The calendar has turned. We are now in the month of June. We know what that means……..sound the music……..beat the drums…..clang the symbols……..It’s PRIDE MONTH!!!!!!

The month when I can’t buy dish soap without it coming in a rainbow bottle. When my insurance company, my bank, my fast food app, and at least three brands of beer want me to know they stand with the LGBTQ+ community right up until July 1st, when the logos quietly revert and everyone goes back to need I say “get back to normal”.

I get exhausted. Not by gay people. Well maybe some gay people. Gay people are fine. I’m exhausted by June. I’m exhausted by the corporate performance of it, the nauseating spectacle of corporations draping themselves in rainbow flags while their supply chains run through countries where being gay is a criminal offense. Seriously? The absolutely unhinged audacity of a company filing a Pride float application with one hand while lobbying against gay rights in Malaysia with the other. It”s laughable…..or sad. Hell I don’t know.

I’m exhausted by what it’s done to the actual conversation. If you have a genuine, good-faith question about any of this the comments that I am sure I will receive I am going to be labeled. Fill in the blank Steve Miller you are a _________. Not a question about the corporate machinery behind it, about whether any of it actually helps the gay teenager in rural Alabama who is the stated reason for all of it. You are not rewarded with a conversation. You are handed a category and escorted out. That’s not how people who are confident in their position behave, incidentally.

So let me be clear before I say anything else. Gay people don’t bother me. They are people I am called to love and I try to do that without asterisks or fine print. Their lives are their own. That’s not a reluctant concession. It’s just where I stand.

But Steve you are a Christian, right winger, zealot, bigot, fascist, MAGA, conservative, extremest, far right, Trump lover……If I have left anything out I am sure it will be in the comment section.

Yes, I am a Christian. That means something specific about how I try to move through the world, not perfectly, not without struggle, but with a command that doesn’t leave much wiggle room: love your God, love your neighbor. All of them. The way Christ did.

I know the history. I remember the AIDS crisis and the silence that surrounded it. I remember to face my own bigotry I started working with my church at Stephen’s House in Greenville, SC, which now is a 6-bed transitional emergency shelter operated by Project Care, Inc.and AID Upstate for individuals living with HIV/AIDS. It serves as a short-term residential facility for those who are chronically homeless or experiencing low/no income. I remember Victor, a scared young man who I became friends with. I remember the uncomfortableness I had at the Haywood Mall hoping and praying that I would not see anyone I knew. ‘Dear God please don’t let anyone see me walking around with five black, gay dudes who really left no doubt that they were gay.”

I remember conversations I had with the guys and most had spent decades of discrimination, violence. Men whose families in every case had turned their back on them. I remember watching Victor dwindle down to 70 pounds and watch him die a cruel death. I’m glad I took them to the mall.

Pride didn’t start as a party. It started as a protest, a declaration that people who had been pushed into the shadows had a right to exist in public. That matters. I don’t dismiss it.

I’m not asking gay people to be less proud of who they are. I’m asking whether pride in one’s sexual identity, any sexual identity is the kind of thing the public square should be in the business of celebrating on a daily basis for a month. I wouldn’t want a month celebrating my straightness. I wouldn’t want a month celebrating my Christianity, for that matter, despite living in a country that was shaped in part by Christian thought.

I say all of this knowing I’ll be misread. Someone will hear “gay people bother me.” The commandment I operate under doesn’t give me the luxury of writing people off. It gives me the responsibility of being honest with them, including being honest about where I think a line has been crossed.

Love the person. Question the month. I think you can do both.

In the meantime, July is right around the corner. The logos will change. The flags will come down from the storefronts. The beer cans will go back to normal. I will be happy.

And I will finally be able to buy dish soap in peace.