Religion focuses on suffering this week. Our community knows it, survived it, and will overcome it again

This is a week, in many faith traditions, devoted to suffering. To the long shadows before redemption. To pain before resurrection.

Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.

I think if you’re going to write about suffering, you should know a little something about it. As I’ve written previously, 10 years ago this year, I fell into a deep, severe depression that landed me on disability for a year. And 20 years ago, I spent almost a year battling a life-threatening illness.

It’s hard to put into words what I learned from suffering through those experiences. I spent a great deal of time in hospitals, in a psych ward, and in countless doctor and therapist visits. I am not perfect by any measure; however, my experiences of suffering have without question made me a better man.

Heading toward the age of 61, I feel awfully lucky to still be alive.

I’ve been thinking about suffering as the storyline in places of worship around the world this week, and the idea that suffering makes a person more whole. Viscerally, emotionally, and historically, suffering is not an abstract notion. And for those of us in the LGBTQ+ community, suffering is not an unfamiliar word. We know suffering. We have lived it. We have been forged by it.

Long before rainbow flags and Pride parades, before corporate allyship and hard-fought legal wins, we bore the brunt of a world that feared us, and we suffered for it. We were called mentally ill. We were arrested. Institutionalized. Mocked. Thrown out of our homes. Left behind by families and churches. Diagnosed as deviant. Treated as threats.

We have been told, over and over again, that we do not belong. And as a consequence, we suffered.

While it might appear that our suffering has come in waves, each one threatening to drown us, so many in our community still suffer today. If you had to think of a through line, a thread, about our community over decades, one word to describe it might be suffering. And yet there is another —- resilience, because while we may have suffered, we are still here.

There are no words to describe the suffering of the AIDS crisis. I wouldn’t even dare try. Yet some of us emerged through the AIDS crisis, when our friends and lovers died by the tens of thousands and the government looked away.

We buried our dead and marched anyway. So many suffered more than others, yet amid the brutality and severity, our community inevitably came through more whole because of the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of so many. Their suffering allowed us to be who we are today.

We have also fought for the right to wear a uniform, to say “I do,” to adopt a child, to simply exist in public without fear. We have known what it feels like to be erased. And we have carved our names into the granite of history anyway.

Now, once again, the storm is gathering around suffering. Under the Trump administration and its emboldened followers, we feel the rising tide of hatred pressing in. The same poisonous rhetoric we’ve heard for decades is now coming from the mouths of elected officials. Leaders who should protect us instead mock us.

They legislate our lives, scapegoat our identities, and provide a permission structure for violence, cruelty, and condemnation. They are not whispering it anymore. They are shouting it from podiums, from courtrooms, from cable news studios. And others are listening.

But here’s what they don’t understand: We have already suffered. And we know how to survive it. And if they want to make us suffer again, we’re not going to stand idly by. We’re not going to suffer because of them.

This week is about remembrance. For Christians, it’s a week when pain is not incidental but central. When betrayal, humiliation, and death are not the end of the story but part of the path to something greater. And for our community, it is a week that echoes our own experience.

We’ve walked the road of rejection. We’ve worn the crown of shame. We’ve been nailed to the cross of public scorn, left to bleed in silence. But as in the story so many will hear this Sunday, we too have risen.

Our suffering has taught us things the powerful will never understand. It has given us empathy, because we’ve been the outcast. It has given us clarity, because we’ve had to fight to define who we are. It has given us resilience, because every right we’ve earned has been paid for with blood, protest, and unwavering love.

We are not just victims of our history. We are the authors of our future. And that future depends on remembering who we are and what we’ve endured.

And so, during this season of reflection, let us remember what our suffering has given us. not because it was fair or deserved, but because it shaped us into people who do not back down.

I’ve heard from many of my young friends who do not understand why they are feeling ashamed of who they are in the wake of years of progress. For a younger generation, being out and queer has become more commonplace and more accepted. This generation now looks on in horror watching the Trump administration and the extreme right wing try to erase the letters LGBTQ+.

That’s why maybe this is a week to remind those who weren’t around during the Stonewall riots, the AIDS crisis, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” or the Defense of Marriage Act that we’ve suffered before and we came through it. And while they might be suffering, they need to remain strong, emboldened, so they too can come through more whole when Trump et al hate ends up in the dustbin of history.

Many of us find strength in the shared memory of resistance from years past. We know how important it is for us to hold on to one another with gentler hearts and fiercer determination. And how we need to carry forward the stubborn, defiant, radiant truth that we have always known:

We have to remind ourselves and others that our suffering prevented us from being legislated out of existence. How suffering didn’t shame us into silence. How we weren’t destroyed because we forged ahead in pain, fueled by love.

We know suffering. We’ve survived it. And we will again.

Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.