It turns out, there’s very little I love more than marching in a Pride Parade. Or not even marching—dancing, strutting, Queen-waving (Elizabeth or Freddie Mercury, dealer’s choice). I believe that you can mark the various phases and stages of your life by what kind of Pride experience you’re having. Not to say that everyone at every stage experiences Pride in the same way. But if you’re looking for a rubric, Pride works. In the beginning you’re just showing up. It’s exhilarating and you can’t find enough rainbow gear to wear. There. Is. So. Much. Glitter. Maybe you took the train in from some suburb with a drive-through Starbucks. Maybe you snuck out of the house. Maybe you’re drinking wine out of your backpack. All you know is you’re thrilled to be there and you go home late in the evening, sunburnt and ebullient.
Later, you get acclimated; you feign being over it. Pride becomes that place where you run into all your exes and first act shady to them and then act friendly to them, depending on what’s going on in your therapy sessions. At some point maybe you even march in the parade. The first time I marched—with a website I was writing for—I was just over thirty, single, and was briefly experiencing the hint of an ab. I wore a fedora for some reason and at the last minute I decided to take off my shirt because that’s basically what you do at Pride. So, that year I didn’t so much march as Display Abs (One Ab) to Thirteen Blocks of Center City Philadelphia.
Maybe at some point you march with your workmates in matching T-shirts that advertise your very open and affirming corporate banking conglomerate. At another point maybe you’re carrying a kid in a Björn in Pride, and pushing a stroller in Pride, and holding a sign that says “Free Mom Hugs” in Pride. And eventually, if you’re lucky, you become one of those queer elders, riding a festively decorated trolley that has been chartered by a community center, waving from the window, marveling at how much has changed and how familiar it all seems.
I love Pride. I love a party, I love a family reunion, I love getting flyers and magnets from local vendors. I love Pride, too, because it began as a riot. That’s important to me; every step, every shimmy, every wave, is a gesture of triumph but also defiance. The first time I went to Pride, I wasn’t legally allowed to get married. I could be fired from my job because of my sexual orientation. My future husband couldn’t be ordained in the church. And yet we were living in markedly better times than we’d lived in before. There was so much to dance about.
By the time David and I decided to get engaged, marriage equality had become the law of the land, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was ordaining LGBTQ ministers, and David had become the first openly gay Presbyterian pastor ordained in Philadelphia. The first time we experienced a Pride Parade together was just before the engagement; we knew that we were going to get married, we’d even talked about it at length; we just needed to go through the formalities, by which I mean posting about it on Facebook. That year, I marched with Philadelphia’s LGBT community center, as I was the program director at the time. David, as he is wont to do at Prides, celebrations, and protests, donned his white pastor’s collar and black shirt and watched from the sidelines. I was wearing a tank top and shorts that in their shortness should embarrass me but obviously do not. After the parade, I met him near the judging stand and we walked back home, me toting a sign that read, “I Love Bread.” (Pride is about love and this is who I am, okay?) I was wearing every strand of plastic beads I could collect; he was looking like the young priest from The Exorcist. People kept stopping us to tell him they loved his costume. A friend flagged us down and took a picture. “Kiss!” my friend implored us. I froze. I finally registered that walking around Pride with my pastor husband-to-be was making me uncomfortable. On the one hand, I was relieved that I derived no psychosexual enjoyment from his priest-like getup. On the other hand, I saw for the first time that the person I wanted to spend my life with was not only an individual, but an institution. He wore his shirt and his collar to represent himself and also to invite passersby to consider that the church, as a monolith, wasn’t all hostile to LGBTQ people. He wore them as a witness and as a small missionary act. From afar, it was noble, beautiful even. It was exactly what I’d been looking for all those years when I didn’t have a church. But in the frame of my friend’s camera, our bodies side by side, holding hands, I felt trapped inside something that I didn’t understand. My Pride reached a limit; my gestures of triumph were unconvincing. Was this right? Was this holy? Was this really for me?
