Uplift: Uplifting LGBTQ+ Experience Within and Beyond Unitarian Universalism

IDAHOBIT—Freedom is Dangerous

Rev. Michael Crumpler stands before the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, wearing a rainbow stole and clergy collar. Beneath a bright Southern sky, the image symbolizes the intersection of faith, Black liberation, LGBTQ+ pride, and the ongoing struggle for justice.

Rev. Michael Crumpler crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge

Rev. Michael Crumpler stands before the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, wearing a rainbow stole and clergy collar. Beneath a bright Southern sky, the image symbolizes the intersection of faith, Black liberation, LGBTQ+ pride, and the ongoing struggle for justice.

By Michael J. Crumpler

Sunday, May 17th, is International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia.

This weekend, I am traveling to Selma for the first time in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the great state of Louisiana to redraw Black representation out of Congress.

Selma is hallowed ground. It’s where we go when we need to call upon the ancestors. We go there when we need to draw upon powers greater than the powers that be today.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge is Mecca. It’s the Promised Land.

Edmund Pettus was a U.S. Senator from Alabama, a Confederate General, and the Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. I wonder what he would think about his name being associated with the very thing he feared the most: freedom.

Freedom is dangerous.

I’m a Black queer nonbinary queen freely moving back and forth between the byways of Brooklyn and the highways of rural southeastern North Carolina. Rarely do I think about the danger that exists around me. Even more rare is the memory of those who made it possible for me to move with such freedom and dignity.

We are going to Selma to remember the danger we are in. Selma will not undraw any maps or overturn any Supreme Court decision. Selma will remind us — and them — that our fight for freedom is through the South.

All our freedoms — homosexual freedom, bisexual freedom, transgender freedom, freedom to immigrate, freedom to not to parent, freedom to be — are connected to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On this International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, may we remember that these fears are really about freedom.

The same fear that beat, lynched, and maimed Black children in Selma is the same fear that bans, misnames, and destroys transgender children today.

The same fear that annihilated Indigenous tribes is the same fear that undermines the rights of undocumented immigrants.

The same fear that put jelly beans in a jar next to a ballot and scribbled a price on a piece of paper for Black people to pay in order to vote is the same fear that says one Black district is too many. We wouldn’t want people to become too free.

On Sunday, May 17th, may we fear not, and may we all be free indeed.