Playful. 

In 1963, Marvel Comics introduced the world to a group of five characters collectively called the X-Men. They were Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, and Angel. They’re joined by their mentor and leader, Charles Xavier, otherwise known as Professor X. Their goal was and is to fight the good fight–for peace, equality, and understanding. 

But they were and are able to fight because they are strange, just like the comic book says–”the strangest super-heroes of all.” They were born with a genetic mutation called an X-gene. This X-gene causes their bodies to develop superhuman abilities, and these abilities vary widely. 

Take Cyclops, for example. 

His real name is Scott Summers, and when he was a teenager, he began to suffer from severe headaches and eyestrain. Only eyeglass lenses made of ruby quartz helped him feel better. But no one could have known that these were symptoms of an unknown superpower coming alive. The whole truth came out rather awkwardly. One day, Scott is downtown and he happened to look at a construction crane high up on a tall building. Power suddenly erupted from his eyes as a blast of optic force. The energy beam destroyed the crane and it hurtled toward the ground, together with everything that it had been carrying. Of course, since this is a comic book, there happened to be a giant crowd of bystanders right underneath the tons of metal barreling down. Scott instinctively trained his eyes upon the metal, blasted it completely away, and saved the day. 

The main thing, though, is that he discovers his mutant power awkwardly. Furthermore, rather than thanking him, the merely human bystanders believe that he had tried to kill them, and so they transform into an angry mob. Scott had to get out of there pronto. Scott Summers, aka Cyclops. 

It’s not his fault he was born with an X-gene. 

He was just born that way. 

Can’t people give him space to befriend his powers and learn to control them better? Can’t they just let him be himself? 

Ever since their conception in 1963, the X-Men have served as Marvel Comics’ allegory for victims of prejudice. They hold up a mirror to the suspicion and hatred that plague the marginalized and the discriminated-against.

Consider yet another original X-Man, named Angel. His real name is Warren Worthington III, son of industrialist Warren Worthington II and heir to the Worthington family fortune. But no amount of Worthington wealth or fame can prevent the X-gene from popping up. In Warren, it was expressed as wings. 

If you saw the movie X-Men 2: Last Stand, you know the awkwardness involved in Warren’s discovery of his mutant superpower. Actually, it’s way more than awkwardness. It’s self hate. He literally tries to cut his wings off to hide them from his father. In one scene, Warren is in the bathroom and has just completed his bloody self-mutilation. His dad is right outside the locked door, demanding to be let in. Warren, finally, lets him in and his dad discovers the truth and he is disgusted. But his dad is also a wealthy industrialist, so he takes that disgust towards the X-gene and tries to create a scientific “cure” for all mutants. 

The plan is that his son would be the first test subject of this “cure.” 

Thankfully, Warren comes to accept who he is and refuses to allow the testing, and he escapes. The consequence is that his entire birth family rejects him. It’s terrible. However, he comes to build a beloved chosen family, his family of other X-Men. 

Does this storyline not hit home hard–especially on this Pride Sunday? Today we are standing up to all the misunderstanding and prejudice that LGBTQ+ folks regularly face. Today, we are collectively mourning the suffering and loss. But we are also, today, celebrating the resilience of LGBTQ+ folks. We are honoring the strength of the LGBTQ+ community. 

For the X-Men, in fact, all the suspicion, prejudice, and downright hate they encounter in the world is no excuse to not dress fabulously. It’s no excuse! In the harsh world, X-Men roll in skin tight costumes, blue and green and yellow and red colors blazing, gorgeous streaming hair, cool glasses, masks, capes, and so on. 

It’s playful, X-men style. 

And this playfulness immediately brings to mind what the LGBTQ+ community calls its “Gay Christmas”—Pride. Here in Cleveland, last year, we saw 10,000 folks marching through downtown Cleveland, culminating in a 15,000-person festival on Malls B and C with dozens of booths representing nonprofits, small businesses and corporate giants flanking the grand stage, featuring local performers and international superstars alike. 

Thousands and thousands of LGBTQ+ people openly owning their sexual and/or gender nonconformity—their queerness—and they/we know what too many people in the world think about that. The hostility is out there. It’s also within, when a person lets that external hate become self-hate. 