I stopped showing up to church so much. I had searched for so long and worked so hard to get to a place where who I am and who I love and how I understand God could coexist. And having arrived at that place, instead of celebrating, I became deeply uncomfortable and promptly turned around and left. When I did show up, I would sit in church and feel nothing, watching my fiancé perform his job like I was observing a bank teller counting cash. The choir at Broad Street Ministry would sing Aretha and Whitney and Stevie and I’d clap but I’d feel hollow. I knew that most of the work of church is building a community, participating. I knew that if you withdrew, church couldn’t make you join in. I tried to put on a friendly face because I was representing David, not myself. I couldn’t bring myself to be more open, because that meant revealing that I felt more isolated than ever. That didn’t seem the kind of thing a pastor’s spouse was supposed to say.
To make matters worse, when we got engaged I forgot to change my profile picture to Whitney Houston in The Preacher’s Wife as had been my intention from our very first date. My plans: ruined! All those Facebook likes, squandered. What a time of turmoil.
One of the things I forget about The Preacher’s Wife is that Whitney Houston’s character, Julia, the eponymous spouse, spends much of the film lonely. The film is driven by her loneliness, and the supernatural solution to it. I certainly didn’t think of that on the steps of my South Philly brownstone after our first date or sitting in the church a year and a half later, watching my future husband perform communion. I thought of Whitney herself, grinning, eyes cast heavenward on the soundtrack album cover. I thought of her singular voice, a perfect instrument in its finest form, elevating every song. I thought of the lead single, “I Believe in You and Me,” which I secretly thought should be our first dance because this dude loves a theme. I thought of her cover of Annie Lennox’s “Step by Step,” which has provided the tempo for every workout I’ve ever done. I thought of her energetic “He’s All Over Me,” a gospel anthem with Shirley Caesar that will have you jumping around your living room, sweating through your Sunday best, every time you blast it. I thought of the way the film made me feel, which is the way that everything Whitney touched made me feel: light and complete and hopeful. There’s something about Whitney Houston’s voice that communicates the inner workings of joy, the thrill of hope, and the exuberance of love. Listening to her taught me about being a human who feels deeply and lives fully. Her voice is like throwing your arms wide and taking in the sky, it’s like walking into heaven on a Sunday morning, it’s like being born again.
When I was a child and I shared a room with Stephen, we used to listen to tapes as we went to sleep. After The Bodyguard soundtrack came out, I would insist that we listen to that (side A only, please) on repeat. I hadn’t seen the movie; it was rated R and I was eleven years old, what a scandal! But I’d been allowed to buy the album because even then I was obsessed with Whitney Houston. More than any other artist, more than Mariah, more than Celine, more than Bette (these were the only artists I knew), Whitney’s voice spoke to something blooming in me. And The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack was, for me, a perfect Whitney creation—a little bit of pop, a lot of gospel, and through it all that voice that sang me to sleep in my youth.
What I don’t ever remember about The Preacher’s Wife, what perhaps would have been handy to recall, is that besides providing a backdrop for what would become the highest-selling gospel album of all time, it’s not a movie in which everything goes well for everyone. It’s about a woman whose husband (played by Courtney B. Vance, aka Mr. Angela Bassett) is struggling to keep a church afloat. Her future is uncertain and her marriage is on sandy land. The pastor prays for divine intervention to save his church, and heaven answers, as it often does, in the form of Denzel Washington, an angel who begins setting things right. The pastor being caught up in the complicated and difficult business of ministry and unable to receive his blessing, Denzel the angel spends most of his time hanging out with Whitney Houston. This, in and of itself, is a blessing, as she finds in Denzel someone to talk to, someone with whom to sort her problems out, and someone who can help her understand what her husband is going through.
I did not have a Denzel. I had not found the miraculous solution to a life beset with questions about church and my place in it simply by becoming engaged to a pastor. Indeed, it had made it harder. I had a choice, the same choice that rose up over and over again—do I stay in this hard place, stuck, or do I turn the page, even though it hurts, even though I’m afraid?
