Post-marriage we have a lot of work to do. We’ve all known that our work in the South wasn’t going to end with one court ruling, no matter how historically significant and validating it was. Our next phase of work is more nuanced and and more particular to each local community we work in.
For example why is it so important and so vital to celebrate the first ever Pride parade in Hattiesburg? On the surface, that’s an easy question to answer.
What is not awesome about a Pride parade in Mississippi?
But what happens behind the scenes is often more telling, more dynamic. For a glimpse into our travels across the Deep South please read this new article by our Executive Director, Rev. Jasmine beach-Ferrara.
This is the South right now. Bias nakedly expressed rather than hidden, a spring loaded tension in public life. People and communities that are full of promise, full of hope. New leaders doing incredible work, changing this place, starting new public conversations. The change that is possible will come from the South, from Southern leaders who know and understand this place, who call it home, who have no plans to leave.
If we believe that our public lives matter, that the ghosts of the past co-mingle with the new realities we create, then Hattiesburg changed on October 10. LGBT people became, in a new way, part of the the city’s public life.
It gets at the heart of the work ahead of us in the LGBT South.
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