Last June, a family friend invited us to be his guests at the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus Pride Performance. We were honored by the invite and looking forward to a few hours of uplifting distraction. The weeks before the concert were dark a time in our county . We were witnessing the first large scale militarized immigration raids of the Trump regime. Masked gunmen in unmarked vehicles descended on LA ripping people from homes, jobs, churches and right off the street. Protests broke out across the city, systemic violence met street justice as ICE agents clashed with protesters. The media painted LA as a war zone. Over the objections of Gov Newsom, Trump federalized the California National Guard. Falsely claiming Californians were begging for federal intervention, Trump then deployed hundreds of marines to LA. We watched our neighbors and friends, teachers, preachers and community leaders dragged in the street, denied due process, deported, detained or disappeared. Our festering national divide ripped open like an old wound, tensions were at all time high and there was a palpable layer of anxiety in the air. 

But the show must go on. The chorus and the hosts performed beautifully and truly created a space for our community to stand, not just in recognition of queer visibility, but in solidarity with the communities actively being robbed of that right. 

The music was moving, the songs were resonant, irreverent and funny. The performances were devastating and endearing. The speakers and soloists were brave and vulnerable and real. Threaded through the afternoon were messages of hope and timely reminders that authenticity is an act of resistance, music is a powerful form of protest and a movement unified by love is stronger than forces allied by hate. 

Towards the show’s end, The chorus preformed “Pink Pony Club”.  While they belted out “Won’t make my momma proud, it’s gonna cause a scene, she sees her baby girl, i know she’s gonna scream…” I looked at the crowd on their feet clapping, cheering, dancing together.  

In that moment it felt like the weight of the world was replaced by the embrace of a community that knows the exhilaration and isolation of leaving who you were to become who you are, that knows the price of inner peace is visible vulnerability and the cost of bravery may be banishment but still wakes up every day with the  AUDACITY to live authentically. 

That is because we are resilient, tenacious, persistent and unrelenting. We’re lovers at heart but we’ve all had to be fighters, we know how to wield ourselves as weapons. That gave me a glimmer of hope I didn’t walk in with.

When the show was over, I saw the same glimmer of hope in the people pouring from the theatre doors back into the city. And I have spent enough time in church pews and AA rooms to know that hope is a holy thing.  

So I held on to it. 

History Repeats itself

It reminded me of a scene from The Sound of Music, when the Von Trap family singers use the Salzburg  music festival as a cover to flee the country.

For context, the weeks leading up to the concert were a dark time in Austria known as the Anchuluus . Hitler used the ministry of propaganda to issue press reports claiming Austria was in chaos. German radio and Newspapers reported mass rioting in Vienna and blamed the unrest on “leftist” and “Jewish mobs” terrorizing Austria’s German population. 

The Austrian chancellor immediately responded saying the reports were false. Hitler claimed the Austrian Government had lost control, that Austrians were begging for intervention and aid from the German military. When German troops rolled into the Federal State of Austria they called it a liberation, not an invasion. In the following days prominent Austria politicians were arrested. Jewish citizens were pulled from their homes, synagogues and places of business to be publicly humiliated, beaten or taken in to custody. Captain Von Trapp is devastated watching the people he loves and the country he serves succumb to fascism. 

Alone, before a crowd peppered with Nazi officers, Captain Von Trapp takes the festival stage to sing Edelweiss, an anthem of Austrian Pride. Every lyric laced with heartache, overcome by emotion, his voice falters. Seeing his struggle, members of the audience lift their voices and together they sing “Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow. Bless my homeland forever”

In that moment the Captain is embraced by Austrians who know that song is not about a single fragile flower fighting alone to survive a deadly climate. He’s uplifted by people who know they are singing about a seed that grows deep roots in caustic soil, survives beneath oppressive winter ice and blossoms under the glaring mountain sun BECAUSE  it is fortified by ecosystems and layered in adaptations protecting, nurturing and defending its vulnerabilities. It is a protest and a call to action to the resilient, the tenacious, the persistent.

We know how that story ends.

We know that we are not alone in our fight. WE are the ecosystems, WE are the adaptations that create survivable conditions in a harsh world. That is the power of culture and community and connection. That is PRIDE, that is where we find hope…and hope is a holy thing.