“There’s a road, I have to follow,” Whitney sings in “Step by Step,” “a place I have to go / Well, no one told me, just how to get there / But when I get there I’ll know….” Maybe Whitney was my Denzel. The fact was, I was in church, on occasion, after years of being away. And this was, yes, where I wanted to be. And stepping through the door, remembering the times of welcome and the times of rebuke in my past, felt like triumph and defiance. It certainly didn’t feel as good as marching down the street on a Sunday in June, glitter-covered and abs (ab?) out. But it was a start.
Yes, I felt alone; yes, I still searched the air above me for God’s voice; yes, I prayed for transformation without knowing exactly what that meant. But I’d taken a step on the road. “Come on, baby,” the chorus chants behind Whitney, “got to keep moving. Come on, baby, got to keep moving.” An incantation, a wish, a prayer. I loved David and I loved God and I didn’t believe anymore that those things were in conflict. I felt something like love for myself. I also knew that the way forward wasn’t any less complicated, but no one ever promised me less complication. If anything, it’s always going to become more complicated. Better but more. Better and more. Pride is a party and a riot, after all. And I was here for all of it.
“Marriage is a gift from God,” David’s hometown pastor, Ken, said to open our wedding ceremony at Broad Street Ministry. They were words David had written, borrowed from a Unitarian ceremony. The pastor continued, “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” this time borrowing words from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, the one that made same-sex marriage equality the law of the land. I realize now that I didn’t really know what those words meant then; I didn’t understand their gravity, their importance, their scope. Everything I did or said that day was a leap of faith, but when you’re in a church, all you need is faith, isn’t it?
I’d left the ceremony up to David. “Just make sure we get married,” I’d said. I’d busied myself with planning the reception, which included a cabaret featuring a live band. We’d hired a couple of musicians and singers, including one woman, Ashli Rice, who sounds just like Whitney Houston. I was only going to get married once and Whitney was going to get me there one way or another. I asked Ashli to perform a medley of three Whitney songs that David and I both liked. Originally, when David and I discussed it, I’d suggested that she perform the entire Bodyguard soundtrack followed by The Preacher’s Wife and close it with Whitney’s version of the national anthem. This just seemed appropriate. David is always far too willing to follow me on flights of fancy and actually considered having someone sing the national anthem at our wedding. Bless his heart. Can you imagine, “The Star-Spangled Banner” at an interracial gay wedding in the heart of a Sanctuary City with attendees ranging from a World War II vet to the mayor’s black LGBTQ liaison to Martin, my cousin who did multiple tours of Afghanistan, to our nephew Michael, a mixed-race boy, then three years old, growing up in South Carolina? Child, that place would have looked like a game of whack-a-mole, with some people standing up and some people taking a knee and some people looking around like “Honey, what is happening in this place on this day?” Now, that’s church.
It isn’t that we have a particularly deep love of the anthem. We just love Whitney. But thinking back, I almost wish we had introduced the chaos of patriotism to the proceedings. It was there already. Love is political. Church is political. Our friends and family—queer folks, trans folks, straight folks, white folks, black folks, Latinx folks, Asian folks, baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, and at least a couple Libertarians, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, questioners, and atheists—are political. This act—daring to say that we believe in each other—is political. Daring to say that we believe in something, anything, is political. Daring to believe that we’ll exist in the future in America is political.
At one point in the ceremony, as is common in the Presbyterian tradition, Ken asked the congregation to stand as he read vows that our community was making to us. “Do all of you pledge your support and encouragement to the covenant commitment that Eric and David are making together? If so, please say, ‘We do.’ ”
“We do,” they all replied as one. Michael’s tiny voice followed a second later: “We do!” he cried. And if ever there was a time to play the national anthem, it’s then. It’s in this place where something new is being built, where people are united in one goal, with one voice, where the future is hard to make out but, yes, it’s there. We’re there. Better and more complicated. That’s the only country I can survive in.