But with Pride, the loud and proud playfulness is like a fire that melts away the fear and the shame. At Pride, we proclaim, loudly, “WE’RE HEEEERE!” and so will the onesies we wear, so will the tutus, the body paint, the knee high rainbow socks, the rainbow flags, the rainbow everything, the skin tight outfits, the lack of outfits, the outrageous floats, the outrageous colors, the blaring dance music, and on and on. 

Someone has said that we are living in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world right now. The acronym is VUCA. Storms are brewing all around us. And, do you know what this VUCA world needs right now? 

More glitter!

Shame and fear melting away in the warmth of playfulness. 

LGBTQ+ editor for BuzzFeed News Shannon Keating calls it “queer joy.” “Queer joy,” she says, “has always had a radical role to play in the face of institutional violence and neglect. From the ballroom scene to the basements of dyke bars, queer people have carved out their own spaces for community-building and celebration in spite of a world that has refused to make room for them.” 

Queer joy is about resilience in the face of violence and oppression. 

Queer joy is an affirmation that, whatever traumas a person has experienced because they are just being themselves, those traumas are not the last word, never the last word, and we won’t be stuck in that box. 

So bring on the glitter, the tutus, the dance party music, the rainbow socks, the rainbow flags, anything and everything that telegraphs queer joy! 

Bring it on!

Although a question could be asked at this point. Has Pride become too much of a party? Too much playfulness, eclipsing its radical political roots? 

Hmmm……

Fierce.

The only way that Pride could be too much of a party is if it forgets its roots and if it is oblivious to the continuing struggle now. 

55 years ago, something happened that was a watershed moment in the LGBTQ+ community. On June 28, 1969, police descended upon a gay club in downtown Manhattan called the Stonewall Inn. 

It wasn’t the first time they raided that club, or others like it. Homosexual behavior, cross dressing, and other expressions of gender nonconformity were treated as crimes, and every raid yielded a bumper crop of so-called “criminals.” 

But on June 28, 1969, things were different. The police raided the club, and club patrons fought back. They fought back! That fierceness had never happened before. The ensuing riots lasted days. And it was a spark. It was, as we heard Mary-Jo say, “good trouble.” Soon afterwards, gay rights organizations sprung up around the country. One year later, in remembrance of Stonewall, we saw the very first Pride Marches across the land. 

Pride comes from fierceness. 

The Pride event held in New York was called the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March, and one first-person account of the event describes it as somber. 

There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. Marchers held signs and banners, and chanted: 

“Say it clear, say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud.”

“Say it clear, say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud.”

But that was in New York. Here, in Cleveland, things started up a few short years later. Historical accounts are conflicting on exactly what year the first Cleveland Pride parade took place. A 1975 article in High Gear, a legendary Cleveland LGBTQ+ publication, described the first Cleveland Pride event as taking place in 1972 with around 70 attendees. It says, “While nothing was done in the way of a parade, or mass meetings in Public Square, there was a very successful Friday night Coffeehouse, and a Gay Pride Picnic at, where else? Edgewater Park!”

However, the student newspaper at Case Western Reserve University, The Observer, claimed that the very first Gay Pride March in Cleveland ever took place on September 15, 1973. And, it was a real march that began outside of a gay bar called “The Change” and moved along Euclid Avenue to a rally in Public Square. 

Organizers, it is said, were disappointed by the turnout of the event. They had hoped two-hundred people would be in attendance, but only forty turned out. The fear of being recognized and ostracized loomed very large.

Why not, when around this time homosexuality was still considered to be a disease in need of a cure. Healing the so-called “sickness” required conversion therapies of various kinds including electroshock treatments and even worse. Our Social Action Film Series is screening a movie called Cured on Saturday June 8 at 7pm, and it’s all about this horror. The horror of one’s wings being cut off… This difficult historical fact needs to be faced. Check it out. 

