Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia Snavely’s video recording of this sermon.
The Pulse nightclub shooting happened in 2016, and its toll of dead and injured was large, but it was not the first—nor unfortunately the last—time that the LGBTQIA+ community was targeted by someone bent on violence.
In June 2022, 31 people affiliated with the white nationalist group Patriot Front were arrested near an annual LGBTQ+ event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho [31 linked to white nationalist group arrested near Pride event in Idaho (nbcnews.com)].
Club Q, a gay bar in Colorado Springs was targeted in November 2022. Five people were killed, and twenty-five others were injured, nineteen of them by gunfire, according to Colorado Springs nightclub shooting – Wikipedia.
“(Kayla Rene) Cortes of Colorado Springs called the city’s LGBTQ community ‘a family. We don’t have much support here in Colorado Springs,’ she said. ‘That (Club Q) was a place you could go, a home. And to ruin that, to ruin our family, is just rough,’” (How the Colorado Springs shooting unfolded—and ended—inside Club Q – The Washington Post).
You can hear that same kind of sentiment in Justin Torres’s piece “In Praise of Latin Night at the Queer Club,” which we read earlier and which he wrote in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting (Opinion | In praise of Latin Night at the Queer Club – The Washington Post).
This week on June 12, it will be the ninth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. The article on Wikipedia tells us, “On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man, killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando…. Orlando Police officers shot and killed him after a three-hour standoff….
“Pulse was hosting a ‘Latin Night,’ and most of the victims were Latin(x). It is the deadliest incident in the history of violence against LGBT people in the United States, as well as the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since the September 11 attacks in 2001, and was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting,” (Orlando nightclub shooting – Wikipedia).
So, what is to be done? Apparently, joining together in community is a good start. At the end of last month, Chloe Veltman published a piece on NPR that began this way:
“Pride is a busy time for drag artists—and not always an easy one. Last year, drag king Freddie Hercury said they received a bomb threat on Facebook ahead of a gig in Niagara Falls.
“And I was like, ‘OK, um, well that doesn’t make me feel great,’ Hercury said.
“Hercury reached out for help to Qommittee (pronounced “committee”)—a network of drag performers and allies who aim to help people in just these situations…. Qommittee focuses on drag performer safety.
“Qommittee has dispensed a lot of security advice to drag artists over the past year since their founding in 2024, and has now, with help from lawyers and other experts, distilled it into the Drag Defense Handbook.
“’This handbook is a collaborative collection of experiences from drag artists across the country who have experienced hatred or threat—and what they’ve done to stand up and make these safe spaces,’ said Veranda L’Ni, a drag queen based in Cleveland, who was part of the team that helped put the handbook together.
Divided into seven sections—crisis response, online harassment and digital security, violent threat response, First Amendment protections, protections against defamation, employment discrimination, and mental health resources—the handbook contains best practices for dealing with everything from online doxing to bomb attacks.
Later in the article, Veltman says, “Based on feedback, the published version of the handbook includes ‘A Note On Law Enforcement,’ which addresses police violence against marginalized communities. And Sanchez ended up contributing a section titled ‘Alternatives to Law Enforcement.’
It lists solutions like community violence intervention programs and provides a Qommittee email address for people who would like help with finding options beyond the standard authorities…
Veltman reports, “Attacks against trans people are … on the rise: More than half of the 932 anti-LGBTQ incidents tracked this past year by the advocacy nonprofit GLAAD were aimed at transgender and gender-nonconforming people—a 14% increase over last year.
“But attacks specifically targeting drag performers have been in decline over the past year according to GLAAD, which reported 83 incidents between May 1, 2024, and May 1, 2025—a 55% falloff over the previous year. It’s the first year since 2022 to show a decrease….
“GLAAD attributed the falloff in attacks on drag artists in part to the drag community getting smarter about safety and security,” (‘Drag Defense Handbook’ aims to protect kings and queens from attacks : NPR).
Community may not save us from all violence, but it is a good place to start. Drag artists organized to get smarter about safety. Others are looking to the past to be inspired to organize and to stand up for the LGBTQIA+ community in all kinds of ways.
This April, on the show Codeswitch on NPR, the host, B.A. Parker, spoke to Tourmaline, who “has blogged extensively about Marsha P. Johnson, made a film about her called ‘Happy Birthday, Marsha!’ and now (has) got two books about her coming out—one a full biography called ‘Marsha: The Joy And Defiance Of Marsha P. Johnson,’ and the other … a children’s book called ‘One Day In June.’”
What struck me in the interview was the way Tourmaline talked about Marsha P. Johnson in the context of the community of her time and as an inspiration for community today.
Tourmaline says of Marsha, “What she did was she got on the solution side of the wave. She gathered with her friends in hourly hotels in Times Square. She … did deep dreaming, and then she lined up with those dreams, not by censoring and editing, but by saying, actually, if we’re going to change the world—and we deserve a changed world—we need to include all of our community…. So it’s not a binary between a single person in a community. We’re dissolving that binary by showing one person’s freedom dream can get so large and be so magnetic that it disperses through an entire community for years and years after that person leaves their physical body…. she formed the—architected an—organization, STAR, Street Transvestite Activist Revolutionaries, that offers a blueprint to some of the deep challenges that we’re facing today, right? They are an organization that popularized in their moment access to gender-affirming health care, which they made really clear was no different from health care that cis people are able to get for their lives. They were really foregrounding access to housing and … helping support the lives of houseless people. They were … foregrounding bail as an issue for their community, bail meaning … people were being held and incarcerated … without being convicted of any crime, ’cause they couldn’t afford to not be in jail. They couldn’t pay that $500.
“So STAR in and of itself as an activist organization has a lot to offer in terms of the climate that we’re finding ourselves in today,” (In the face of trans erasure, what can we learn from Marsha P. Johnson? : Code Switch : NPR).
The Pulse nightclub was a place for joy in community until it wasn’t. Qommittee and STAR are and were communities working to make a difference for the better in this world.
Unitarian Universalists are another community seeking to make a difference. On the Unitarian Universalist Association website, there is a page that begins, “Each of us has worth and dignity, and that worth includes our gender and our sexuality. As Unitarian Universalists (UUs), we not only open our doors to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, we value diversity of sexuality and gender and see it as a spiritual gift. We create inclusive religious communities and work for LGBTQ justice and equity as a core part of who we are. All of who you are is sacred. All of who you are is welcome.”
The page ends, ”Effective justice ministry depends on partnership. UU partners for LGBTQ justice work, beyond the Unitarian Universalist Association, include UU State Action Networks, Side with Love, and Transgender Religious Professional UUs Together (TRUUsT). UUs also form interfaith partnerships, such as with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal, the National LGBTQ Taskforce, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),” (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Justice | UUA.org).
Community is not a guarantee of safety, but community can make us safer.
On this anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, let us remember those killed there as we recommit ourselves to be in community doing what we can to protect LGBTQIA + individuals and LGBTQIA + community spaces.
Please join me in a meditation for Pride Month, written by UU minister Elizabeth (Kit) Ketcham:
“With gratitude for the freedom to be our true authentic selves,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
With the courage that comes from challenging fear,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
With sorrow for those who could not be here with us today, and in honor of those who died of AIDS or who lost their lives,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
With grief for those whose pain was unbearable and who left us too soon,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
Looking ahead to the justice still withheld,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
With the confidence that a sense of community banishes isolation and loneliness,
may we live the Spirit of Pride
With the rainbow flag flying high, a sense of beloved community among us, and the joy that comes from making new connections,
may we live the Spirit of Pride.”
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