I don’t live in that country, but every day by existing, by speaking, by loving, by writing, I make a vow to get there, step-by-step. To knit together the pieces inside that don’t coalesce; to find a community that is generative, or, short of that, to make one; to see the future. This is why I treasure Whitney’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” It does the miraculous in that it finds something beneath the words that is true and halcyon and greater than the failings of the nation it represents.
Hearing Whitney’s voice, the response is automatic, it is soul-deep and centuries old. It is the awakening of a piece within you that dares to be optimistic, a seed that was placed there by the prayer of an ancestor. It is never a guarantee.
We commonly only sing the first verse of the anthem; it’s comprised of four sentences and three of them are questions. The singer wants confirmation about what is seen, what is perceived, and what it means. And that lack of surety is America most of all. America is never a set notion; it is an ideal scarred from battle, perceived through smoke. The people must cry as one, “We do!” Is that what patriotism feels like? I feel that I should know, but patriotism, too, is always a question. It’s a concept that has been hijacked and beaten up, sold out and ripped to shreds by those who want it only for its surface rush, and not its arduous roots. Anything good in this country has had to be wrestled free.
Some say that’s the beauty of the nation; that’s the American dream, as if we are all Jacob pummeling the biblical angel for a new name. But the tribulations that tinge every victory in pursuit of simply being American—and all that that supposedly entails—are the worst of us. They are a national shackle, a dark mark across the soil. And so it is a shock when the crisp, bright, free voice of a black woman elevates our national anthem from the dirgelike bottom of rote recitation to something otherworldly, something spiritual, something that dares to hope. The fact that it’s possible is a miracle. It lifts me up; it transforms the song; it builds the country from ash.
Ashli starts her medley by singing “I Believe in You and Me” from The Preacher’s Wife. The crowd, a couple of hours into our reception, is a noisy conference of joyful murmuring. They grow silent at the sound of her voice. I get chills because I know what is to come and I know what has come before. As she reaches the crescendo, people are shouting like it’s church. And maybe it is. Maybe this, too, is holy. Maybe this, too, is heaven. Ashli segues into “I Will Always Love You” from The Bodyguard. My mother leaps to her feet like Sister Jackson. A queer couple finds their way onto the dance floor and sways in each other’s arms. And this, too, is church. We have all caught the spirit. We lift our voices up. Couples flood the makeshift dance floor that we’ve made purposefully small because David and I are awkward dancers and we wanted to discourage that kind of thing, like the dad from Footloose. The couples are undeterred; love is not a respecter of borders.
Oh, and it is a sight. My parents are dancing; my brothers and their wives are dancing. Our friends of all genders and races and sexual orientations and many nationalities, they’re dancing. They are holding each other; they are making a new world. Ashli’s final note on “I Will Always Love You” pushes the buttressed roof of the church into the sky; the stained glass is a constellation now, points of light drawing us back to a place where we once found belonging and leading us on to a land we can call our own. The drummer taps the cymbals, that sizzling sound that means something’s coming. The horns and guitar start to vamp. Ashli launches into “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” with wild abandon. And this is church. For this song is about keeping alive the hope that you will find someone with whom you can express your joy. And isn’t that worship? Isn’t that a declaration? Isn’t it?
The dance floor fills. The singers belt with the same boundless exuberance with which Whitney wants to know if the banner yet waves. Does it? Does this nation we’ve made have a flag? A name? A home?
I catch sight of our nephew Michael and a crush of other children—those of our friends and David’s congregants—darting through the crowd with glow necklaces on every appendage. I realize that this night in this church is the world that they will know, this is the world they will see as normal, this is the world they will inherit. A world made by people of all colors and sexualities and ages and faiths and gender expressions who have traveled many roads toward hope. And though we crowd the dance floor in the space that has been made specifically for us, our presence seems to create even more space, for those like us, for those yet to be. All heaven has broken out.
And this is why, I think to myself as past and present and future collapse on themselves. Hope. This is the liberation that waits for us through the smoke. And isn’t that holy? Isn’t that love? Isn’t that worth living for?