This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Love When It’s Hard to Love – Practitioners Krista Bremberg, Don Mannery, Jonathan Hoffman, Hunter Talman
DESCRIPTION
The spirit of PRIDE isn’t about being fearless—it’s about the courage to show up fully, authentically, and unapologetically, even when fear is present. Rooted in spiritual principle, we recognize that love is a sacred practice—one that matters most when it’s difficult. To love ourselves and one another in the face of adversity is a powerful act of truth and transformation. This PRIDE Sunday, we invite you to join the Practitioners as we honor LGBTQ+ PRIDE with reflection, education, and celebration. Come stand with us, learn with us, and love with us—boldly, visibly, and wholeheartedly.
SUMMARY
The transcript summarizes the history and meaning behind the LGBTQ+ pride flag, and discusses the ongoing struggles and activism within the LGBTQ+ community. It emphasizes that pride is about celebrating self-acceptance, honoring one’s identity, and recognizing the inherent sacredness and divinity in each person regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The speakers also acknowledge the increased anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in recent years and call for continued action and advocacy to ensure the rights and dignity of all LGBTQ+ individuals are protected. Overall, the transcript highlights the importance of embracing one’s authentic self, standing in solidarity with the most marginalized, and channeling both love and righteous anger to create positive change.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Don Mannery:
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate it. Good morning. My name is Don Mannery pronouns, he, him and I am here to indoctrinate you to push the gay agenda, as they say, and a certain degree. I never understood why people always said that because the gay agenda is really pretty much what we teach here. It’s about self-acceptance, honoring yourself, whether the shadow parts and the good parts. It’s just fully embracing who you are. Did everybody receive a flag? I just want to make sure. Does everybody, I’m just curious, just to raise a hand, does everybody know what the colors and the symbol on this flag means? And you can be honest. Okay. Because to be honest, when we were researching this, it’s like I kind of forgot some of them and it keeps evolving. So to try to include everyone within our community. So even some of these, I had to refreshing and look up and see what it meant again.
So today I, Jonathan, and Hunter are going to provide some education, a little bit of history around pertaining to the Pride flag itself and the activism behind Pride Month. So the first Pride Month or Pride parades, excuse me, was back in 1970. And I think about that because I was born in 1973. So for my whole life there was a pride parade to go to. Just think of the people before me that didn’t have access to that or feeling that connection, being able to go to Pride, pride parades and be able to celebrate who they are. So this was actually one year before the Stonewall riots, as Paul was talking about, where there was a pushback from the gay community for all the police rates that were going on. And actually activism started for Gray Rights, even 14 years prior to this at another bar that was in Pittsburgh that was known at the Pepper Hill Club. Just to give you a little bit of history on that as well, which is a little bit lesser known, but activism for our community has been going on for a long time. So the purpose of the flag is, of course, it aims to be inclusive and representative of all diverse experiences within the LGBTQ plus community, highlighting the ongoing struggles for rights and acceptance for all.
A little bit about the pride flag history. The first traditional pride flag was made in 1978 by someone called Gilbert Baker. And actually it looks a little bit different than it does now. It didn’t have all of these symbols and additional colors on there, so it gives you a hint of the kind of history and the evolution of the flag itself. So the traditional flag itself had eight colors on her actually, and now there’s primarily the six primary colors here on the right side of the flag. So the colors are to symbolize aspects of life, the red meaning life, the orange itself meaning healing, the yellow stripe signifying sunlight, the green signifying nature, the blue signifying harmony and the violent color at the low end of the flag is for spirit. Some of the previous colors that they had on there, they used to have a pink color on there for sex.
They had a turquoise color for magic and art, and they also used to have a white violet, which symbolizes the rest of the LGBT community. As you see now, there’s additional colors on there. The black and brown stripes at it represent people of color within the community, acknowledging historically marginalized individuals and honoring those that we lost to HIV and aids. The blue, pink, and white represent the transgender flag people who are also transitioning and intersex and outside of the binary that we know currently, the Chevrons, actually the little arrows on the flag represent Ford Moving forward movement, excuse me. And the yellow and purple insignia in the middle of the flag represents the intersex community with the yellow symbolizing agenda outside again the binary and the purple circle representing the intersex experience. Just to give you a little bit of history on that. And just to let you know, there might be other flags that you see.
