Yesterday members and friends of the First Unitarian Church marched in the annual Providence Gay Pride parade. My feet are killing me. And I’m still basking in the glow of how the community responds to a church that as we marched flew two banners: The first read “First Unitarian Church of Providence.” And right behind it “Standing on the Side of Love.” We also featured for the third time a float, okay a pickup truck stuffed with kids and others for whom the walk was a bit too much. Shoulda sat with them…
This morning I find myself thinking back to remarks made by a friend who finds the whole thing a bit silly. At least he couldn’t bring himself to quite say he thought his particular foci in the area of social justice was more important. I think he misses something very important. Maybe even a couple of things…
In some circles today is called Juneteenth. It marks the day in 1865 when the slaves in Galveston, Texas, learn of they had been “freed” more than two years earlier. This is also the anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, voted following an eighty-three day filibuster and, of course, right at a hundred years after one would have thought that matter settled.
Civil rights are complex things involving changes in law and in our human hearts.
Considering how few states have marriage equality, how every once in a while there are attempts to introduce sodomy laws to the books, we’re no where near a time when such things as this annual commemoration of Stonewall and the stand for GBLTQ rights is no longer needed.
We haven’t achieved the shifts in law. And our hearts are equally in flux. And things are happening.
As I write these words New York state is one Senator voting in the affirmative from achieving marriage equality there. Our own little Rhodie is struggling to move a civil unions bill (a sorry half step, but containing acknowledgments of important rights, and a powerful step in the right direction) to the floor of the senate, where if it gets that vote is likely to pass into law.
And the hope for simply being an integrated part of the great project of the American dream gets one small step closer…
People need to remember the injustices of our times. Great and small. And to resist establishing hierarchies of justice. Grab for those possibilities that are close at hand. And do the work to bring the rest to consciousness. This is part of the covenant of our humanity, to see, to notice, and to act responsibly…
It makes life worth living.
And I know we’re doing some good things. When a band of our teenagers arrived at the church where we were decorating our pickup truck float, they looked dismissively at us and one stage whispered, “Look at the Closet Heterosexuals.” Actually it wasn’t true for all of us. But there was something sweet in the assertion, an owning of our whole community, a reversal of the assumed that speaks to what we hope to be…
GBLTQ folk need to stand for themselves. And their friends need to be with them. And it is probably important that one has difficulty telling which is which…
And so while my feet are sore, I feel our little band has done something, small and important.
And will continue to do so…
Remember Stonewall…
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