News :: GLBT
Interfaith service honors Boston Pride theme by Ethan Jacobs
associate editorWednesday Jun 17, 2009 This year’s Pride Interfaith Service, held June 13 at Old South Church just prior to the start of the parade, took this year’s Boston Pride theme, "Trans-forming our community," to heart, putting the struggle for transgender rights front and center.
Dr. Justin Tanis, education and outreach manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and author of Transgender Ministry, Theology and Communities of Faith, delivered the sermon, detailing his personal journey from attending his first Pride parade in Northampton to becoming a national activist for transgender rights. Additionally, the Pride Interfaith Coalition presented its annual Pride Interfaith Award to the volunteer committee that organizes the annual Boston Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which commemorates the lives of transgender people who have died as a result of violence. The Interfaith Coalition also urged the approximately 300 attendees gathered in the church to fill out postcards asking their legislators to support the transgender rights bill currently under consideration on Beacon Hill.
Recalling the bus trip to his first Pride celebration as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College in 1985, Tanis said he and his friends were initially nervous about anti-gay protestors and the potential for violence, but their concerns evaporated once they got off the bus in Northampton.
"But those fears seemed kind of silly when we stepped out into the sunshine and gathered on the little green there in Northampton to get ready to start the parade, and there were children around and balloons, and it’s a little hard to be afraid with all of those things happening," said Tanis, who now lives in Washington, D.C. "But taking that first step out onto the pavement on that first gay Pride was also a symbolic step. It was for me a way of saying that I will come out into the sunshine, that I will be who I am walking down the street regardless of who else might be here. And it was a step that said I am part of something much larger than just myself, I am part of a broader community."
Tanis said that day launched him into LGBT activism. In 1987 he attended the march on Washington, and as a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School he protested at the State House on behalf of the gay rights bill and joined his fellow students holding impromptu safer sex classes at T stations around Boston, using a condom and a banana. In the intervening years Tanis has become a professional full-time activist; he currently coordinates the annual NCTE congressional lobby day.
"What began as a quiet voice inside me, a voice telling me who I was and how I might be in the world, expanded to include ever-increasing numbers of people, expanded my understanding of what it meant to be a member of a community," said Tanis.
Joined on stage by fellow TDOR committee members, Nancy Nangeroni thanked the Pride Interfaith Coalition and told the crowd, "There’s nothing more important in my activism, and I can probably say the same for everyone up here." She thanked the organizations and churches that help make the Day of Remembrance possible each year, and she reminded the crowd that transgender victims of violence are too often denied justice by the legal system.
"We have yet to have a successful police investigation of a transgender murder in Boston," said Nangeroni, explaining that prosecutions have taken place only when suspects turned themselves in or were turned in by people they knew.
This year marked the 32nd annual Pride Interfaith Service in Boston. The service was originally held in Arlington Street Church; in 1993 it moved to Old South Church after the parade lineup was moved that year to Copley Square (the parade now starts in the South End). This year’s service included a mix of Christian, Jewish and Buddhist prayers and chants, along with music from the Voices Rising chorus. Old South’s Rev. Quinn Caldwell told attendees that this year marks the 15th anniversary of Old South’s decision to become an open and affirming church for LGBT people. He acknowledged that such an anniversary might not seem impressive in a year that also marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City.
"But in the world of Christian churches, it ain’t bad," said Caldwell.
Ethan Jacobs can be reached at ejacobs@baywindows.com
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