What Does Pride Mean to Me?

A Sermon by Rachel O'Neal
Preached at Urban Abbey on June 30, 2019

I came out for the first time when I was 12 years old. I was lucky to have grown up in the family I did because they essentially said welcome to the club. Roughly 50% of my family identifies somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Pride for me is deeply rooted in family. And although I grew up in a generally accepting family, I seem to confuse a lot of folks outside of them. Identifying as both nonbinary and bisexual means fielding a lot of questions. The fact that my partner identifies as a man helps no one. Folks who I’ve known for all of five minutes have asked me if he is “biologically male,” as if his parts were any of their business.

My existence outside of the boxes that people so desperately wish to place me in is generally greeted by one of two responses: confusion, or further dissection of my identities until the tiny pieces of who I am can be neatly separated into labeled boxes. The problem is that those boxes are not me. In fact, I know only a few people in the queer community for whom those boxes are comfortable. Certainly no one in my family fits exactly.

My mom came out when I was 8 years old. She was married to a man and a part of a fundamentalist church in California. The sheer courage it took for her to come out as a gay woman in that setting and in that time represents Pride to me. You see, in my family Pride is not something you feel - it is something you do. The act of loving and accepting yourself for who you are is Pride.

Although stories about families like mine are more commonplace now, we can never forget that our existence and self-love remain revolutionary. It is for that reason that when I think about Pride, I not only think of my family, but I also think of those who began this movement 50 years ago. Their power and self acceptance paved the way for families like mine, and for that I am ever grateful.

This rainbowtastic movement began as a riot started by Marsha P. Johnson, a black, trans, sex worker. It remains an act of revolution, in a cisgender, heteropatriachal, white supremacist society to be anything other than straight, white, and cisgender. Her defiance of the system and refusal to conform sets the tone for all Pride-related activities. Her identity and self-confidence remain as subversive today as it was back then. To this day trans folks of color face more danger and discrimination than any other sect of the LGBTQ+ community. Since the beginning of 2019, eleven black trans women have lost their lives in the United States. 

Moreover “According to a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, LGBTQ people of color are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to say they've been discriminated against because they are LGBTQ in applying for jobs and interacting with police.”

The rainbow capitalism that runs rampant during Pride Month seems to suggest that there is no need for further action, that we have achieved equality, but the awful truth is we haven’t. Our community cannot turn a blind eye to the realities of queer people of color. Pride began as a riot, and until the day that everyone can walk down the street free of fear and fully accepted by their community, Pride will remain a protest.