a special day.”
“More of this woke BS…”
“I mean, I’m fine with it, I just don’t want to know about it.”
“There is no place for those discussions in schools.”
And I know there are people who wanted to be here today who can’t make it, but I am also confident that some people chose not to be here because they don’t want to listen to people like go on about stuff they don’t care about. And that’s fine. It saddens me, but it's fine.
We became an Affirming Ministry nearly a decade ago, and to me, it just felt like a natural progression; we had undergone some significant soul searching and deliberative dialogue, and as my daughter is fond of reminding me, when you know better, you do better. We decided to take the big step from being implicitly welcoming of everyone to explicitly welcoming a group that had experienced tremendous persecution from people of our faith.
The backsliding since then has been staggering. And I don’t just mean the eyrolling when someone notices your preferred pronouns in your email signature.
- The vandalism of rainbow crosswalks.
- The petition against Pride recognition by the municipal government in Westlock.
- Prominent hockey players refusing to wear Pride jerseys.
- The opposition to teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity or SOGI in schools.
- Right wing trolls labelling those who defend sexual minorities as “groomers” by trolls, both online and in-person.
- Cranks disrupting council meetings with fearmongering about “the gay agenda”
- The increase in hate crimes against sexual minorities.
According to this poll this poll, in just three years, the number of Canadians supporting LGBTQ+ individuals being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity with everyone has dropped from 61 to 49 per cent.
Support for gender-affirming care for adolescents with parental support has gone from 59 to 48 per cent.
Another poll last September showed Albertans as the least likely to speak up in defence of homophobic or transphobic comments online.
So, to be clear - treating our brothers and sisters and others who are gay, or lesbian, or bisexual, or trans, or queer, or intersex or asexual or two-spirited doesn’t just make some people uncomfortable - it makes them angry.
There are a lot of what I call ‘Talibertans’ in this province, who would gleefully recriminalize same-sex relationships if they thought they could get away with it.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around it, honestly. How am I impacted if two women get married? How does having two grooms in a wedding party make my lifetime commitment to my own partner any less worthy or honoured?
And these folks are too quick by half at quoting the Old Testament to defend their _____ - if they did even a minute’s research they would realize pretty quickly that the Hebrew Scriptures are not talking about two consenting adults moving in together. And even if they were, I don’t see you stoning people for working on the sabbath or wearing two different fabrics at the same time or not trimming your beard corners or whatever.
The fact that so much of this animosity comes from people who claim the same faith identity as I do, but who conveniently forget critical lessons like “judge not, lest ye be judged” or “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” or even “love one another, as I have loved you”, makes my eyes spin, when they aren’t actively weeping.
I think a lot of us here believe that love is love - without conditions, without exceptions, without limitations.
And that, my friends, is why I believe we are here.
To continue telling these people who are hated by some, that they are loved by many, they are loved by God, and, I hope, that they are loved by us.
To continue to speak up in advocacy for those trying to make a more tolerant world for themselves and others.
To make a place for those who are often shunned by their own families.
To speak up in the face of willful mis- and disinformation, prejudice, bigotry and hatred.
And to do all this, even in the face of ignorance and opposition, with love.
Because in a world that feels like it is growing angrier and less tolerant with every passing day, love may be the greatest protest of all!
Amen
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