It was nearly seven years ago that I lost a friend due to what I can only assume is my opinion writing. What can I say? Shutting my mouth while my country is in peril is not an option.
On the day I’m speaking of, this friend and I saw some art and had pizza in Manhattan. We were mostly around the Lower East Side, so not much affected by the Pride Parade that was happening. But as we journeyed back, I needed to catch the PATH back to Hoboken, so we wound up in Midtown.
By then the parade was over, but the remnants of it were all over the streets. She expressed clear disdain for how gay people had left her city. Never mind that New York looks the same way after sports ticker tape parades, Columbus Day and St. Patrick’s Day parades, Thanksgiving, etc.
I should add here that we had always diverged politically with little effect on our friendship. She asked me that day if I couldn’t take some solace in the fact that many Americans were sleeping better with Trump in office. I sat with that for about a week and then wrote a column just dismantling the very idea. It was about morals, not politics.
I never heard from her again. There was no conversation; I was ghosted.
With Pride Month here, I have been thinking about this moment from 2017 and where things are now. We seem to be in this place where some Christian and other religious folks feel the need to reclaim the rainbow. I’ve been seeing a lot of comments on social media with this theme of lamenting that rainbows are an LBGTQ symbol and emphasizing that God created rainbows, yada, yada.
There are years-old websites dedicated to this, so it isn’t new. But I’m wondering if the “movement” got a little juice from the wife of a Supreme Court justice recently getting pissy over seeing a rainbow flag flying at her neighbor’s home. The same wording keeps showing up, how God’s beautiful creation was co-opted.
I am so sick of people of religious persuasions of all kinds using their sacred texts as an excuse for bias. Who do you think invented the clouds and the sky and the vast landscapes we get to witness? Who do you think invented cancer, nuclear weapons, pedophilia? Is your answer the same to both? Now there’s a dialogue.
Couldn’t help but think of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s words here. “I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade.” He added, to the Mike Pences of the world, “If you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
The video of Steve Bannon currently circulating where he declares the intent of MAGA if they win in November – retribution, named names, violence – has a jarring backdrop. It’s a shelf with pictures of Jesus. It makes the message darker, far more eerie. These people think God is on their side as they declare their sinister intent. Because, hey, isn’t there a Bible passage lauding bump stocks?
But I digress.
In the last few years, the GOP has exploded the issue of transgender people, exaggerating their prevalence and danger to society to scare Americans who are already vulnerable to conspiracy theories and who are averse to anything that shakes their “traditional” upbringing. Let’s save women’s sports! What???
It is really something to watch this play out.
Meanwhile, you’ve got your gay couples who are like, can we please just get married and visit our loved ones in the hospital without a hassle? They’re not rebels. They’re not deviants. They want to chill, grab a beer, have kids, live in peace. Is that radical? Why do you, with your manicured lawn and state-of-the-art grill, even care? No one is closing the doors to your place of worship.
I love a good homily as much as the next person, but the best sermons make you think. They’re not a substitute for common sense and free will.
People leave messes after parades. Other people are hired to clean them up. Simple, really. No reason to get God involved.
[Editorial Note: This is my 16th installment in a series I began in order to give my writing some flow after being in a healing phase from knee surgeries for a year (2023-24).]
