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Liberative Spaces or What You See at Pride


Happy Monday, my friends! Last week was Pride Week in Columbus, and not only did LOVEboldly have a booth at Columbus Pride, but we also co-sponsored the Inaugural Pride Interfaith Prayer Service. While we weren’t nearly as busy as some of our partner organizations—a HUGE shout-out to Stonewall Columbus—we were still pretty busy. Personally, I wasn’t feeling well on Saturday and ended up doing a lot of people-watching while sitting at our booth. Pride festivals, particularly larger Pride festivals, are liberative spaces. People are free—encouraged, in fact—to express themselves in whatever way they choose. For many folks, this level of self-expression is foreign to their daily lives. And so, the pup masks, furry costumes, minimum amount of clothes required, body paint, leather, and other forms of expression were on full display. For Friday and Saturday, Goodale Park in Columbus was a truly liberative space.


Liberative spaces come in many forms for many different communities, but they typically are found indoors or in remote areas, almost always out of the public eye. These spaces are also not exclusively about self-expression as much as they are about safety. Where the church often functioned and continues to function as a liberative space for some communities, Queer people, having been excluded from the church, found refuge in bars and other businesses catering solely to our community. And while churches were raided by the police with far less frequency than gay bars, both churches and gay bars have suffered violence in many forms. It should not be lost on us that the very reason that Pride Month in the United States falls in June is because the Stonewall Inn was raided by police on June 28, 1969. Four years later, on June 24, 1973, the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans was set on fire, killing 32 people and injuring 15. While the lounge wasn’t an exclusively Queer space, the majority of the patrons were Queer, and it had previously served as a meeting place for MCC New Orleans, an early affirming church. The Upstairs Lounge Arson was the most devastating single attack on the Queer community until June 12, 2016, when 49 people were killed and another 53 injured in the Pulse Night Club massacre.


Liberative spaces are important because they act to counter dominant narratives about who a certain community is and what that community does. In addition to the pageantry, the skin, and sexuality on display during Pride, we saw a very out-of-place dad chasing after his very flamboyant tween son who was alive with the epitome of Queer joy being at Pride. We saw young couples smiling as they held hands and kissed in public. We saw community elders who came out long before it was cool being their absolutely fabulous selves. We saw the well-connected rich gays with gaggles of friends and the poor Queers who got to enjoy a safe space without financial requirements. What we saw was the Kin-dom of God in all its beautiful diversity. If you’re struggling to find God’s face and God’s Kin-dom in the world right now, go to a Pride festival.


What are your liberative spaces? Where do you see the Kin-dom of God?


Let us pray: God of infinite love and infinite diversity, during Pride Month, remind us of the people—both Queer and allies—who have helped us reach this moment. Help us remember that we stand on the shoulders of giants who thought themselves quite average. May we celebrate our past when you have blessed us, enliven our present as you bless us now, and work for the future of your Kin-dom on Earth when you will continue to bless us. We ask this in the name of Jesus, your son, and our liberator. Amen.

(This prayer is taken from an essay and prayer I wrote for Red Letter Christians, which you can find by clicking here.)


Blessings on your week, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.


Faithfully,


Ben

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