By Michael Gibson-Faith
When I was last a church-goer (several years ago), I attended what was then the Church of Today in Warren. Bestselling author Marianne Williamson was the community's spiritual leader, and one thing she said all those years ago has been resonating with me lately about the LGBT community.
Marianne said, "Humans are always despairing and crying out to God, 'Look at the violence, look at the poverty, look at the wars and injustice! God, where are you?' But in reality, God is saying to us, 'Kids, look at the violence, look at the poverty, look at the wars and injustice. Kids, where are you? Wake up! WAKE UP!'"
Whether you believe in god or not, the moral of this little parable is insightful. Too often we're waiting on someone else to accomplish our goals for us. We want somebody out there to take care of us, to make it easy for us, to do it instead of us, even when we know perfectly well that we could probably do it ourselves if we just got up and took action.
This makes it easy to put all the responsibility for change on other people. We certainly don't have to take any responsibility ourselves if it's somebody else's job! Unfortunately, by abdicating our responsibility, we also relinquish our sense of control over our lives.
Many of us have this attitude in multiple areas of our lives, but many LGBT people even give up their responsibility for building an equitable and compassionate society. We think the onus is on straight people to change themselves. We think social change is the exclusive purview of the professionals who run advocacy and community organizations. We think that social change is for people braver, smarter, or queerer than us.
We think wrong.
LGBT people need to wake up to our potential for transformation. We need to answer the world's urgent call for change. We need to do the things we can do to create lasting, meaningful change, instead of leaving it all up to somebody "out there." We need to recognize our excuses as excuses–from "I have no money" to "I'm too busy" to "I'm too pretty." We need to become the change we wish to see in the world.
Decisions are made by those who show up. So wake up and show up. There really is no other way. If you don't like LGBT organization's strategies, get involved with them to try and change their tactics, or work with other folks to set a course to follow on your own.
If you don't like Pride events, if you don't like a certain conference, if you find yourself telling someone or something they need to do something this way or do this for you, ask yourself, "Can I do this?" or, "Can I help them do this? What support can I give to make this successful?"
We are responsible for our own lives. I am in control of my life and my experience of it and responsible for making things better for my family. HRC is not in control of my life; I can't put it all on them to try and make my life better.
Friends and chosen family, we've spent enough time looking at the prejudice, looking at the destruction of families, looking at the cultural wars, looking at the injustice. Let's stop just looking. Let's stop complaining. Let's stop waiting for somebody to make it better.
Let's take some action.
