And I Will Always (Say I) Love You: An LGBTQ Pride Sermon
How Queer People & Dolly Parton Teach Us How to Love
This sermon comes from our 2024 LGBTQ Pride Month worship service at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, CA.
As the story goes, Dolly Parton met her husband Carl in 1964. She had just moved to Nashville, and life in the city was a whole different world from her country life in East Tennessee.
One day, she was at the laundromat washing her clothes, and she stepped outside while the wash was running to wander around town. A man drove by and started hollerin’ at her. That was Carl Dean.
Well, she stopped and said, “Hi!” And they became inseparable.
Dolly was living in one of the Nashville suburbs at the time. And as she tells it, Carl came by everyday, and they would just spend as much time as they could on the porch together. Meanwhile, he was living on the other side of town, helping his dad with the family street-paving business.
Eventually, all the back-and-forth wore him out, and two years later in 1966, he said, “You’re either gonna have to move to the other side of town, or we’re gonna have to get married!”
That was the proposal.
Dolly was a little taken aback—and rightfully so. She responded, “You know, you haven’t even told me you loved me.”
“Aw, you know I love you,” Carl said.
That’s when Dolly poked her finger right into his chest. “Then say it. Tell me you love me.”
He tried to look away, but Dolly held his face so he had to look her right in the eye.
“I love you,” he finally said. They got married just a few months later.
That same year on the other side of the country right here in San Francisco, we had the first LGBTQ riot in American history at Compton’s Cafeteria at the corner of Taylor and Turk in the Tenderloin. Compton’s was a 24-hour diner known as a place where trans women and drag queens would often gather in public. But they weren’t always welcome. The staff would often call the police to arrest the people there for “female impersonation,” which was a crime at the time.
One night, things went too far. Police came to arrest a woman, and she fought back and threw some coffee. The diner erupted. A riot broke out. Women, drag queens, cops… Dishes, sugar shakers, high heels… Windows broken and police cars damaged…
Protests continued for days as people fought for the dignity of all of the people who called that diner home.
Dolly and all the folks at Compton’s Cafeteria… They all knew life’s biggest secret: that they were loved — no matter what. And they had one simple request: that the world tell them that back.
They knew that there is something deep within each of us that whispers our worth and reminds us that we deserve to feel it, see it, and hear it out loud.
How often do you hear “I love you”?
How often do you say “I love you?”
I know for me growing up, I heard it some. A lot in my family, for sure. Like it was with Carl Dean and Dolly, it was always more from the women than the men. But I certainly heard it often.
I heard it at church, too—often more indirectly. Fewer “I love you”s and more “God loves you”s. But it was there.
But I think that’s really where it ended. Not a lot of “I love you” at school. Not at ton among friends.
It wasn’t really until my first job out of college that I began to hear “I love you” on an everyday basis. It just so happened that at my first job I was surrounded by a lot of queer people (that’s working in entertainment in Los Angeles for you…) and this was years before I was “out.”
Almost every time folks would depart for the day and head home, I’d hear someone say, “Love you! Bye!”
Or my absolute favorite version, “Love you! Mean it!” And no sarcasm, they really did!
To this day, it is when I am with my queer friends that I hear “I love you” the most often. At parties, at dinners, in texts, on phone calls… They end, more often than not, with an “I love you.” And I still smile when I hear it.
I think that’s because queer people know how much it matters—how profoundly powerful it is—to hear “I love you” and know that people mean it.
We hear those words in our scripture reading today from 1 John 4, which is so often simplified down into “God is love.”
That is a completely true statement, but these words are so more than that. The writer is painting this beautiful picture of the flow of love.
Love begins beyond us. Somewhere no one can touch. A light no one can extinguish.
It is eternal.
It is unending.
It is divine.
It is.
That same love is here: deep inside us because we were all created and birthed by that love. No one can ever take it away, and we can return to it again and again and again whenever we need it.
We bring that love to life as we love others. It happens when we say it and when we share it, with our words and with our lives.
That is life’s task. To be in that flow of love. To live in that flow of love attuned to the love beyond us, within us, and extend it around us.
But sometimes that flow gets severed.
For queer people that is especially the case. For many queer people — and queer people from over the ages — stories have been told and statements made that sever that very fundamental part of ourselves. That part of ourselves that desires to love and be loved.
Many queer people have been told that they don’t love right.
Or they can’t love.
Or they aren’t loved.
Or they’re unlovable.
Or that they are cut-off from that big, eternal, beyond love.
Families can say that.
Churches can say that.
Culture can say that.
We can even say that to ourselves.
It is a cut with a deep pain. It can be an existential pain.
Our great saint of San Francisco, Harvey Milk, reminds us: “If you are not personally free to be yourself in that most important of all human activities— the expression of love — then life itself loses its meaning.”
And that’s why today—and this whole month—is so important. We celebrate Pride to declare, proclaim, and demand in the face of those who say otherwise that life does have meaning. And that meaning is love.
Our task as human beings is to live a life of love with all of the gifts, identities, journeys, and expressions that God has given to us.
To live lives that say “Yes!” to the beautiful diversity of the human family.
That is more important now than ever before in a world that is swimming with tension and division and hate and contempt.
But in a world that wants to sever us from one another, we must remember that there is a love beyond and within us that continues to call out to us: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
The more we share it, the more we live it, the more we become it, this world can’t help but become anything else but beautiful.
About 15 years ago now, I was part of a church community that said it loved me, and one Sunday, I walked into that community knowing that my life was going to change. I was going to have to leave that community, and it was going to hurt.
Just days before, I had come out to my best friend, Kathleen. She was the first person I came out to. We were at Outback Steakhouse, sharing a Bloomin’ Onion (obviously) over a pint of Foster’s (that’s Australian for beer). I told her everything, and she said, “I love you.”
I knew the people at this church wouldn’t say the same thing, but I still went that Sunday because for whatever reason I felt like I needed to.
That night, we were all singing some church song together—probably something about love—and I looked around and thought about how I was going to have to leave this place. It was a community that I’d spent years in with people who I thought were good friends. But I realized I had to let go of them.
And as we were singing, I heard a voice—as clear as day—call out and say, “I love you. And I got you.”
Call that voice whatever you’d like, but that voice is that big “beyond” love and that quiet “within” love.
That voice gave me the strength to leave and the courage to finally say to myself, “I love you.”
It might not always feel like it, and people might tell you different, but never forget that you have a lot of power in this world. And that power is to tell people: “I love you.”
Tell it to as many people as you can as often as you can.
With your words. With your actions. With your life.
Tell them you love them and remind them that they are loved.
And remember the big secret: That’s true of every single person on this beautiful Earth — no matter who they are, where they come from — no matter what.
Friends, never forget that you are loved — fiercely and forever.
Happy Pride! Amen.
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Find more words and creative worship from me at samlundquist.com
