The first church service I attended at the Abbey was a Pride Service.

It was 2018, and it was my first time stepping inside a church for an actual service for 7 years. There was a guest speaker that day, standing where I’m standing now. And he stood in front of all of you and talked about being gay. And no one gasped. No one started whispering, or laughing, or yelling. No one said they would pray for him. No one reacted much at all, just quietly listening, and sipping their coffees, and acting like everything was normal, while I sat next to a stranger and cried.

I will never forget the hospitality I experienced at the Abbey that day. I came here all alone, with shaking hands. I came in knowing it was a Pride celebration, knowing that it was okay for me to be here, with my buzzcut and my rainbow pins and my men’s button down shirt. But still not really trusting. Not fully believing that this could be a real thing.

I sat down next to a stranger - one of the only empty seats left, and quietly sniffled the whole service. I don’t remember this stranger’s name or what she looked like or anything about her. But I remember she offered me a tissue halfway through, while looking away to not draw too much attention to my tears. I remember when I reached for my wallet as the offering basket came around, she batted my hand away, saying, “No, you are our guest today.” I remember everyone standing for communion, while I stayed frozen in my seat. Unsure of if I should take it. If I deserved it. If I belonged. And she stood up, turned to me, offered her hand, and said, “Go ahead. You can take it if you want to. I’m right behind you.”

When I was a young, shy preteen, I loved church. I carpooled each Wednesday night in middle school to a church with two neighborhood friends and their mother. Each Wednesday, she dropped us off 30 minutes early for youth group, so we could gossip and giggle on the church lawn with a gaggle of 7th and 8th grade girls. And at 7 pm, we’d go inside and sit in a circle around a 20-something woman, who I thought was maybe the coolest person alive, and talk about faith. Our youth group leader was cool. She wore band t-shirts and dyed her hair and even had a nose piercing. And my thirteen year old self was…..in love. I was down right studious in this youth group, always participating, always wanting to impress her. Nursing one of my very first crushes on a girl, I leapt in discussion, ready to talk about the topic of the week.

One week, the topic was homosexuality. I fell silent. My heart beating out of my chest as this young woman who I admired told me that the innermost thoughts I had only admitted in the pages of a journal were a sin. I stared at my shoelaces for an hour and tried not to listen to her telling us that it was a temptation to be resisted, an illness to be cured, something dirty or sick or wrong. That people like me needed to be saved or fixed.

When the lesson was over, and everyone started to walk back outside to chatter on the lawn, I stood slowly, my legs turning to jelly, my stomach feeling like it had been flipped upside down, she laid a hand on my shoulder. I stared straight forward while she told me she noticed my silence. That it was okay. It wasn’t my fault. There was a place I could go, she told me, a place the church could send me to be cured. To be fixed. To be saved.

I got into my friend’s mom’s car. And when she called the next week to ask if she should pick me up for youth group, I said no. And I said no again the next week. And the next week. Until she stopped calling.

There are moments I look back on in my life now, as a queer adult who was once certain that I would never grow up. At 13, I was sure I had no future. I could not picture it. Couldn’t picture myself 24 and queer and happy. For many years, I cried on my birthday, having previously believed that I would never be that age. I couldn’t fathom the idea of an adult queer life. I couldn’t fathom living with the pain I felt being closeted another year longer. Each birthday I would stand in the mirror, shocked to see myself another year older. Last year was the first birthday I didn’t cry.

Many people fear that we are going backwards. That the queer youth of today will have fewer rights, a worse quality of life than the generation before them. This fear is valid. 497 anti-trans bills were introduced in the US this year. The passage of LB 574 here in Nebraska has been a huge blow in the lives of transgender young people and their families. It can feel hopeless, and heartbreaking. But as activist Mariame Kaba says, “Let this radicalize you, rather than lead you to despair.” This is where we come in, this is where we put that radical hospitality that I spoke of earlier to use. This is the time for action. For welcoming community into your life. For driving people across state lines to receive the medical care they need. For fundraising for families who need to get out of this state for a little while. For cooking your queer friends a meal, offering a listening ear, with no cliches in return, for holding your friends’ hands. For calling your senators or showing up at their office or showing up at their house and saying that you demand to be heard. That we demand to be heard. Now is the time to be relentless, to make good trouble, to, as Bayard Rustin once said, become angelic troublemakers and tuck yourself in places so wheels don’t turn.

Every fight our queer ancestors won before us, we won with way less help than we have now. We are not going backwards, just because we’ve temporarily lost a few legislative battles. This is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, Coretta Scott King, once said, “Progress is never truly won. It is fought and earned in every generation.” This is our generation’s fight. And we need you in the fight more than ever.

And if there are any young, frightened queer people listening to me right now. Anyone who looks in the mirror on their birthday and wonders how they got there and if they’ll make it to the next one. Any queer kid looking into the impossibility of living a free and happy adult queer life. I just want to say. Go ahead. You can take it if you want to. I’ll be right behind you.