Pride Sunday Reflection

By Vicki MarkAnthony

Sunday, June 29^th 2025

I’ve had a really interesting June. There’s been a thought-provoking confluence of media messages that have weighed heavily on my mind. And I remembered a specific line from a poem by Robert Burns.

Man's inhumanity to man,

Makes countless thousands mourn.

So how did this month start and what prompted that line to come to mind? A few weeks ago, Margaret Silvestri came over to my porch for an ice tea and we decided to watch The Philadelphia Eleven. It’s a documentary based on the 11 women who defied the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church. Three bishops broke with their fellow bishops to ordain these women and a Philadelphia pastor offered his church. There was a beautiful display of courage and love - and a disgusting display of ignorance and misogyny. There were hate letters and death threats aimed at the women and horrible verbal attacks from both the laity and the clergy.  Perhaps they never read the letter to the Galatians that we read last week, “there is no Jew no Greek, slave or free, male or female for you are all one In Jesus Christ.”  It took years and tears for the Episcopal Church to look at itself and finally agree that women priests should be normalized in the canons of the Church. Barbara Harris, the first woman consecrated bishop, wore a bullet proof vest under her alb at her ordination. In fact, it was the question of women’s ordination that drove me away from the Roman Catholic Church to this very spot.  Man’s inhumanity to women?

We’ve come a long way, baby because those first eleven would not be silent when they heard the call of God.  

Then a few days later, I turned on a PBS station and watched a documentary about the Stonewall Riots in New York City. That event in June of 1969 is why Pride month is in June. Gay bars in NY were owned and operated by the mob, and the police were paid off to look the other way. Why? Because being openly gay was illegal: It was illegal to display affection to the same sex. It was illegal to dress in a manner inconsistent with your birth gender. And one night, the police decided to raid the Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village and after decades of cruel and often violent treatment of gays and lesbians, the people revolted. Not just the homosexual community, but the neighbors who joined in solidarity with their cause. The police turned out in riot gear which incited the crowds - resulting in anger and turbulence night after night. You might remember a few years ago, the furor over the nomination of Gene Robinson to be the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in the US. Nevertheless, he was elected in June 2003 and caused some conservative congregations to leave the Episcopal Church ---and in fact one of our former rectors left over the issue.  Eventually, most states overturned laws criminalizing same sex relationships but it wasn’t until June of 2015 that same sex marriages were legalized by the Supreme Court. Social change takes time but it doesn’t happen through silence or faintheartedness. Gene Robinson also wore a bullet proof vest under his vestments when consecrated as 9^th bishop of New Hampshire. So much for loving your neighbor.

Also this month, I was listening to my NPR station which had a piece on Loving Day. What was Loving Day? It was June 12 commemorating the Supreme Court Case of Loving v. Virginia. Back in 1958, a black woman named Mildred Jeter married Richard Loving, a white man in Washington DC. Then they moved back to their home in Virginia. At the time in many US jurisdictions, there were laws against interracial marriage -  and the Lovings were subsequently arrested and sentenced to a year in jail. Their sentence would be lifted if they agreed to leave and not return to Virginia for 25 years. The Lovings filed a motion to vacate their convictions and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court.  So it was in June of 1967 that a unanimous ruling overturned the law. The Lovings changed the laws of this country by refusing to be silent in the face of injustice. 

This month I also watched a video on the internet about the 10th year anniversary of the massacre at Mother AME church in Charleston. The young white supremacist killed 9 people at a bible study, wounded others and left the church, the community, and the country in scars. But some of the survivors would not be silent. They spoke up at his sentencing, after the perpetrator admitted he would do it again, that he was not sorry. They spoke up to forgive him. They spoke up to tell him to turn to God. They would not be silent and showed that the lessons they had learned at that church and that bible study had penetrated deeper than those 74 bullets. They spoke up asking for peace and tolerance and love of neighbor.

On Substack last week, I read this: "Let’s say you’re an immigrant with questionable legal status. You’re married and your spouse is the same. You have lived in America for many years, paying taxes and whatnot, and own a house. You have two kids and they are American citizens – for now. You and your spouse show up for a routine asylum court date and are snatched by a group of men with masks who claim (without showing identification) that they are agents of the state. You are put in jail. And let’s assume that you are deported. Perhaps to El Salvador. What happens to your children in the hours you are arrested? Who picks them up from school? Who feeds them? Where do they sleep?" Remember when Jesus said I was a stranger and you welcomed me?

And then of course, there is Gaza. From every media source, I could not escape seeing or hearing the cries of the Palestinians as they suffer from bombings and starvation. I could not turn away from those horrors as much as I would like to. Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. Do not mistake criticizing the genocide taking place by a ruthless Israeli government for antisemitism. The two do not equate. I can love the Jewish people and lament the atrocities the Israeli government has committed. But beware. This is precisely the time when hate groups spread their horrid antisemitic messages. Let’s not be silent in the face of that evil as well. Remember Paul’s warning to the Galatians today, “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”

I told you it’s been an interesting June! The second sentence in our Epistle says “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. We love others, not because they deserve it but because God loved us first, and continues to love all of us passionately and persistently as Rev. Sandy says. We are being challenged today to live out that commandment by speaking the truth even in the face of lies, even in the face of hatred. We may have come a long way but in many aspects of our modern society we are slipping back. The criminalizing of immigrants, the treatment of gays in the military and healthcare, the sin of white supremacy, the erasure of DEI, the wholesale genocide of the Palestinians in which our government is complicit, are just some of the reasons we as followers if Jesus need to speak up – because as our Connecticut bishops recently reminded us – Silence equals death. Loving our neighbors and speaking the truth is life giving. The end of our passage in Galatians says: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.  —Galatians 5:22–23  

On June 1st, there was a flag raising at Town Hall to celebrate the beginning of Pride Month and I was proud to see some from our congregation there in solidarity, in joy, peace, kindness, gentleness. Today, we will hold a celebration on these beautiful grounds to mark the time when folks who could no longer stay in the closet, spoke out – and owned who they were. And their neighbors cared enough to speak out with them. God has given us a voice and a choice. We can use it to speak malice or we can use it to forgive. We can use it to stand up for the most vulnerable, or keep silent in the face of injustice. And then, on Monday, there was a Facebook post from author Anne Lamott, one of my favorites, who seemed to be channeling Galatians: “Today we can unleash waves of love on each other, our families and communities…because love is bigger than any bleak stuff and barbarity that the world throws at us. We will have hope again because we always do again…What is helpful right away is to stick together in our horror, grief, anxiety…So if you do not know what else to do right now, do love: take a big bag of food over to the local food pantry…Walk around the neighborhood and wave or hug everyone and pick up litter…Talking and sticking together is usually the answer. We become gentler, more patient and kind with each other and that’s a small miracle. It means something of the spirit is at work...healing and peace will take time. And in the meantime, always always always always, we take care of the poor. This will help you more than anyone else, and put you in Jesus and Buddha’s good graces.” So, it is my sincerest hope that we here at Christ Church will take that advice, live by the fruits of the spirit, continue to love our neighbors, and not keep silent.

May it be so.

Please pray with me the prayer by Martin Luther King Jr.

God, grant that this tragic midnight of man’s inhumanity to man will soon pass and the bright daybreak of freedom and brotherhood will come into being. Amen.