An American Mourning

Hey, New York Knicks Fans (And NYC), You Won Last Night

Hey, New York Knicks Fans, I know you’re waking up today disappointed that you won’t get the sweep you were hoping for, that you’ll need to postpone your long-delayed celebration at least a few more days. I realize this wasn’t the script you’d written in your head for Game 3, and this morning you’re probably not in the mood to hear about moral victories. Still, I need you to hear something: the game may not have gone your way, but you won last night. You won with the thunderous chorus of boos you rained down upon that cognitively-addled malignant narcissist from every inch of the Garden’s hallowed ground. You won with the glorious middle finger curbside receiving line you greeted his street-clearing, party-trampling motorcade with. You won as you showered him with expletive-laden, f-bomb defiance, denying him the cheap ego stroke he disrupted a multitude in desperate search of. You won as you loudly and unequivocally reminded him once again that he will never be as respected and beloved as Barack Obama. You won by not letting him suck the oxygen from the room or the spirit from your souls. As he has done for decades, he once again returned to your beautiful city to manufacture chaos, squelch joy, and center himself, and as you have done for decades, you told him where to stick it—and a weary nation thanks you. You were all of us, last night: pissed off, fed up, and sick to our stomachs of this needy, repugnant, self-obsessed megalomaniac. You stood as our repulsed proxy, saying to his face what every truly patriotic American dreams of saying. I’ve always marveled at your city’s courage in the face of tragedy, your unflappable resolve through unimaginable adversity, and your absolute refusal to take any s**t from a two-bit tyrant like him. You’ve never rolled over, never surrendered, and never backed down from a fight, and the rest of America watched you last night, and we were cheering you on like one of our own, because you are. As a former longtime Philadelphia resident (and confessed Sixers fan), I’m rooting for your Knickerbockers, but more than that, I’m rooting for you and your city. I think most of this nation is. You are the fierce, radiant, beautifully diverse place that has always persevered through the darkest seasons of this nation, and last night you reminded us that we’re going to make it through these incredibly black days, too. You pointed us to something bigger than sports last night, and we’re grateful. As he quickly dozed off, crestfallen and embarrassed after failing to command unearned respect and undeserved adoration, you all did what you’ve always done: you carried on. And yeah, in the books this will go down as an “L” for your team, and that’s gotta sting this morning. Still, I hope you find some comfort in knowing that in the eyes of tens of millions of patriotic Americans throughout this nation who have had it with this self-absorbed professional parasite, you won.So, NYC, from the vast, thankful multitude this morning who were lifted by your truly inspiring performance last night: f*ck Trump, f*ck ICE, God Bless America… and Knicks in 5. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Take Heart, America, We're Going to Outlive Him.

Hey, America. I get it: this feels like it’s never going to end, like this oppressive darkness will never lift, like the disorienting chaos of these days is now our default setting. This is understandable. For the last decade, we’ve been living in dog years, friends; pummeled by a century’s worth of Constitutional crises, systemic failures, war crimes, and human moral collapses. The atrocities have accumulated, the legislative losses have piled up, and perhaps, most of all, the list of people we loved and once respected who’ve abandoned compassion and reason has grown beyond what we can fathom. To put it another way: we’ve been knocked on our asses for ten straight years, and that’s gonna leave a mark on our nation, on our relationships, and on our psyches. We are collectively experiencing the PTSD of a prolonged daily existence that our nervous systems were never designed to sustain. That kind of unceasing emotional trauma has rendered all of us deprived of hope, physically exhausted, and a hair’s breadth from a breakdown. In light of all of this, we can be forgiven for believing that we’re never getting out of this, that our Republic is cooked, that 250 years will end up being the lifespan of our flawed but once-promising experiment in liberty. But we’d be wrong. Our present condition is not permanent, America. One way or another, a shift is coming. He is not long for this earth, and he is not long for the presidency. One day, soon, either nature or the Constitution is going to take him, and when it does, there will be rejoicing throughout this planet that we have not seen in 80 years. Humanity will feel the cathartic jubilation it should feel when tyrants meet their demise, and whether he ends first in the ground or in a cell, we all need to make sure we’re here to celebrate together. We cannot be so overwhelmed by the recent sorrows and current threats that we slip into apathy and resignation; that we allow ourselves to be gaslighted into believing our presence counts for nothing, that our work is fruitless, that our efforts are wasted. We need to remember that the toll of proximity and the lies of the present can distort reality. We’re here right now, on the bloodied and broken ground with our faces pressed into the jagged, unrelenting horrors on our timelines and in our neighborhoods. Presently, it’s impossible to rise to 30,000 feet and see that our current struggles, though formidable, are not unprecedented. Humanity has always persevered beyond the evil visited upon it. If we lean on History, she will remind us that all violent regimes crumble, all malevolent movements dissolve, and all tyrants fall, and this will be true for this nation and the monstrosity in front of us. Our job as decent human beings is to allow our individual and collective presence to hasten the arrival of such times. It may feel illogical, but we are closer to ending this nightmare than we imagine. As quickly as it arrived, it can be driven out if, instead of throwing our hands up and accepting our shared fate in these moments, we transform all the despair and the anger we’ve amassed into a fierce and unrelenting resistance. But that is the caveat here: we cannot wish this hatred away, and we cannot do nothing and hope it extinguishes itself. Violent, power-mad, parasitic people never voluntarily abdicate power once they have it; courageous, compassionate humanity has always needed to work together to take it from them. We can be that beautiful plot-twisting presence right now. And no, the ugliness his ascension has unearthed in our neighbors, the unthinkable damage he has done to our systems, and the cruelty he has authored will not magically disappear with his death or imprisonment, but there will be a massive gap left. The terrible status quo will be interrupted. Through the polls or through protest, instability will come to this seemingly unstoppable behemoth. As they always do, time and effort will ensure that what is right now will not always be. Friends, our calling as empathetic humans, good citizens of this nation, and caretakers of the planet, through sustained effort, personal sacrifice, and steadfast, focused fury, is to make sure that the nation we become will be greater than the nation we are, and far sooner than if we had never been here. Take heart, America, we will outlive him. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

