It doesn’t fucking matter whether aces and aros were “always here.” What matters is that they’re here now. We are here now. And it is a terrible thing to turn someone away because you think they didn’t get here first–whether, indeed, they did or not.
I disavow Christianity. However, I am humble enough to admit that, once in a while (in this case in the late 4th century CE), its rhetoricians have managed to phrase something better than I have, in the same way as one might quote any ancient author. This is from what is read, in place of the sermon, in the service for its greatest feast of the year.
If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived thereof. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.
And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. […] The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Set aside the stuff about God for a minute. That’s not the point. The point is that we should do the same. It doesn’t matter when any “laborer” got here; we should feed them all the same, regardless of when they saw the “job posting,” because here’s what no one realizes: Those laborers, whatever time they arrived today, are all going to come back tomorrow and work from six in the morning, and it would be unimaginably cruel to let any of them go hungry and force them to work on an empty stomach.
We are Queer. We reject the narrative that we are given only so much, and must hoard what little we have. We reject the idea, put forth so often by autocrats and nationalists and capitalists who seek to rule by fear, that the starving who ask for food and the despairing who ask for hope are “invading” or “stealing” from us. If we do not have enough resources, we will make more. Surely we are not so weak and downtrodden as to be unable to do that? This is the month of Pride, and we will have pride, not shame; we will break through our fear and dare to truly love–not just the love that is between individuals, but also love for everyone.
It takes great courage to love. It is so much easier to hate. It is so much easier to hide. It is so much easier to lash out at anything unfamiliar, anything not understood. It takes almost unbearable courage to stand in the face of hatred and say “No, I will not bow; I will love so hard that even you will see that I, we, cannot be stopped, until even you cannot resist my determination that this bad thing will not happen to anyone ever again.”
No human being will ever succeed in perfectly resisting the temptation not to love. That does not mean we should just give into it! Perhaps we will never be able to overawe the hearts of the white men in Washington who want to restart the AIDS epidemic and leave the poor to starve and die, or the men in Chechnya who have abandoned the pretense of fiscal necessity or preservation of liberty and are waging queer genocide openly. Perhaps we will never have the strength and, yes, love to rise up and stop them for good when they attack us. But we can, I think, open our hearts and minds enough to stop fearfully closing ourselves into smaller and smaller separate communities, which are the easier for the oppressor to squish. We can see those who clamor for acceptance as recruits and immigrants to the cause of Queerness, not invaders and freeloaders upon the nation of LGBT.
No more exclusion. No more meanness. No more fear. No more palearchy of who came first. It is Pride. I want a politics of love.