I do want to lift up one of the tremendous contributions of this congregation to Pride here in Cleveland. It was the introduction of “angels.” My predecessor Rev. Kathleen Rolenz brought the idea to West Shore in response to the LGBTQ+ community’s experience of the trial that following the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. As if his murder wasn’t bad enough, members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church picketed Shepard’s funeral mercilessly with signs bearing hate-filled slogans, such as “Matt in Hell.” 

Thus came the idea: for people to dress up as angels and form a shield to protect Pride parade marchers and on-lookers from protesters. 

In 2016, West Shore members Kelly Pinkas and Nancy Jeurgens were careful to drum up that year’s group of angels specifically in light of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people died. That, together with the 2016 election cycle, triggered a spike of hate crimes and general vitriol. 

Our West Shore angels, clad in white, big-hearted with courage and resolve, with angel wings held up by PVC piping, showed up and stood up to the shouters. 

And now here we are, 55 years after Stonewall. 

Where are things today?  

Yes, there’s been lots of advances in civil rights for LGBTQ+ people. Many would say that the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 was a watershed moment. But the very next year, 2016, saw the Orlando shooting and every year since has seen numerous violent acts towards gays and lesbians and transgender folk. 

And then there is the continuing violence of anti-LGBTQ+ bills which have been introduced in state legislatures across the United States. Since the start of 2023, there’s been over 530 of them. This is, says the American Civil Liberties Union, a new record and more than double the number introduced in 2022. 

A particularly disgusting incident happened this past May 11, when Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker made his commencement speech at Benedictine College. He referred to Pride Month as evidence of sin. His words: “Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.” In other words, you can’t love the person you were born as and be religiously faithful to God. It’s yet another message that reinforces the constant message of conservative Christians, that God hates the LGBTQ+ community….

Butker, in his speech, also went on to condemn abortion rights; to vilify diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and to encourage female graduates to embrace the “vocation” of homemaker. As a whole, his remarks were sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-abortion, and racist.

This is bad in itself, but even worse was the NFL’s response. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said: “We have over 3,000 players. We have executives around the league that have a diversity of opinions and thoughts just like America does. I think that’s something that we treasure, and that’s part of, I think, ultimately what makes us as a society better.”

Goodell, then, likes “diversity of thought.” Contrast this, if you will, to how he responded to the “diversity of thought” of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem in 2016 in protest of “the injustices that are happening in America.” Goodell was critical, saying that “I think it’s important if they see things they want to change in society…. But we have to choose respectful ways of doing that….”  

When the NFL essentially blacklisted Kaepernick for kneeling, Goodell with all his talk of respecting different viewpoints was nowhere to be found. As one commenter put it: “Gotta love the hidden racism in Goodell’s comments. So if a player is white, free pass to say whatever he wants. But how dare a Black man kneel.”

It’s still a time for fierceness, friends.

It’s still time for fierceness.

A lot of good has happened since Stonewall 55 years ago.

But a lot that’s bad too. 

Pride is playful … but Pride must also be and ever remain fierce. 

Free.

“Fiction,” says the great writer Stephen King, “is the truth inside the lie.” 

X-Men stories are purely fictional. They are lies, but with truth in them. One of these truth-filled lies has to do with Charles Xavier, also known as Professor X. Professor X is a powerful mutant telepath who can control and read minds. But even more important to know is that he is the founder of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters at a location commonly called the X-Mansion, which recruits mutants from around the world. Located in Westchester County, New York, the X-Mansion is the home and training site of the X-Men.

And it’s absolutely essential, this school. This is the place mutants can go to, to honor and understand themselves and to develop their mutant potentials. This is where mutants can find their chosen family, their chosen community. 

It’s absolutely critical. You can’t fully become yourself all on your own. No one can.

There’s a scene in the second X-Men movie, X2, where a teenager comes out to his parents as a mutant. The mother responds, “Have you ever tried … not being a mutant?” 

How many folks in this space can personally relate to that scene? Coming out is so deeply personal, and the fear that loved ones will reject you upon hearing the news can be debilitating. To hear as a reply “Have you tried not being gay? “Have you tried not being trans? Have you tried not being you?” is heartbreaking. 