If Your Straight Christian Marriage is Threatened By LGBTQ People, You've Got a Crappy Straight Christian Marriage

Well, it’s Pride Month, and once again this year, my timeline is filled with performative, pearl-clutching, straight, professed Christians, outraged at the supposed rainbow-bedazzled queer assault on the institution of marriage. This year, they’re even trying to meme-manifest a “Nuclear Family Month,” which is about as asinine an idea as advocating for “White History Month” every February. Of all the Conservative Christian commentary you’ll ever hear, this is among the most ridiculous: that LGBTQ people marrying somehow devalues a straight, heteronormative couple’s marriage, like a foreclosed house down the street driving down property values in the neighborhood. Marriage isn’t a community exercise or a collective endeavor; it’s a lifelong agreement between two people before the Law and before friends and loved ones as witnesses. It is a legal document, not a spiritual covenant (unless that couple claims faith). The fact that we don’t get to superimpose our religious beliefs on anyone else’s partnership is only a problem for people who also believe they get to police other people’s bodies, bathrooms, and sexual activity. The two people making their vows to one another are not beholden to anyone but their spouse in honoring, nurturing, or preserving that union after their wedding day. Married people don’t have a Board of Directors or a group of spousal shareholders to answer to here. They have their husband or wife, and the family they create together. They alone get to govern their agreement. I’ve been married for 32 years now, and during all that time, exactly two people on the planet have had a direct impact on the strength and sanctity of my marriage. Every single day, my wife and I work together diligently to have a vital, honest, loving relationship, and we’re the only ones who can make that happen or keep it from happening—period. The idea that anyone else’s marriage affects ours is fairly ridiculous to both of us, and it should be to anyone fully invested in honoring their own marital vows. Ultimately, this isn’t about theology; it’s about the fading fine art of minding your own damn business. For years, I worked as a personal trainer in a boxing gym, and at first, many new clients came in worried about being embarrassed in front of other more fit, more experienced people. I assured them by reminding them that when those people are on the floor, they are so focused on what they’re doing and working so hard that they don’t have the time or energy to be concerned about anyone else; they’re just trying to survive. It’s too bad more straight Christians don’t seem to give half as much time to attending to their own marriages as they do to overseeing others’. Maybe they wouldn’t be failing 42 percent of the time. Interestingly, the same folks claiming that gay people are damaging marriage aren’t nearly as vocal about the rampant infidelity, abuse, and divorce out there in so many heterosexual Christian marriages. Magically, they don’t view those people as a threat to the Institution and are quite able to separate themselves from the greater married world when it suits them. A Facebook acquaintance recently lamented the fact that “the queer agenda is tearing apart the family unit”. I wondered whose “family unit” he was referring to. I know it isn’t mine. My family unit is pretty spectacular and secure because it exists independently of those outside my house, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or any other possible variable. I have authority and direct influence regarding only one family unit on the planet. That’s how this life works. To all the perpetually outraged straight Christian couples out there this PRIDE Month, a few reminders for you: Even if you believe that same-gender marriage is sinful or immoral, claiming that it does any sort of residual collateral damage to you or your spouse or your family says more about the fragility and possibly fraudulence of your relationship than it does about the LGBTQ community as a viable threat. As much as you claim you want to protect the family unit, the reality is that queer people have family units, too: caring, imperfect, loving, flawed, beautiful ones. They daily navigate complicated relationships with siblings, parents, children, spouses, (and, even, In-Laws). They live lives together in deep community marked by all the compassion, frustration, intimacy, laughter, heartache, and richness that you share with your family. If you can’t admit and respect that, and if you find yourself somehow threatened by any other person’s pursuit of happiness or expression of family, that’s likely a you problem. There’s something incredibly troublesome when we as people of faith require others to believe what we believe, or worse, when we act as if their refusal to believe what we believe or practice what we practice in any way diminishes our faith experience or somehow taints our religion. Straight Christians, when you got married, you didn’t make those flowery vows to all married people, before or since. You didn’t profess your undying love and commitment to an institution. You didn’t expectantly join the ranks of a club or fraternity or corporation. You didn’t get married to Marriage. You pledged to a person, promising to love your spouse as faithfully, passionately, and completely as you could for the rest of your life. That’s all you are obligated, expected, and most importantly, qualified to do. The bottom line is that if your marriage is adversely affected by anyone else’s marriage (straight or queer), you probably have a pretty crappy marriage. That should be cause for great worry, and it’s probably something you should pray on. Outside of your spouse, the only person who can really damage or devalue your marriage is you. So, Happy Pride Month, and Happy Mind Your Own Damn Business Month. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

