Pride Month is full of pride
It’s Pride Month:
It is a month-long occasion for celebrating the LGBTQ+ culture and raising awareness of their rights and history.
Two days ago, as I stood onstage at my school, speaking to the student body, I could see a Pride flag waving on the front lawn just below the American flag.
A few hours later, as I drove Charlie to his Little League game, I saw Pride flags displayed at the fire department, the police department, Town Hall, and several homes.
Two people at the baseball game wore shirts with Pride flags emblazoned on them.
Between innings, I checked for New England Patriots news and saw an Instagram post of Gillette Stadium with a Pride flag on display on the big screen.
I have friends who are gay. Some are married. The parents of some of my students are gay. I’m certain that bigotry still exists in my community, but I don’t often see it and rarely hear it because, in my community, my state, and even the New England region, LGBYQ rights are perceived as human rights, and members of the LGBTQ community are simply members of the community.
The majority of people in my community support Pride Month and all that it represents, which forces the bigots into the shadows lest they out themselves for who they really are.
This isn’t the case in all parts of our country.
It’s befuddling and heartbreaking to think that in some places in America, the thought of an elementary school or a police station or a football team flying a Pride flag would be a cause for debate and even disgust.
But geography really matters. Certain regions of our country are still dominated by hatred, bigotry, and intolerance. It would be exceedingly difficult in places in America to fly a Pride flag, marry someone of the same sex, or express your gender in a way that feels right for you without facing bigotry on a regular basis.
Just this week, the wife of a Supreme Court justice was caught on tape openly fantasizing about flying an anti-pride flag with the Italian word for “Shame” surrounded by flames
“I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is married to a hateful, vengeful bigot.
Is it too much to assume that he probably thinks similarly?
How often do open-minded, kind, and accepting people marry small-minded bigots?
It’s also astounding that Christians who have read the New Testament could believe that Jesus Christ would oppose LGBTQ rights. Whether you believe Jesus to be the son of God, a wise philosopher, or even a fictional character, his moral certainty and acceptance of all people could not be more evident in the text.
The first four books of the New Testament—the story of Jesus’s life—make this abundantly clear.
You really need to twist your thinking, compromise your logic, and collapse your reading comprehension to believe that Jesus would have opposed Pride Month or felt any hatred at all for members of the LGBTQ community.
Yet that is how bigots like Martha-Ann Alito justify their hatred and defend their bigotry.
It’s unconscionable.
So I count myself lucky today to have been born, raised, and continue to live in a community where Pride flags fly in abundance, my LGBTQ friends enjoy more rights than ever before, and the small, hateful monsters are relegated to the shadows much of the time because they are surrounded by a majority of better, wiser, kinder human beings.
We still have a long way to go to erase bigotry from this country and this world, but I’m so happy to be living in a place that is seemingly ahead of the curve.
