Why Pride?
Naming the reasons why Pride month is so important for us all to celebrate
Hey friends… well, it’s June, which in case you have been living on a different planet and you don’t know, is Pride month. It’s the month set aside for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate who they are. Who they were created to be. It’s also the month for LGBTQ+ allies to celebrate with them. Why is it important for allies to participate in the celebrations? So that their LGBTQ+ friends, family and acquaintances know they are a safe place for them to be and belong.
I’m not queer. I’m as cis and heterosexual as they come… lol… but I deeply love many who are in the LGBTQ+ community and I try to support them as best as I can, not only during the month of June, but all year long. I want them to know they are loved just as they are. I mean, they love me just as I am, so surely I can do the same!
I ashamed to admit that I wasn’t always this inclusive.
My journey to become an affirming Christian is partially documented in an earlier blog I wrote on my old blog site back in 2019 called “Loving Better: My journey towards becoming an affirming Christian”. You can click that link if you are interested in reading it. Obviously I’ve learned so much more since then, but it’s still a good place to start if you wonder how my journey started unfolding. I definitely grew up in a religion that told me that “The Bible says that homosexuality is wrong, and if the Bible says so, well, then it’s true!” Since then, I’ve learned that much of what “The Bible says” is just someone’s interpretation of what the Bible says. Did you know that the word “homosexual” wasn’t even IN the Bible until 1946? And did you know that many scholars now see that the original word that was translated as “homosexual” didn’t mean that at all?
We all have lenses through which we choose to read the Bible and those lenses are usually ones we have inherited from our specific religion’s Bible teachers or pastors, or from our family’s view of how they interpret scripture. However, as we grow in our faith, our “lenses can be refined and even replaced as our understanding grows and changes over time.”1 I think it’s important to say that high-control religions will try to discourage you from opening your mind and heart to outside influences when it comes to using new lenses, but I have found that the Bible becomes so much bigger and more alive when you allow yourself freedom to explore how other Christian communities choose to let it guide them.
Look, we don’t have to look too far in the past to see how the Christian church has gotten things wrong before by using incorrect lenses to interpret the Bible. Things like slavery, women’s rights, bi-racial marriage, and child abuse. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping track, but the amount of abuse allegations coming out from within the walls of Christian churches across America is astounding. Child abuse, sexual abuse, emotional and religious abuse. It’s bleeding out everywhere. On one hand, it’s horrible to hear about, but at the same time, I’m glad it’s all coming out. Things can’t be dealt with in the dark, it must be brought out into the light.
Which brings me back to my initial question: Why Pride? Why does the LGBTQ+ community feel the need to celebrate their sexual orientations?
“Why Pride? Because Shame.” — Grant Jenkins
I saw my friend Jamie share those four words on his socials the other day, written originally by his friend Grant, and it just jumped out at me. YES! They are celebrating because they no longer allow themselves to live in shame. Shame is a dark, depressing place to live. No wonder the suicide rate has traditionally been so high among the LGBTQ+ community. Pride literally saves lives. Living in shame is a burden no one should have to bear. So Pride is important because it allows our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans, queer, questioning and more friends to come out of the dark and into the light! And I for one, just love to sit back and watch them come alive and thrive, just like everyone has the right to do.
“People should never be collateral damage of theology.” - Sarah Bessey
Like I said earlier, there is a long laundry list of things that “good Christian people” have gotten wrong through the years, and I definitely think fundamental views on what they think the Bible says about homosexuality will be another one they got wrong.
My dear friend Staci Frenes is an amazing musician who was making her living as a Christian singer/songwriter/worship leader when her whole world got turned upside down when her teenage daughter came out. She was literally faced with doing some hard work on this subject or possibly losing her daughter. It wasn’t easy to reconcile her love for her daughter and her love for her religion and the beliefs she had been taught around homosexuality, but she did it. She documents her journey in a beautiful book called Love Makes Room: And other things I learned when my daughter came out . I highly recommend this book to anyone as a great resource, but especially if you have an LGBTQ+ child.
Now I’m going to quote Brian McLaren here for a moment:
“Thousands of sincere evangelical Christians feel a deep tension between their head and their heart. In their heads they understand the Bible (and God) as the uncompromising enemy of LGBTQ+ people. But in their hearts, they find it hard to condemn or exclude them. Some people tell them to choose their heart over their head; others say the reverse. Colby Martin’s highly readable and deeply engaging new book, UnClobber, offers a third option: a different way to aligning head and heart through a fresh look at Scripture. Written with a theologian’s intelligence and a pastor’s sensitivity, this book is the resource thousands have been waiting for.”
That quote is an endorsement for a book I’ve been recommending for a while now that I have found super helpful in unpacking bad theology surrounding homosexuality in the Bible. Its full title is “UnClobber: Rethinking our misuse of The Bible on Homosexuality” by pastor/speaker/author Colby Martin.
Along with the book, Martin has put together some courses online that help you break down those pesky “clobber verses” even easier.
Link to Un-clobber Courses: https://courses.unclobber.com/
I’ll list more books I think you’ll find helpful if you are one of those Christians who McLaren says “feel a deep tension between their head and their heart” on this issue. I hope and pray you’ll find some information here that will help you align with your LGBTQ+ siblings in a new and bolder way. My own journey has brought me to the conclusion that they deserve to be included in our Christian communities as equal brothers and sisters in Christ. I am encouraged by the other Christians and church communities around me who have come to the same conclusion.
I am also encouraged by more and more Christians who are willing to speak out and be brave enough to tell their own stories about how bad theology has harmed them. Ya’ll keep speaking up! It’s working! Exposing abusive leaders and systems HAS to be the first step in making some real changes, so that the church isn’t a place that harms people anymore. The church should be a place to go for healing, love, and community. Jesus’ teachings are beautiful and worthy of so much more than a bunch of man-made rules and incorrect Biblical translations.
One of my favorite quotes is from Father Richard Rohr. He says: “Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself”. ANY religion can fail you because all religions are man-made. However, God never fails us. Never, ever, ever. Things might look grim at times, but I truly am hopeful that Christianity still has a lot to show us about loving God and loving each other. And that’s what a good religion should do, right? I keep believing…
Much love to you all… M
P.S. If you have any books, podcasts, or other resources that you have found helpful in your own journey towards becoming an affirming Christian, please share in the comments! We can all learn together. THANK YOU!
Other books I highly recommend for you to read during Pride month:
Torn: Rescuring the gospel from the gays vs. christian debate by Justin Lee
God and The Gay Christian by Matthew Vines
Does Jesus Really Love Me by Jeff Chu
And some other great resources:
Has “Homosexual” always been in the Bible? via United Methodist Insight
“Leaving High Control Religion” by Mark Smeby
direct quote from Josh Scott’s book, “Bible Stories for Grown-Ups, pg xii
Thanks for this post, Marcia. We are on this journey right now, as both of our adult kids came out as trans two years ago. I appreciate all the references and resources you have included. I will be checking them out as I have time. I wrote about Pride in June, too. It's my post entitled "Accidentally starting off on the right foot," which was the first post under my Substack's new name.
Lovely post - I especially like your friend's friend's insight, "Why Pride? Because Shame."
Great resources, too. I would add that I appreciated David Gushee's book Changing Our Minds and would recommend to those who feel the tension you describe.