If you watch any of the pride phrases or watch it on TV or whatever. There’s also a primary transgender flag, there’s a bisexual flag, there’s a pansexual flag, there’s a asexual flag, a non-binary flag. This one’s known as the current and recent progressive flag. So you might see a little bit of variances in the flags that you see because some people still have the old school original flag. But just wanted to give you a little bit of history on that. So I’m going to introduce Jonathan, who’s going to give us a little bit more of the activism behind it.
Jonathan Hoffman:
Yes.
Alright, good morning, Cityside. Good morning. Hi everyone online. My name is Jonathan Hoffman. My pronouns are he, him, and I’m one of your licensed spiritual practitioners. And today I’m going to tell you just a little bit about where the L-G-B-T-Q movement has come from and where we’re going. But first I wanted to start with a quote from the book of the Month, this thing called you by Earnest Holmes. And the quote is, you are a divine idea in the mind of God, and you must know this about yourself. And this quote is especially meaningful in the context of pride because it affirms that each person, regardless of your identity, is inherently sacred, intentional, worthy, and sovereign. It really speaks to reclaiming dignity in a world that often tries to take that away. And I like to acknowledge that Pride Month is both a celebration of who we are, where we’ve come from, but also as a reminder that there are still some ongoing struggles going on within the LGBTQ plus community today.
And so to provide a little history, I just wanted to give just to acknowledge that the LGBTQ plus existence has existed across the ages so long before the labels of gay, homosexual, transgender, non-binary. Before all that existed, there were gay people, they’ve been present throughout human history. And I’m going to highlight just a few of those just to give some context. So from the Native American tribes, we have the term two-Spirit. How many of you have heard of Two-Spirit? Anyone? Okay. And that really describes people who embody both masculine and feminine energies. And two-spirit individuals were often revered as healers, as matchmakers, as teachers, and as spiritual leaders seen as having unique insight and power in part of the pre-colonial Africa. And many Pacific Islander cultures, same gender relationships and fluid expressions of identity were accepted as part of just the natural human variation in ancient Greece and Rome.
Same sex relationships, especially between men were not uncommon and were openly discussed in art and literature. Some of the early Hindu texts and Buddhist spiritual traditions include stories of androgynous beings, gender shifting deities and individuals who defied their gender norms of the time. So all this to say the existence of lgbtq plus people is not new. What is relatively new is the idea that we should be hidden or punished or erased, basically not celebrated. Now today I am happy to report that we’ve seen greater visibility, representation and legal recognition now more than ever. So marriage equality is the law of the land in the United States and in many countries across the world. There’s more LGBTQ plus representation in politics, in the media, in sports, and in our spiritual communities, which is helping to normalize queer and trans identities for future generations.
But even with all this progress, our rights do remain fragile. So across the US and in other parts of the world, there has been a sharp increase in anti LGBT legislation, especially targeting transgendered youth. So just in 2025 alone, just this year, we’ve seen over 850 anti LGBTQ plus bills introduced in the US alone. And that’s the highest number in US history. That hasn’t happened before, that many number of bills with the scope, it’s beginning to widen, to target discrimination in healthcare, education, public spaces and religious exemptions. So this isn’t just policy, it’s about the dignity and safety and mental health of people who deserve to be loved and affirmed. So today, pride is really about lifting up every voice, especially those most often left out in the spotlight, what I like to call the least of these. So all we have much to celebrate.
