Earlier this month, 250 people from faith communities across the D.C. area gathered at All Souls Church Unitarian Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 42nd Pride Interfaith Service titled “Woven with Faith and Power.” More than 200 people joined the livestreamed service. From the pulpit hung a Pride progress flag and behind it, a collection of rainbow tulle fabric matching the scarves that I and others waved up and down the aisle as a Maypole celebration for the pagan community. All Souls choir members were dressed in colors that created a rainbow when they sang in formation, and clergy of all religions were decked out in rainbow stoles and vestments. 

Attendees were welcomed by the Umoja Dono and Waimbaji drummers, followed by a procession of faith leaders as the choir sang “Step by Step, the Longest March.” It was one of the largest gatherings of faith leaders I had ever seen, from Druid clergy and Hedge priests to rabbis and imams to Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The church was packed with singers, drummers, the DC Peace Team, and members of the public that had come to sing and celebrate interfaith solidarity during WorldPride. The location and history of the event was especially significant. It was on the All Souls chancel that the right for marriage equality was enshrined in Washington, D.C., back in 2009. But the history of the Pride Interfaith Service is much older, dating back to a day-long prayer vigil held in conjunction with the display of the AIDS quilt during DC Pride in 1985. 

The vigil was organized by the Washington Area Gay and Lesbian Interfaith Alliance (WAGLIA). In the mid-2010s, WAGLIA changed its name to the Celebration of the Spirit Coalition and later, Center Faith, which strives to promote religious pluralism and interfaith collaboration by hosting events like the annual Pride Interfaith Service that gathers together its partner organizations from a variety of faith traditions, including Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, Mennonite, Brethren, Centers for Spiritual Living, Radical Faeries, Pagan, Wiccan, and Earth Religions. 

As Rev. Darryl! LD Moch, Pastor at United Church of Christ (UCC) of Fredericksburg and Jonah Richardson from Adas Israel Congregation welcomed people to “continue this work of gathering, uniting in faith, and standing together as we work to weave a better world,” the latter acknowledged this rich history of queer interfaith activism in DC. I was fortunate to stand in for this rich history and speak truth to power in remembering that queer interfaith work, just like the queer community itself, has a long and sacred history. This is my third year serving as the historian for the Pride Interfaith Service. 

At the time during the HIV/AIDS crisis, and today with the rise of Christian nationalism, Rev. Carmarion D. Anderson-Harvey of the United Church of Christ said that recognizing this history has never been more important. Our communities are under attack. 

Many loved ones have been lost to HIV/AIDS, to queerphobic violence, and to old age, including Allan Armus who organized that first prayer vigil with representatives of nine different faiths back in 1985: Joe Pomper, Daniel FL Hays, Christian Yoder, Joe Sophos, Rev. Elder Robert Vanzant ThD, Bishop Yao Kwabena Rainey Cheeks, Charles Redden Butler Neto III, and Imam Daaiyee Abdullah. And so the service called out to and welcomed in these ancestors “who fought and won many of the rights we are afforded with us today,” Rev Dr. Wallace R. Henry III of Inner Light Ministry UCC said during the ancestor libation. 

Their wisdom is invaluable but so too, Tahil Sharma, faith director at the National LGBTQ+ Task Force, said, is reaching out to and involving young people in this work. Sharma urged that the question “Where are the young people? should be carved into the first steps of every sacred space that has asked me that question.” Sharma urged faith leaders present not to gatekeep leadership or decision-making but to invite in young people to carry on the legacy of interfaith advocacy, and for young people to know the history of faith within queer communities. 

Later in the service, Ebony C. Peace, a Unitarian Universalist Lay Community Minister, specifically called this out–the importance of recognizing the legacies of harm that people and institutions of faith have caused LGBTQ+ people and the wider community, through physical and spiritual violence such as conversion therapy, purity culture, and colonial erasure. The freedom to religion, Peace said, is just as important as the right to freedom from religion, especially as far-right Christianity continues to be weaponized against LGBTQ+ peoples’ rights. 

Atheists, agnostics, and the “nones” — the people who identify with no form of religion — Peace said, are valid and important contributors to interfaith work, recognizing that faith is not for everyone and spirituality, especially for queer people hurt by organized religion, is often a malleable and non-organizational conduit to sacred affirmation.

