Photo courtesy of Nellis Kennedy-Howard
During Pride Month, I often think about the queer folks who came before me, and the debt I feel to them for building a world where it’s possible for my marriage to exist.
But this year, Pride has me feeling something different. My wife and I are starting a family, so I’m not only reflecting on the past, I’m also looking ahead to see what’s next.
The Stonewall uprising was 50 years ago this month. All across the world, people are honoring the legacy of Marsha P. Johnson, the Black trans woman who threw the first brick at Stonewall and sparked the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
Fifty years once seemed like an impossible length of time to me, enough time for empires to rise and fall. But now when I imagine fifty years, I think about whether the little baby kicking in my belly and keeping me running to the restroom every 30 mins throughout the night will be fighting the same fight 50 years from now that her mothers have been fighting for decades? What kind of world will they live in after we're gone?
Even just getting here, becoming pregnant in the first place, was a difficult road. Most insurance companies do not offer equal healthcare coverage for same-sex couples -- meaning, my wife and I had to pay out-of-pocket for fertility healthcare that would have otherwise been covered if we were in a heterosexual relationship. Each attempt to get pregnant cost thousands of dollars. And this is a common issue -- queer women are denied access to coverage for IVF and other forms of reproductive health care every day. I'm grateful we were in a position to make our family possible. We are two lawyers working to pay off student loans, making our road to pregnancy extraordinarily challenging, and now our fertility debt will pose a new long-term challenge. Will our baby face similar challenges decades from now?
As difficult as it's been, I know the future holds a lifetime of joy and celebration with our child. And I know that parenting will hold its own set of real challenges. I'm already trying to think about how to answer questions our little one will ask someday, "Why do other kids have daddies and I don't?" and "Kids at school called you names today, what does lesbian mean?" I confess that I don't know how to put myself in the shoes of our little one who will face criticism and bullying for having a different kind of family. I think about the little boy in Denver who recently took his own life because of anti-gay bullying. He was only nine years old. That's right, nine years old! No child should be carrying such a burden. It's not long before our little one will be headed off to school and exposed to other children whose parents are not accepting of people like us.
Recently I was honored to preach my first-ever sermon at my church. In the sermon, I talked about Muhlaysia Booker, a Black trans woman who had been brutally beaten in a transphobic assault in Dallas the previous week. Since then, in a totally separate incidence of racialized, gendered violence, Muhlaysia Booker was murdered.
And when I think of the hate that still exists 50 years after Stonewall -- the verbal and physical violence that my wife and I are all too familiar with -- I know fifty years is too long to wait for change. I feel the urgency of the equity work I’ve been called to do more strongly than ever. Sierra Club is just one tiny corner of this vast world we all share. But it’s my corner, my community. This is where I choose to engage, to try to build a better world for the next generation and the many generations thereafter.
Our world may be vast, but it’s made up of people like you and me. So many of us are working to build a better world for our kids. My story is just one of millions, and hearing these stories gives me hope to continue the fight.
How are you building a better world this Pride month?