We can’t afford to be complacent. Pride means staying awake to injustice and standing with the most vulnerable among us. So as we look to the future, the spirit of pride invites us to move beyond equality and towards equity, ensuring that every member of our community not only has rights on paper, but has the support and resources to truly thrive. So the fight for our rights is not over, especially in places where being LGBTQ plus is still criminalized or violently suppressed because our vision is global, rooted in solidarity with those who face the harshest conditions simply for being who they are. So this movement fully belongs to all of us. So whether you’re gay, straight, queer, trans ally, your voice, your love and your actions matter. So in the earlier quote from Ernest Holmes, he reminds us that each of us is this divine idea, not a mistake, not an afterthought, but a purposeful, radiant expression of life itself. That’s what pride is about, is owning the sacredness and the authenticity and the realness of who we are. So with that bit of education, I’m going to turn it over to Hunter and he will bring it home with a little bit of spiritual principle. So thank you,
Hunter Tallman:
Thank you, thank you Don and Jonathan, thanks to both of you. And a special thanks to Jonathan who really orchestrated all of this. He put it all together, he put the meetings together and kept us in line. So thank you very much, Jonathan. Yes, good morning everybody. My name is Hunter Tolman. I’m one of the licensed spiritual practitioners here. I use the pronouns he and him, but we’ll also respond to, Hey girl. Good morning. Before I start, I just want to thank Paul. I was struck by emotion when you were, and I grew up as in a small town in Colorado and I didn’t know any other gay people. I didn’t know there could be a world outside of being afraid. I didn’t know there was anyone other than myself that was willing to fight for me. And here on this Pride Sunday, I can look into that camera and I can wish my husband a happy pride who’s watching in a different state while I stand on stage in a church and say, I’m gay. That’s incredible. It’s incredible.
And it’s because of other people that have been willing to stand with us. So thank you so much. So when I first agreed to this talk today, my initial thought was to go very like, yeah, celebratory self-love, love one another, let’s love each other. Let’s get out there and make a change kumbaya. Let’s do it. And then I read this reading and like Paul said, there was some energy there. It’s not nice, it is not kumbaya. It definitely felt like a call for love, but it was more a call to action, this language of we call on our spiritual community and all people of faith to stand in love, to rise in support, to speak truth, and to act boldly in support of our transgender family.
It seems like a call to fight. And so as this talk was seeking shape, I wanted to explore the idea that those people who are so actively stripping away the rights of queer people and trans people, that those people who are trying to deny us our uniqueness, our specialness, to deny us the celebration of who we are, who we are as individualized expressions of the divine. Well, those two, those people, since all is love and all is God, they too are their own individualized expressions of the divine. And they’re just going about seeking this experience of love in a very different way than I do it, than I think that most of us do. It at the core of our teaching is unity, oneness, that love is the only power. That love is all there is. Love is all and all is love.
And if that’s true, then hate and fear, the experience of fear. The expression of hate must also be an expression of love. Since there can be nothing else, how can that be what seems to be so hateful? Really be about love? It’s a stretch. It’s a stretch. But I believe that the acts of hate, that these acts of violence are being perpetuated by individuals who are so desperate to feel safe. They’re so desperate to feel accepted. They’re so desperate to feel love. They’re desperate and they’ve been conditioned to believe that love is this finite thing. That if we here are celebrating and claiming love in the glory of our gayness, the glory and incredibleness of our individuality, our otherness, our transness, that if we’re claiming all this love, if we are experiencing love, not in spite of all that makes us different and unique, but because of it, if we are claiming that love, then maybe there’s not enough love for them.
And that by diminishing another person, by diminishing us, by denying us our uniqueness, then maybe they can recoup some of that love for themselves. So the word love can easily be interchange and exchange for power, peace, abundance, the limited belief of there’s not enough power for everybody, so I need to take it from them. There’s not enough peace for everybody, so I need to deny them of that. There’s not enough abundance, there’s not enough to go around, there’s not enough money, there’s not enough, there’s not enough. I need mine. It’s very limited. And that the acquisition of all these things trying to acquire more power, more peace, more love, more money, et cetera, it drives all these behaviors of good and bad. And that even the evil acts of the world are really desperate calls for love, desperate calls to feel okay, to feel safe, to feel power, to feel peace, desperate calls that are executed in the worst possible way.
So it’s hard to not feel judgmental, but Earnest Holmes says, we must release the condemnation of others. If we are to be free of the condemnation of self, we must release the condemnation of others to experience forgiveness. So as I witness these heinous acts of inhumanity, I push myself into the spiritual truth that love is all there is. I push myself to see that somewhere in these horrors, there is some goodness, somewhere in there is a desire to experience a greater deeper love. I release the condemnation of others and because of it, I experience some forgiveness. I push myself to love when it’s hard to love.
Isn’t that nice? How spiritually evolved of me? But wait a minute, I can hear it Kumbaya, my Lord. No, no, no. This is not a kumbaya moment, not now, not today, not here right now. No. This reading is a call to action and it gave me pause thinking, what do I do? Do I do enough to fight for the rights of others, to fight for the rights of myself? Am I standing in my truth? No. At best, I’m sitting in it. I’m certainly not standing and I’m sitting because I’m afraid. It’s been really easy for me to say Love is all there is. Love is God, it God is good. Amen. Goodnight. Okay. And not have to do the work.