The desire to protect the LGBTQ+ community’s access to and freedom from religion is also a critical way, Rev. Anderson-Harvey affirmed, to understand and affirm that sacredness is inherent within all queer and trans people. They are divine and holy, Anderson-Harvey affirmed, echoing the Lavender Interfaith Collective’s Call to Action in the Washington Blade: “every person is worthy, every voice sacred, everybody divine.” And no part of them or anyone can be or is illegal, Rev. Cuban Episcopal priest Yoimel Gonzalez Hernandez said. 

“This is sacred work,” the Collective’s Call affirmed, and work that must prioritize and uplift the value of every person in these communities through intentional actions against ableism, racism, white supremacy, and all other forms of oppression. 

It echoed a panel held just two days earlier at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington (MCC-DC), festooned with rainbow textiles and a handmade quilt stitched with the church’s motto, “Every Thread Divine,” for WorldPride. There, Ani Zonneveld from Muslims of Progress Values, ordained Druid clergy member Rev. Shige Sakurai from the Unitarian Universalist Church, hedge priest Ron Padrón from White Rose Witching, and I gathered as panelists to discuss the history, potentials and futures of interfaith coalition building and action and to commit to learning and acting together.

With stickers reading “Gay is God,” a play on D.C.-based activist Frank Kameny’s “Gay is Good” and miniature rainbow flags with powerful phrases like “Trans is Divine,” “Protect Trans Kids,” and “God is Gay” fixed to attendees shirts, about 40 people gathered at MCC-DC to discuss interfaith cooperation and LGBTQ+ advocacy, exploring how we protect our movement and reimagine collective paths toward peace. It was a meaningful start to a week of interfaith work that Center Faith and the Lavender Interfaith Collective will continue throughout the year. 

Closing with everyone singing a rendition of “Sometimes Inside So Strong,” those gathered proclaimed that “the more you refuse to hear my voice, The louder I will sing”–a testament to queer people of faith’s refusal to back down in the fight for survival and liberation and queer and allied faith leaders commitment to fight the weaponization of faith as a tool for queer oppression. 

Emma Cieslik is a D.C.-based museum worker and public historian.

In an era marked by escalating political hostility, targeted legislative rollbacks, and surging hate-fueled violence, LGBTQ+ individuals face an urgent and sobering imperative: self-defense. Across the United States, queer lives are increasingly endangered not just by interpersonal bigotry, but by systems that fail, or outright refuse to protect them. In this climate, the act of owning a firearm is not a political stunt. It is, for many queer people, an existential necessity.

Although gun ownership is often stereotyped as a conservative domain, a growing number of queer and trans individuals are reclaiming the right to bear arms; not to dominate, but to defend. The mainstream debate too often casts the federal Second Amendment and state gun rights as synonymous with reactionary politics. But for marginalized communities, especially those historically abandoned by police, the right to self-defense is not just constitutional, it is life-saving.

The numbers reinforce this stark reality. Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA reveals that queer people are more than five times more likely to experience violent victimization than their non-queer peers. Transgender individuals are at even greater risk, facing a staggering victimization rate of 93.7 per 1,000 people, compared to 21.1 per 1,000 among non-queer individuals. Black LGBTQ+ people in particular face some of the highest rates of hate-motivated violence, revealing the dangerous convergence of racism, queerphobia, and transphobia in American society.

The 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 predominantly Latinx/Latino queer people were murdered remains one of the most horrific reminders of how queer spaces are often the targets of deadly hate. Yet the violence has not abated. According to Them. magazine, 75% of transgender homicides in 2020 involved firearms used against them, with Black trans women disproportionately affected. Despite these facts, federal protections remain weak, and police responses are often indifferent, hostile, or retraumatizing.

In response, a growing network of queer and trans people have turned to community-based defense organizations that reject both right-wing extremism and state neglect. The Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), founded in 2018, promotes the idea that working-class and marginalized people deserve the tools and training to protect themselves. It is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-racist, and inclusive. As of mid-2019, roughly one-third of the SRA’s 2,000 members identified as queer, with specifically 8% identifying as transgender. Since the 2024 election cycle and the resurgence of far-right organizing, that number has more than tripled. The John Brown Gun Club (JBGC), another leftist formation, provides armed community defense at Pride marches, drag events, and anti-racist demonstrations, filling a critical gap left by state institutions that often fail to protect queer bodies.

These organizations don’t glorify violence. They promote harm reduction. They offer firearm safety classes, de-escalation training, and mutual aid, not paramilitary cosplay. Their existence serves a purpose more essential than politics: ensuring that no one is left defenseless against fascist aggression or hate-driven attacks. When institutions fail, the community must provide its own shield.

