Moments of Joy Pave the way to Victory
This week we saw some major victories in courts and communities around the world, plus a major apology from a previously anti-LGBTQ+ advocate
Hello again, lovely readers! Thank you so much to the folks who sent me birthday wishes last week, and welcome to those of you who are just joining us. I'm excited to report that this week we have quite a few victories to celebrate—and it feels like they're everywhere I look!
Some housekeeping before we dive in: I hope you’re enjoying good queer news so far. As I’m exploring more narrative-forward stories of joy like the one you got last week, I’m making note of the fact that these stories take many, many hours to prepare for you all. I do not ever plan to put my good news roundups behind a paywall, and I want to provide as much high-quality free content as possible. To facilitate that, I’m experimenting with the subscriber options here on Substack. If you’d be interested in subscribing to a paid version of this newsletter, where you’d receive both the free news roundups and additional stories of hope and joy (plus a few free live events as well!), let me know via pledging a subscription here. You won’t be charged anything unless I see that there’s a real interest and I decide to “activate” the subscriptions.”
Paid subscriptions aren’t accessible for everyone, and wherever you’re coming from I am just truly glad you’re here. Not in a place to pledge? That’s ok! I’d love it if you could help spread the hope and joy of this newsletter via sharing this post with a friend or family member who might enjoy it.
Ok, interlude over. Let’s jump into the joy!
Moments of Joy Change Everything
This weekend was one of my favorite events of the year: Tower Grove Pride. Our weekend festival is a community-oriented celebration of all the things that make the queer community vibrant, and the organizations and values that hold us together. I spent this weekend wrapped in the arms of my community, meeting families here for their very first pride together, connecting with community leaders about how we might be able to make a difference together, and joining a banned books read-a-thon through my favorite local bookstore, Left Bank Books!
This festival perfectly exemplified to me why I started this newsletter. It's so easy to look out at the world around me through my various screens and feel so alone, but out there in the park surrounded by rainbows and families and unabashed unashamed queer joy was the perfect anecdote to isolation and hopelessness. How is this connected to my "why" for creating this newsletter? Because outside of St. Louis, nobody knew it happened. There were no major stories, no historic victories, no records broken. But make no mistake: this gathering was not small or unremarkable just because it wasn't nationally reported.
Here are just a tiny handful of some moments I got to witness at this festival included:
A trans young person finding a book with a character just like them for the first time at the local bookstore booth
Parents and grandparents coming up to chat with me at the PFLAG table about feeling finally ready to start the journey towards supporting their loved ones
Walking down the street surrounded by the open love and affection of countless queer couples of every age and orientation you can imagine
Faith leaders of almost every tradition sharing affirmations and reminders that faith was never meant to be a weapon
Local advocacy organizations focused on other issues like reproductive autonomy, gun violence, substance use, and urban canopy-building connecting with LGBTQ+ leaders about the many ways our movements are arm in arm with each other, and the ways we might collaborate
We have this expectation that we're waiting for the "big moment", a major headline that says "Homophobes hate this one weird trick: undo centuries of bigotry overnight with one bill/case/protest!" There is no one big action. There is no finish line. Even the biggest victories you can think of are made up of a long series of decisions, actions, losses, successes, conversations, or dreams. Small moments. None of these moments alone will fix the world around us. All of these moments together, though, will.
Every little moment like these is a brick, paving the road that we want to walk down. I can report on the moments that I have the privilege and honor of being a part of, but it is so important to remember that there are far more of these moments than I will ever be able to report on. This is a very, very good problem to have.
All that being said, this week did see some major victories and moments of joy that are absolutely worth celebrating, so let's dive in!
This Week’s Good News Roundup
Your high-level good news recap of the week includes:
A Major court victory in Georgia for Bodily Autonomy
Same-sex marriage legalized in Thailand
A grassroots movement in Australia succeeded in blocking a well-known TERF's hate campaign
The author of a prominent anti-LGBTQ+ faith text has made a major apology
The Court Victory:
1. A state court ruled that Georgia's 6-week abortion ban is unconstitutional. This ruling marks a major victory in the fight for reproductive autonomy in Georgia. (Source: AP News, 9/30/2024)
“liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.” - Judge Robert McBurney
International Victories:
Thailand has officially legalized same sex marriage, becoming the first country in Southeast Asia to do so! (Source: BBC, 9/24/24)
In Australia, an outstanding grassroots organization successfully campaigned to get Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, barred from entering the country. She was scheduled to visit Australia to partake in the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference. Last year, she attended and then traveled around Australia and New Zealand sharing messages of hate that directly correlated with increased violence towards transgender people in the communities she visited. This year, thanks to a campaign by the grassroots organization Trans Justice Initiative, she won't be allowed to spread her hate any further and will instead have to stay home doing what she does best: being a TERF on twitter. (Source: Out in Perth, 10/2/24)
Love is Always an Option:
Finally, a story of change to remind us that no matter how long someone has walked a path of anger, fear, or hate, the path of love and kindness is always an option. 30 years ago, Richard Hays—one of the foremost new testament scholars—wrote a book that was a cornerstone of the traditionalist Christian stance against LGBTQ+ people. It was considered one of the top 100 most influential religious texts of the 20th century, and for decades it was a central text used to justify decades of homophobia and transphobia within (and outside of) Christian spaces. Now, he’s deeply apologized and is working to change Christian perceptions of LGBTQ+ people. His new book, co-written with his son, is called The Widening of God's Mercy, "a fresh, deeply biblical account of God’s expanding grace and mercy, tracing how the Bible’s narrative points to the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in Christian communities." In public interviews, Hays has spoken openly of his regrets.
“The whole story of the Bible, I think, regularly summons us all to the practice of repentance…[The position I took] has been, I would say, weaponized — I don’t think that’s too strong a word — by people on the conservative side of the evangelical churches who use it as ammunition to act in what I guess are rightly described as oppressive ways towards gay and lesbian people.”
(Source: LGBTQNation, 9/20/24)
It can be tempting to view hate as a threshold that can't be uncrossed. To sort people into good and bad and call it a day. The reality is that people are messy, and all we are is a collection of the moments we've lived, the choices we've made. I try my best to be a person who does good things, and I like to think that most of the time I succeed, but I also know that sometimes I definitively do not.
Don't get me wrong—there are plenty of people out there who have done many bad things. But I think every human reserves the right to decide they want to try to be good.
Every human being on this planet has the ability to choose a path of love. This doesn't mean they all will. Not by a long shot. It also doesn’t automatically undo any hurtful, hateful thing they did in the past. But remember that love is always on the table as a way forward.
I hope this gives you another reason to keep hoping this week. Remember, dear reader, the change we want to see live in the moments we’re a part of every day. Start searching for those moments and you will find them.