I'm An American Taxpayer, and I'm Sick of Killing People.

I’ve been trying to place the heaviness within me these days; the nagging sickness that resides in the pit of my stomach every morning, regardless of what I do to try and push it away. It isn’t merely the growing nihilism that comes from realizing how quickly the bedrock of our Republic is dissolving. It isn’t just the black despair from watching the rapid and seemingly inexorable erosion of human and civil rights. It isn’t only the leaden grief that comes from witnessing so much unnecessary suffering, so much preventable pain, so much manufactured chaos. Along with all of that, I think the real heart sickness comes from realizing my complicity in crimes against humanity. As a taxpaying American, I am partnering in the genocide in Gaza. I see the breath-stealing videos of Palestinian children torn apart by AIPAC-funded drone strikes, of elderly people executed by IDF soldiers, of Israeli political leaders applauding the barbaric destruction of Gaza, and I know that my taxable income is funding the carnage. As a taxpaying American, I am murdering the people of Iran, Lebanon, Cuba, and Ukraine. Watching our leadership waging or permitting deadly, wasteful, and unprovoked wars of greed, distraction, and geography all over the planet, and knowing that I am in some way aiding and abetting them is cause for mourning. As a taxpaying American, I am starving people to death in New Jersey. The tortured souls languishing inside the hellscape of Delaney Hall, forced to eat maggot-infested food, denied basic healthcare, shown no human comfort, enduring a deadly squalor that has no reason to exist other than the cruelty of the sociopaths who constructed it with the resources of my life’s work. As a taxpaying American, I am assaulting girls and young women in Texas. Realizing that the horrors inside an inaccessible compound in San Benito and the unthinkable brutality that is being visited upon the most vulnerable and helpless there do not happen without my unwitting, yet still real, financial assistance. As a taxpaying American, I am viciously terrorizing immigrants. Watching a masked Gestapo-esque army of perverse monsters relentlessly hounding my black and brown neighbors in the places they work, study, worship, and raise their families is made all the worse by the knowledge that the sweat of my brow is fueling them. As a taxpaying American, I am violently persecuting queer people. It breaks my heart to know that despite my work to try and be an LGBTQ ally and to advocate for the inherent worth of every human being, my taxes are bankrolling the homophobic and transphobic legislative assaults on transgender teens, on gay couples, on marriage equality. Like most people who call this place home, I was weaned on a story of this nation that was part curated myth, part racist whitewashing, part genuine aspiration, and part American exceptionalism that steadfastly refused to admit culpability for inhumanity. The central narrative I inherited from my pastors, teachers, parents, media, and politicians was that the United States was a place that, though terribly flawed, still endeavored to be a brilliant beacon for the vulnerable, hungry, and hurting of the world. It may have been a mix of ignorance, privilege, and wishful thinking, but I bought into the lie, and it’s sobering enough to realize that this story was never true. That’s enough of an existential gut punch. And it’s another matter altogether to realize that for your entire life, but profoundly in these present days, your work and creativity have funded the very hatred, inequity, and brutality you’ve spent a lifetime intending to eradicate. There’s a futility that comes from when that truth settles in; when you are a person of peace who is subsidizing war. I think that’s what’s so hard for so many of us right now. We’re trying to fight for and with our country simultaneously. I know that we are not powerless in these moments, but I confess that the road out of this is unclear. All I can say for certain is that as a taxpaying American who loves humanity and who hates the nation we have become, it’s hard living with so much blood on my hands.Note: Of course, we aren’t willfully participating in these atrocities, but it’s impossible to divorce ourselves from what our leadership does in our name, and this is the struggle so many of us find ourselves in. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

