Hundreds filled a Bankers Hill cathedral Wednesday to watch as more than 40 LGBTQ-affirming clergy blessed San Diego Pride week and lit up the century-old cathedral in rainbow colors.
It was the first time since the tradition began 11 years ago that the recently retired Very Reverend Penny Bridges did not preside over the gathering at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Without its founder, the interfaith service still went forward with a variety of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, humanist and other religious leaders.
“I just think it’s great to see so many faiths together. I think we need it more than ever right now,” said Bob Lehman, the first gay man married in San Diego during a brief window same-sex marriage was legal in 2008.
Insight St. Paul’s Episcopal Church with standing-room-only during the Light up the Cathedral interfaith service. (Photo by Drew Sitton/Times of San Diego)As I sat quietly in a back corner, seated in one of the few chairs still available when I arrived 20 minutes before the service began, my jaw ached. This was due to dental work, but made me concerned I wouldn’t be receptive to any spiritual insight this evening, as body postures often improve receptiveness. But also, tight jaw and fists aside, was my heart open to this message?
In the last few years, it feels like the more I open my heart to others, the more opportunity they have to hurt me. Narrowing the circle of my love seemed like necessary self-protection, even from those who purported to love me since my birth. I contain multitudes, yet they only embrace a small fraction of myself. These original injuries seem more painful recently, when so much of the world echoes and accentuates their rejection.
But I do not always close myself off to people and places that hurt me. After all, I stepped through the doors of the church.
Beneath the stained glass, clergy apologized for religious institutions’ discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and affirmed us as beloved children of God. These assurances feel similar to seeking an embrace from a woman in a Free Mom Hugs shirt.
In both cases, these stand-ins for moms and pastors know that the rejection from family, religious spaces and community are too often the story of queer people — and can lead to deep hurt. These actions are a balm, even if the representatives of mom and pastor are not the same ones that coming out cleaved from us.
People march and wave flags behind a banner for the Santee United Methodist Church’s Pride walk on Saturday May 30, 2026. (Photo by Adrian Childress/Times of San Diego)The Light up the Cathedral service always comes with a lot of pomp and circumstance — a pop-up symphony, two choirs, awards, this year to Santee United Methodist Church for its Pride events in East County.
The church went more public in its support of LGBTQ+ people in 2023 to give a different view of Santee amid protests over the YMCA allowing Christynne Wood, a trans woman, to use the locker room and swim with her aqua sister. She refused to give into their demands.
“When you stand up to hateful bigots and religious zealots, you’d be amazed how many other people that have been bullied by that group come up and say thank you,” Wood said.
Santee UMC baptized Wood after the “unpleasantness.”
“When I was sliding down the rainbow, that’s where it dropped me off,” Wood said after the service.
Then there is so much liturgy and verses and scripture and poetry and psalms recited. It’s the act of each clergy person, standing up to read these words of comfort to the diverse congregation before them, that matters the most.
The leaders read passages that have been reinterpreted by conservative religious folk to exclude, transforming them back into beacons of inclusion. Clergy read Biblical passages like 1 Corinthians 13, “the greatest of these is love,” which I’d heard at dozens of weddings officiated by pastors who believe only marriage between a man and woman is sacred.
A reverend and a rabbi read Psalm 139, a beautiful poem about God’s creation of a person: “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Pundits have debated trans people’s existence with those lines.
Father Brad Mills, a Jesuit priest, read Romans 12:9-16, urging people to zealously “hate what is evil” and “cling to what is good.” Some churches define that evil as those sitting around me. And others see discrimination against those same LGBTQ+ people as evil.
My teeth clenched. I was in a lot of pain. I breathed out, trying to open my palms to receive wisdom from Miller, whose principles I profoundly respect, such as when he stood against the murder of the Escondido ‘Trump House’ owner.
“No one should be treated below the baseline of human dignity, human respect, human love, no matter what you believe, no matter what you do, no matter your faith, no matter your race or religion or creed,” Miller said of why he, a Muslim, was at the LGBTQ-affirming service. “The bottom line is that you are a human being.”
Miller has attended for years, sometimes called on to deliver a closing blessing, but this was the first time he — or any Muslim — gave the main address.
“If they ask ‘Brother Yusef, how are you standing here?’ I am standing here in love. I am standing here in community. I am standing here in family, and I’m standing here with you,” he said.
Brother Yusef Miller, a longtime Light up the Cathedral participant, delivers the keynote address. (Photo by Drew Sitton/Times of San Diego)Miller described hate as deep unresolved anger that poisons from within before turning external. I have a lot of that unresolved anger, which made the message a callout of myself, not just those who would refuse to attend such a service.
“This toxic pride is not only harmful to our family, but it is harmful to ourselves. You cannot destroy the human race without destroying yourselves,” Miller said.
Some of my anger felt justified. How was I to fight hate with love when I feared for my friend’s safety after a man on a date punched her when he realized she was not cisgender? And how was I to forgive after grieving lives ended by hate-filled individuals at San Diego’s largest mosque?
But Miller showed his own posture towards love: We cannot just have an open palm to receive love and then clench our fists to keep it to ourselves. Extend open palms too. That posture can soften the hearts of those who hurt us, but more importantly, it stops us from calcifying into the people who would commit such hateful acts.
“We can redeem our brothers, our sisters, our family, friends, and our siblings who are lost in the darkness of hatred. They’re lost… but do we leave them there? No, we bring them forth. We show them true love, true family, true interconnection,” he said. “Love, patience, mercy is a transformative act. It can transform the heart.”
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