But that teenager who came out in the X-Men movie won’t ever face misunderstanding and rejection at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where the motto is Mutatis Mutandis–”changing [only] those things which need to be changed.”

What needs to be changed is not his mutant identity but the ignorance and prejudice of the people surrounding him, and the words these people say to him every day. 

Yes. X-men aren’t real. Charles Xavier is a lie. The X-Mansion in Westchester County, New York is a lie. 

But the truth inside the lie is that people are different, and prejudice IS real, and there needs to be a place where people can come together and they don’t have to check anything about themselves at the door. A place where they don’t have to cut off their angel wings to be loved. You are loved, angel wings and all. 

Because that’s what freedom requires. 

The right kind of community. 

Freedom requires hearing, “Gay or straight, cis-gender or transgender, you are Loved by a Love larger than you can know.”

Freedom requires experiencing this deep acceptance, this deep welcome. 

It can’t happen all by your single, solitary self. 

Earlier we heard Mary-Jo Maish speak to this. We heard how she and her wife Marcia joined First Unitarian Church (now the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cleveland) in 1975, and that her first “aha” moment was when the Board of Trustees explicitly invited both of them to the annual  Board Christmas party.  She says, “We were closeted at home, at work, to our families, but we were SEEN as a couple by that congregation.” 

And now they are members here at West Shore, and here they are seen as well. It makes all the difference. Unitarian Universalist congregations and this congregation in particular are places where LGBTQ+ people come to learn that you can be who you are and you can also be religious. They are not incompatible, after all. 

Do you know of the Nashville Statement? It is an evangelical Christian statement of faith that came out in 2017, which insists that to get right with God, LGBTQ+ folks must change their core identity. Pursue reparative therapy. Cut off your wings. Do something, except be what you know in your heart of hearts is yourself. 

It breaks my heart because I know it does not have to be that way. 

You can be L or G or B or T or Q or +—and deeply faithfully religious too, in service to values that are just and fair and affirm life! 

Why do we march in Pride parades? 

Because we are playful, and we are fierce, and we believe in freedom.

This is our Unitarian Universalist faith. 

“Dear Friends,” says the very first ordained woman minister in all of American history, the Universalist Olympia Brown. “Dear friends, stand by this faith.  Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideals, which has comforted you in sorrow, strengthened you for noble duty, and made the world beautiful for you. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that you are worthy to be entrusted with this great message and that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost. Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation.”

What we do in our anti-racism, anti-oppression, and multiculturalism work, in standing up for LGBTQ+ people within and beyond these walls—both ourselves and others—is a new application of the truths that Olympia Brown names. 

We are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost.

That great true principle is that all are worthy, not just some. 

That great true principle is love fiercely opposing ignorance and hate. 

Stand by this faith.

Move to the rhythm of this faith.

Let this faith lead you out the door and into the streets. 

March in faith. 

Let Cleveland know we are here, and no one needs to live a closeted life like Mary-Jo did. 

No one needs to live like that. 

Bring your glitter. 

Bring your tutu. 

Accept your wings!

Spread your wings!

Be playful. 

Be fierce. 

Know we march for freedom. 

Stand by this faith!

GLITTER BLESSING

And now, you are invited to experience the ritual of the glitter blessing. 

Let shame and fear melt away in the warmth of playfulness. 

All of us know shame and fear.

All of us hide something from others and maybe even from ourselves. 

All of us have wings which we have tried to cut off.

So now, we enter into the space of the glitter blessing. 

Whoever you are, whomever you love, you are worthy. 

Whoever you are, whomever you love, you are hope against despair.

You are divinely human, a paradoxical mystery of combined eternity and dust

Be vulnerable; be strong; be your whole self as you walk forward to bless this world

Just as you are, just as God created you.

All are invited to come up to the front now.

For each person who wishes, I’ll have some glitter available.

Where on your body do you need to be reminded 

of being playful, being fierce, being free? 

You get to choose. 

Come take a dab of glitter 

and bless yourself. 

[…]

May shame and fear melt away in the warmth of playfulness. 

Just as you are, just as God created you–

May you be playful, fierce, and free. AMEN.