The rise in queer firearm ownership reflects a broader cultural shift. One that rejects the monopolization of armed protection by conservatives, law enforcement, and the military. It is a reclaiming of autonomy, of bodily sovereignty, of the right to survive. It says plainly: queer and trans lives are not expendable. They are not negotiable. They are worth defending.

In a world where systemic violence targets us at every intersection, queer and trans firearm ownership is not a fringe movement, it is a moral response to lived danger. This is not about glorifying guns. It is about refusing to die quietly. It is about the fundamental human right to safety, dignity, and resistance. As Malcolm X said, “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a human, you take it.”

So, too, must queer and trans people, especially those left behind by both government and mainstream queer institutions, and assert that their lives will not be bargained for, but protected. The people must not beg for safety. They must be ready to defend it.

Max Micallef is an activist and writer based in Upstate New York.

I thought of titling this “A long way from WorldPride” to contrast the struggles of displaced LGBTQ+ people in Kenya with the recent celebrations in Washington. But that would miss the real story.

The United States is facing a concerted right-wing effort to erase and disenfranchise minorities in the name of fighting “wokeness,” a term used to disrespect the diversity of America’s population. The phrase “DEI hires” [referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives] is used mockingly to pretend that no person of color or other minority is ever qualified for any job.

Meanwhile, my friend Rosamel, a trans woman who runs a safe house in Nairobi, is the very embodiment of pride under pressure. The two-dozen residents of the house include several orphaned children of queer folk. After Rosamel was hospitalized for days due to an injury and tetanus, the children have taken to sleeping next to her and following her around because they are afraid of losing her.

If that is not family, there is none. Those who use the claim that God created two and only two sexes as justification for denying legal protections to gender-non-conforming people need to take off their blinders and see the greater complexity of God’s creation.

Whether right-wing culture warriors recognize it or not, God created intersex people and people whose brain chemistry tells them their gender is different from what was assigned at birth.

The phrase “biological males” is routinely used by people on the right in a way that reduces biology to genitalia. Perhaps even more egregiously, many in the news media uncritically accept the right-wing vocabulary.

Thus our struggle continues. We still have work to do to build and honor what many good people of faith call the Beloved Community.

I attended the WorldPride Human Rights Conference in Washington featuring delegates from across the globe. Being surrounded by so many smart, dedicated activists was invigorating despite my suffering from stress and lack of sleep.

The final session at the conference was a conversation with the Congressional Equality Caucus. One of the panelists, Rep. Becca Balint (D) of Vermont, said, regarding right-wing threats to roll back LGBTQ+ progress, that she is a glass-half-full kind of person.

She is right. We could easily sink into despair, given the aggressive attacks on our community. But we must not let the haters rob us of our joy nor deflect us from our purpose.

Before the panel began, I spoke with moderator Eugene Daniels of MSNBC, an openly gay journalist who is president of the White House Correspondents Association. I thanked him for his fearlessness and excellence.

A friend told me that he didn’t care to emulate Eugene’s fashion-forward style nor his use nail polish. But my point in praising Eugene is not that all of us should try to be him. We are a diverse people. It is rather his poise and self-confidence that deserve emulation.

Eugene’s mother told him when he was younger, “You belong in whatever room you find yourself.” Yes.

The threats to LGBTQ+ people around the globe are real and daunting. But we have one another, and the examples set by those who came before us. We also have the wisdom of those children in Nairobi, who needed no one to tell them who loves and cares for them.

I raised money to pay for repairs to the safe house, and for the walking sticks Rosamel required after her injury. The need among these displaced people is always greater than the capacity of the handful of donors. More non-governmental organizations are needed to help those forced to flee their homes and countries because of unscrupulous politicians and clergy who scapegoat them for problems they had no part in causing.

Eugene Daniels was motivated to come out after the Pulse Nightclub murders in 2016. He didn’t want to die with no one knowing his true self.

By contrast, Utah state legislator Trevor Lee (R) backs HB 77, a measure to ban Pride flags in schools and local government buildings, with an amendment allowing Nazi and Confederate flags for “educational purposes.”

We must join forces to beat back the evil nonsense currently proliferating.

To find role models, we have only to look around us and around the world. Rosamel and Eugene did not wait for permission to step up and lead.

To quote a wise ancient man whose teaching is routinely ignored by the hatemongers on the so-called Christian right: “Go thou and do likewise.”

Richard J. Rosendall is a D.C.-based writer and former president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance.