Since 2015, I’ve attended a number of Pride Festivals, often with the group Mormons Building Bridges. (The photo at the top of this blog is me (in yellow) at my very first parade ever, next to my friend Alice (who I’d met for the first time that day).) If you aren’t familiar with Mormons Building Bridges, they are a group of Latter-day Saints who march in pride parades across the country in their Sunday best and give out hugs at their booths during pride festivals. The first time I skipped church on a Sunday morning and nervously headed downtown to a parade I was blown away by the love and acceptance that I felt. I also remember standing at a crosswalk alone on my way to the parade and being overcome with emotion and gratitude for the opportunity I had to go and march as an ally. I can only compare those feelings to the strongest spiritual feelings I’d ever had in my life while bearing my testimony or listening to a talk that really moved me.
So for pride month, here are eight things I’ve learned at pride festivals that I think we should incorporate at church, too:
1. Shout your love to others!
At that very first pride parade I was surprised by how many spectators from the crowd shouted phrases like “I love you guys!”, “Thank you for your kindness!”, and “Thank you for being here!”. Could they really love us when they’d never met us, and our church had historically been at odds with their community? But the shouts kept coming, and I heard many times that the biggest cheers of the day were reserved for the Mormons Building Bridges contingent. They knew we were different and they loved us for crossing a bridge into their world and choosing to celebrate with them.
Why don’t we shout our love at people anywhere else other than Pride? Can you even imagine that in the real world? What if we sat on our front porch and yelled at people walking past on the sidewalk, “You are fantastic! I love your outfit! I love your dog! I love you! Have an amazing night!” A world where we shouted our love to each other would be magical. I wish it didn’t just happen once a year in June at the pride parade.
We could even whisper-shout to people who walk into our Sunday School class, “I’m so glad to see you! I love your pants! I love your face! You’re so cool!”
2. Make every stranger your friend.
I’ve met new friends next to me in line to enter a pride festival, outside a restroom, or refilling water bottles together on a hot day. Everyone is so open and friendly at Pride, more than anywhere I have ever visited before. There’s no mandatory time you must know people before they open up with their life story, and someone you’ve been standing next to for five minutes might have already told you every step that led them to coming out and how nervous they were to show up that day to their first ever Pride. Someone who was a stranger a few minutes ago will be someone you hug before you say goodbye and part ways.
Why doesn’t this happen at church? Have you ever sat by someone in Relief Society and opened your heart up to them before the opening prayer, or had someone in the restroom ask how you were doing who genuinely wanted to hear the answer? I don’t totally understand the magic of Pride, but it’s the only place I’ve had these kind of conversations with no barriers and only love and acceptance and hugs before we part ways.
3. Invite people to come everywhere with you.
After meeting people in random places at the festival, it felt natural to tell them to come by my booth where we were giving out hugs. Often they would come back with me or stop by later to say hello again. Sometimes (if they happened to be Mormon too) they’d stay and give out hugs with me for awhile.
Bring people with you to your space, wherever that is. Don’t leave them alone where you found them.
4. Become interested in people that seem very different from you.
Sometimes Pride can be a little overwhelming to someone like me. There is a lot of glitter and a whoooole lot of skin. I’m a person comfortable in more clothing than less, so it took a minute for me to adjust to the wild outfits that sometimes came walking past my booth. One year, I noticed a group of middle aged+ men in speedos (and maybe capes?). (It’s been a little while and my memory is fuzzy, but they were definitely dressed down for the occasion.) My first instinct was to worry that they were a threat to me somehow. Did I want to offer a mostly naked 50 year old dude a hug? I’m going to be totally honest and say, not really. (And I love hugging people!) But I decided to be curious, and I stopped by their booth to find out who they were and why they were in speedos. I actually never learned the answer as to why they were in speedos, but I *did* learn they were a service group. They met together and organized weekly lawn care services for veterans and widows, and did home repairs for needy families and single moms. That was it. They were a service club. I was like, “Oh. That’s actually…really cool of you guys. You’re awesome.” I told them my husband was in the military and had deployed multiple times for over a year, and they asked if they could take care of MY yard for me if he was gone again in the future. I said, “Thanks, but I actually love mowing my lawn and I’m a little worried you’d show up in speedos.” The man laughed and assured me they mow lawns while fully clothed. This group of men were so nice and so funny. I was sad that I had judged them. I gave them hugs and let them attach their “Hugged By A Mormon” sticker to their speedos on their own.
5. Rush into the aisles of the chapel to hug people who are very different than yourself.
Not everyone has my personality, but I loved volunteering at the hugging booths. As people would walk past, I would step out and smile and ask, “Can I give you a hug?!”. Not everyone said yes (which was fine), but about 95 percent of people enthusiastically opened their arms and gave me a big squeeze. I loved this. It was a feeling of kindness and friendship and openness that I have never experienced anywhere else in my life. What if it was like that at church? What if people walked into the building and people rushed into the aisle to say, “Can I give you a hug?!” What if a gay couple or a transgender person walked into Sacrament Meeting and everyone jumped up to give them a hug? What if the more out of place someone looked in a church building, the more likely people were to form a line of huggers to greet them?
6. Have more fun!
Church can be…kind of boring. Not always, but far too frequently. Pride is FUN. It is laughter and smiling and dancing and hugging and high fives. Worship and feeling the spirit doesn’t have to always be quietly reverent or solemnly sitting. It could be a world where you laugh and wave across the room and clap your hands. If there’s one thing we could borrow from Pride Festivals for church, it would be that pure joy that loving everyone so fiercely brings.
7. Meet everyone where they’re at and don’t expect them to change to make you comfortable.
We should learn to be comfortable with people showing up exactly as they choose to. Maybe they are women who wear pants to church. Maybe they are people who drank coffee on their way to the chapel that morning. Maybe they are scared or excited or angry or depressed. Let’s just meet them exactly where they are and accept and love them.
I often went to Pride Festivals in knee length shorts or Sunday clothes. I did not fit in with the general crowds there. Nobody told me I didn’t belong. Nobody looked me up and down and wondered why I was so out of place. Absolutely no one cared. They just accepted my hugs and told me they loved me back.
8. It’s okay to not fit in. Be authentically yourself and you will be loved anyway!
If only we could show up to church meetings or activities as our true authentic selves, with no need to change ourselves to fit in or fit a changing standard. If you like tattoos, cool. If you like tank tops, cool! If you drink iced tea, fantastic!
What if we loved each other for being authentic rather than judging people for not fitting in? What if we all assumed that every person we meet is going to absolutely love us and become our lifelong friend? What if we worried about absolutely nothing at all about other people except for making sure they knew exactly how amazing everybody else thinks they are?
If you have never been to Pride (or if you’ve only driven past and been nervous looking at the costumes or amount of skin showing), I think you should try it out. Go with an open mind, an open heart, and open arms (if you love hugs like I do).
And if you don’t like hugs, that’s fine. I’ll give you the best high five you’ve ever got!
Lovely piece!
For some reason it reminded me a bit of this article that was about how mass should be more like taylor swift concerts: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2023/06/16/taylor-swift-eras-tour-245498
Obviously your post is a lot different than that one, but they both have the theme that the secular world can sometimes feel more full of love than what we find at church. We should definitely work to make church more loving!
I read the article you linked but forgot to reply to your comment (until Jody’s post today reminded me). And yes – the Taylor Swift article totally made me think of my own experiences at Pride! Sometimes the most loving and accepting places are not where you initially would expect them to be based on preconceived notions. I appreciated you sharing it with me!