Stonewall is remembered for being the site of a riot. What I remember about that community is care.
By the time the New York Police Department entered the Stonewall Inn in lower Manhattan on June 28, 1969, a community already existed. The rebellion became famous because people fought back, but communities are not built in a single night. The Black and brown queer folk, transgender women, drag queens, sex workers, and young people who gathered at Stonewall had already spent years creating ways to survive. They had learned how to care for one another when families and churches would not and when the police attacked them. Stonewall was not the beginning of their steadfastness. It was the moment the rest of the world was finally forced to see it.
I have been thinking about what the church still has not learned from that historic moment. The church I am addressing here is not a monolith. I understand there are Christians for whom this entire conversation stops at the mention of the LGBTQ+ acronym. I am not writing for them today. I am writing for the rest of us. I am writing for people like me, who are resisting inequitable systems and imagining what liberation can look like for all that God has created.
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