A Pride Month Challenge To Would-Be LGBTQ Allies

June is Pride Month, and straight people who consider themselves allies to our queer neighbors need to understand the implications for us in this iteration of America. Yes, allyship is about rainbow flags, social media posts, and parade events, but it’s about a hell of a lot more than that. To be a true LGBTQ ally right now means visibly and forcefully pushing back against the quickly metastasizing hatred throughout this country; the toxic flood of intellectual ignorance, archaic dogma, phobic fear, and inherited stupidity all being curated by the MAGA Republican Party. The ACLU is currently tracking 530 anti-LGBTQ [https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2026] bills across the United States. They range from healthcare barriers to school sports bans to curriculum censorship to forced outings in schools to so-called religious exemptions to drag bans to attacks on expression and visibility for the queer community. These proposed draconian laws amount to a government-sanctioned, legislative legitimizing of discrimination, designed to silence, erase, and punish human beings for their gender identity and sexual orientation. They represent a rejection of science, a discarding of common sense, and the complete, perverse consummation of the sickening marriage between Church and State. As with other historically marginalized and oppressed populations in this country (people of color, immigrants, women, Muslims), LGBTQ human beings are seeing their hard-fought legal protections vanishing in recent months. Long-decided laws protecting them are being furiously challenged. Malicious theology targeting them is taking hold in churches. They are being painted as immoral existential threats and bathroom-lurking monsters for gullible, easily-manipulated, hate-addled Americans who have abandoned the Golden Rule, discarded the Constitution, and rejected the call to love their neighbors. At the highest levels of leadership in our government, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, non-conforming human beings are being slandered and dehumanized, fomenting the mindless rage of their cultic base. And it is into this swirling storm of prejudice, disinformation, and rising violence that we who imagine ourselves friends and advocates of queer people are being called to step this Pride month. We are being invited to do far more than simply throw on a t-shirt, attend a drag show, or share a think piece on social media, as nice as those things are. In these perilous days for LGBTQ human beings, to be a straight ally is to risk profound turbulence within our circles of influence. It’s intentionally stepping into the path of verbal and physical violence. It’s loudly outing oneself as a human being who will not permit hatred in their midst. It’s being willing to make bigots uncomfortable. If we end this month without finding ourselves in a difficult conversation with an uninformed family member, without experiencing a coldness from our transphobic neighbors, without bringing tension to our churches, without facing the insults and threats queer people sustain just for waking up and living, we will have failed as allies. The fight against LGBTQ discrimination is not the fight of the LGBTQ community alone. They should not have to continually make the case for their humanity, or incessantly fight to be treated with dignity and decency, or to brave the taunts and brutality of the deceived and dumb around them. We should be fighting alongside them. Straight allies need to be a fierce, steadfast, unflinching obstacle to those who still somehow believe that anyone else’s gender, orientation, body, or marriage are any of their damn business. In our churches and schools and workplaces and town halls and neighborhoods, we need to show up for our queer friends by placing ourselves between them and the emboldened bullies who think that they will face no resistance. It’s time that would-be LGBTQ allies in the United States stood up for the people we claim to love by making their hateful assailants know what it’s like to be outnumbered, to be reminded that they are not going to drag this nation back to the Stone Age on our watch. Pride has always been a protest as much as a celebration. And for those of us who truly aspire to stand with the queer community, it must be a clear declaration of war against the emboldened bigots who believe they can erase queer human beings from this nation, a war they will not win. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]