...and the greatest of these is 'Faith'

Faith is a prickly word in our community. When people who lay claim to "faith" are challenging our families' right to exist, and when those same people use what they call "faith" as a weapon against us, the very word can seem like a curse created specially to hurt our community.
It is even harder to keep faith strong in the face of a President who thinks he was elected by God, and who is presiding over smaller budgets and a shift away from proven prevention methods in the face of 40,000 new HIV infections each and every year.
But then, faith has always been a demanding taskmaster. Faith lifted Rosa Parks' feet up the stairs of that bus, and faith lifted the hands and the voices of the heroes who fought back at Stonewall. It was faith that led thousands of couples to San Francisco to be married earlier this year, and faith that drove over three thousand people in Michigan to volunteer against the anti-family Proposal 2.
Parks didn't have faith that her one action that day would lead to full equal rights for African-Americans the next. The Stonewall heroes didn't have faith that their resistance against that night's gay-bashing would end police abuse of LGBTs forever. The warriors who began Act UP! could hardly have faith that they would end up shaping social policy. And the heroes that came together to oppose Proposal 2 didn't have faith that their phone calls, letters, and organizing would lead to full marriage rights for our community come Nov. 3.
All of these heroes, though, held and still hold an individual and collective faith that, someday, things will get better. They held, and they hold, a faith that their steps up onto the bus, their willingness to fight back, their calls and their letters and their protests will create a world tomorrow that is just a little better than the world we find ourselves in today.
And, you know what? They are all right. It is easy, today, to take Parks' huge steps for granted in the wake of the eventual success that she enjoyed. It is easy to forget that there was a time when simply holding a Pride event would have led to mass arrests and beatings by the police, or when the debate wasn't about whether to cut AIDS funding, but whether to put that money in the budget at all. And it is easy to assume that the people who worked until their hearts poured tears against Proposal 2 did so totally in vain – that the passage of this latest anti-family atrocity proves that everyone should just go home and give up.
All of those beliefs are not only dead wrong, they are deadly. We must never stop trying to imagine the strength of one small, black woman against millions of whites with hating hearts, all filled with "faith" that she was inferior. We must not once, ever, go to Pride and then go back home to our closets, or stop organizing and agitating to protect our brothers and sisters who are living with HIV/AIDS. Most of all, we cannot let the work by thousands against Proposal 2 yesterday dwindle to the disgruntled voices of a few today, in the face of the "faith" of the bigots who oppose us.
We here at BTL cannot promise that our community's work for marriage equality today will lead to Parks-like success tomorrow, next month, or even ten years from now. We can't promise that George W. Bush will turn back toward science in the fight against HIV/AIDS, or that he will miraculously see the benefit of community-based organizations.
We can guarantee, however, that with every LGBT voice that comes out and speaks out, minds are changed and hearts are opened. We can guarantee that each individual one of has has more power, more voice, and more ability than any one of us dares dream about today. And we can guarantee that, eventually, the fight for our equality is ours to win. Or to lose.
Because this is what faith is, and this is what faith demands. Not faith in some perhaps-distant God, but faith in what is right, right here and right now. Faith in what is the best and the highest and the bravest in each and every single member of our community. Faith that, eventually, bigotry always gives way – and faith that, eventually, it will wither and die.
The day we allow our deluded opponents to define "faith" on their terms is the day that our community – and indeed, this country as a whole – will lose far more than a single ballot proposal, or any ten Presidential elections. The day we let them take faith away from us is the day that the movement for human rights will die.
"Keeping the faith" isn't merely a slogan. Today, more than ever, keeping the faith is what will keep us, and the dream of equal rights for everyone, alive.