50 Years of Stonewall Pride 2019

Published: June 30, 2019, 10:55 a.m.

b'This year\\u2019s Pride celebration is such an important one for queer people. Not only are we still fighting the good fight, but we are also remembering the Stonewall Riots that happened 50 years ago. We honor the strong and courageous queer folks behind that uprising and continue the work that they have started 5 decades ago.\\nEpisode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast!\\nFr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week\\u2019s lectionary readings. We\\u2019re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I\\u2019m Father Shay Kearns\\nB: And I\\u2019m Brian G. Murphy. Good morning and happy Pride! Today is Sunday, June 30th, 2019. It is Pride in New York City \\u2014 World Pride. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It\\u2019s a big weekend for queer people. It\\u2019s also my first Pride away from New York city in 11 years. I\\u2019ve been a queer man living in New York City for 11 years and so, Pride, in particular, and The Village and Stonewall all feels deeply personal to me. I\\u2019m excited to spend the morning talking about LGBTQ Pride and how that intersects with our lives and faith as queer Christians. So Shay, what do you have to say about this?\\nFS: Yeah, it\\u2019s so interesting. I still feel like, you know, I always reflect on the fact that growing up, Pride was considered the worst of the sins. And then, coming out, I really had to grapple with what it meant to be proud of my identity and who I am. It seemed like the double sin, right? Because not only was I queer and trans \\u2014 which was definitely not okay in the church that I grew up in. But also, I was gonna be proud about being queer and trans? Which just felt like a flaunting that was just more than people can handle. And over the years, I\\u2019ve come to really love this sense of being proud. Particularly proud of something that so many other folks denigrate and say, shouldn\\u2019t exist. I find a lot of strength in being proud of my identity and a lot of strength in this sense of pride as resistance. Especially moved, this year reflecting on the fact that it\\u2019s been 50 years since Stonewall. And that Stonewall wasn\\u2019t a parade, it was a riot, and it was an uprising. It was a group of poor and people of color, sex workers and trans-women of color who finally said: \\u201cNo!\\u201d We are not gonna let you harass us anymore. We are not gonna let you shake us down for money. We are not gonna let you kick us out of this space that we have, that we love and that\\u2019s safe. We\\u2019re gonna fight back. It\\u2019s so beautiful that that\\u2019s what started this movement for rights and I\\u2019m glad that people are reflecting more about the fact that it wasn\\u2019t white cis-gays that started Stonewall and that it was trans-woman of color. I\\u2019m seeing that more in the narrative now which I think is really beautiful. And I am also reflecting about how much work there\\u2019s still is to be done. I went to this orchestra event the other night. It was a Pride event, so they were playing works by composers who were LGBT. And I was struck by 2 things: 1) they only had one trans composer in the program and they left her out of the program, but it was an accident, you know, air quotes. But I was just really struck by the fact that seriously, the one person that you are going to leave out is a trans woman. And then the night ended with a white cis-man, I\\u2019m assuming, doing this \\u201cAren\\u2019t we so happy about marriage, equality. I couldn\\u2019t have even dream that as a kid. Happy Pride!\\u201d And I was sitting in the audience and they had a trans flag on stage which I was really moved by. But like, in the past month, multiple trans-man of color have been murdered. There have been multiple rollbacks for trans-protection from the current administration. And I felt like, how tone deaf do you need to be, to get on stage and say the fight\\u2019s been won. So I\\u2019m approaching this anniversary with both this sense of joy, of yes, how far we\\u2019ve come, and also there\\u2019s a shit ton of work still to do. So, let\\u2019s get on it and start doing the work.\\nB:'