And because of that I’m realizing I’ve been too passive, too permissive and even complicit in some of these atrocities, I’ve allowed fearlessness to negate my spiritual experience holding onto the idea that all is good and there’s nothing to be afraid of because love is all and all is God. But let’s be real, there’s plenty to be afraid of. So as I think of what is happening in our country and in our communities and to our friends, I’m filled with fear and that fear feels very real and I realize it’s crippled me to do anything else.
Let’s take a breath there. So what am I left with? It kept coming back to one question, and that is what if that fear is useful? And thinking about fear? I think fear shows up when something matters to us. It can indicate when something is really important, something we don’t want to lose, something we highly value. And love is often spoken as this thing that sort of exists all around the sort of one dimensional basic sort of like, oh, love is all there is thud there. It is sort of this obtuse, omnipresent object. But love isn’t a thing. That’s not what it is. It’s an event, it’s an experience. And the experience of love is anything but obtuse. It’s not static, it’s multifaceted and dynamic. The experience of love is an experience that is also full of fear. Love existing with fear, and then the energy of that thing that love is a thud.
This big object is sort of taking up space. When there’s fear pushing against it, the energy starts to shift and it changes and it causes some friction and it generates some heat and maybe it sparks a flame which can change form. It can change this thing from this solid thing to something much more dynamic, something more complex, something more explosive, something transformative. And it’s in this place, in this heat where there’s passion. And I recognize that this love is all there is and all is love, but that this love is also difficult and it is painful and it is unique and this love is pissed and this love is getting loud and this love is proud.
Proud to exist, not in the absence of fear, but to because of it. To love when it’s hard to love is to recognize the allness, not just the niceness of love. Pain and loss are love because they can’t be anything else. Hate and suffering and grief are love because they can’t be anything else. Let it all be love and let love be all of it. Just let it and be it, but also do it this bright Sunday. It’s not just a display of love and self-love and pride and community, but it’s a love of all pain. As love, struggle, as love, transformation as love.
So be afraid, but be in action. Be mad, but be in movement. I don’t know what this looks for anyone else, but I’ll tell you what it looks like for me right here, right now. It’s this on this microphone telling you, I’m afraid that’s the truth, but at least I’m not sitting down anymore. That’s for you to figure out. So I encourage you to act in the face of fear knowing that it too is love. Embrace the fear with love for there is no greater protest than to act with love while also being full of fear.
Nothing will scare them more than that. At this time, I’m going to ask the musicians to come back up. I’m going to move into a little bit of a process. If you’re comfortable doing so, I ask you to just close your eyes, put your hands on your heart and summon the love that you feel deeper than anything else, whatever that is for you. Just feel that in that chest space, recognizing the complexity of that love, the depth of it, the pain associated with the struggle that you felt around it, but also the joy that it brings, the safety, the comfort, the laughs, whatever that is for you.
And then I ask you to sort of just place some of that fear, some of that pain in one hand and allow the happiness, the joy in the other. And just allow the tension between those two things to run through your body, stretching you wide open, opening your heart space to a greater experience of a greater experience of the one. Knowing that that is all that there is. Knowing it is here right now with you as you and by you and for you. It is yours to claim. It is your birthright to feel the full expression of love.
Knowing that that is an expression of God. Knowing it is an expression of good knowing. That is an expression of pride. And so right here, right now, wherever you are, you are on your spiritual journey. Know that you are empowered. Know that if you are feeling love, that you are also protected and that you are safe and that you can stand and you can shout and you can scream and you are love claiming all of that for us here right now. Claiming all of that for them out there, knowing they too are full of fear and seeking love. And so with that, I’m able to release and give thanks, thanks to know this truth, thanks to know the complexity of love, the depth of love, the experience of love, the experience of God. So I’m able to say thanks. I’m able to let it go. I’m able to let it be. Knowing the law responds with results right here, right now. An experience of love and experience of the one and experience of pride. Join me knowing this as the absolute divine truth of all together, as we say and so it is. And happy pride.