Category: LGBTQ

One Week

.Reading time 5 minutes.

I presented the poem above (“They”) at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly on June 20, 2025.  I had written it as a caution to a liberal religious audience that sometimes is paralyzed into thinking that the pressing issues of our time are at arms length.  I wanted them to understand that the liberal reluctance to engage in the battle for moral, cultural and religious equity is not a choice everyone can make.  I wanted my audience, and anyone who hears this poem to understand that this is urgent.  The violence is happening now.  It is life or death.

Then, yesterday, June 27, 2025, just one week later, the President of the University of Virginia, where I am currently a candidate for a PhD in religious studies resigned due to pressure from the federal administration rather than acquiesce to their demands around “DEI”.  For them, President Ryan wasn’t going far enough by having already deleted the entire DEI program at the school or suppressing protests against the death happening in Israel and Gaza.  My belief is that the administration and the new MAGA Board of Visitors for UVA will not be satisfied until all remnants of social or educational “identity” (a.k.a non-white-cis-het) are fully expunged from the school.  Apparently, having ways to affirm different people while they are seeking an education is some kind of nefarious and illegal indoctrination agenda.  This whole process is clearly moving toward an erasure of all programs that are not deemed “American” enough (i.e. white, straight, Christian), but I believe the first targets will be African American and LGBTQ anything.  And so, in 2025 UVA will ultimately look like what segregationist Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd wanted in 1955 after Brown v Board of Education was decided (See: the Southern Manifesto).  At this point, I have very low expectations from UVA.

How willing are you to always leave parts of yourself behind?

My poem anticipated this.  Black people, Queer people, Trans people, Immigrants, Indigenous people, people with disabilities…we’re all very good at anticipating this kind of thing.  It is not that we possess a special gift or insight.  This is what we get all the time.  We know that this is not a glitch in the system; it is a feature of how the captains of the dominant culture…they…operate.

They

They are counting on you…
To not care enough to endanger yourself
To only jeopardize yourself in the prescribed ways
To do what has been done before
To limit your involvement to what can be done in a day
To not bring it home with you
To no piss off your “loved ones”
To always have a way out…

They are counting on you
Because they are inside your head
They know you too well
They have sat with you at family gatherings
And tolerated your talk
Let you win
Or politely not touched the third rail
They are counting on you to not put up a fight

They are counting on you
To always fight fair
To have a conscience
To believe in justice for all…including for them
To leave a small opening
Through which they can always crawl

What are the ties that bind?
How willing are you to always leave parts of yourself behind?
Do you wonder how it might feel
To be all of you without compromise?

It feels desolate and desperate
It feels friendless and vulnerable
It questions life and trust
It ponders all
And suspects all

Yet above everything else
It tastes of truth
Pure, clean, unfettered, full and whole
Truth
It finds companions in honesty
And partners in the fullness of true hearts
It provides more safety than can be told
And there is no better flavor
And they know that…because they live their truth,
Unapologetically every day.
That’s why they aren’t counting on me.
Their truth is
A world where I end.

So, they are counting on you
To care more about them
Less about yourself
And not at all about me
They are counting on you to always leave part of yourself behind.

–ALD

Diversity?

.Reading time 4 minutes.

I am often asked why I chose to attend the University of Virginia for my PhD.  Particularly in that my study focuses on religion, race, equity and embodiment…words that are lightning rods in a largely conservative place like The Commonwealth.  My application included two essays, “The White That Binds: Unitarian Universalism’s Racial Covenant” and “Religious Equity: The Path to Greater LGBTQ Inclusion”.  I did not hide who I am personally or what my scholarly goals are in applying to the program.  My professional ambition was to have the experience of education outside of the “blue bubbles” that I have previously been part of: Princeton, Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley), Harvard, etc.  I recognized that if I am to be taken seriously as a scholar of race and religion in the world, I cannot have an experience that is limited to the traditional liberal bastions.

On Friday, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors voted to dissolve their office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  What these recent actions of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin are telling me is that I may not have been bouncing between blue bubbles as much as hopping from one enlightened but unaware oasis to another in a toxic and potentially lethal sea.  As UVa students, we don’t know what the upshot of these actions will be, but the language from the governor, (“The Board of Visitors voted for common sense, saying ‘no’ to illegal discrimination and ‘yes’ to merit-based opportunity,”) and state attorney general (“For too long, diversity, equity, and inclusion regimes have been misused to guarantee equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity,”) –emphasis mine–is clear.  Any work, actions or directions that intentionally speak to “diversity” will not be tolerated by this completely anti-historical ideology.  This leaves the black, gay, Unitarian Universalist minister, aiming to write a dissertation about a religious history and evolution of whiteness, and who mentors black and LGBTQIA+ students, and who has aspirations of being a dean for Diversity or a dean for Religious Life in higher education in just a bit of a head scratching moment about his future in Jefferson’s academical village.

Read the statement from the Governor, the attached articles and the full resolution, all linked below.  Recognize how the language of civil rights has been twisted and doubled over on itself to justify this ideological agenda.  It ignores recent history (hello Unite the Right rally) and willfully leans into the chilling effect that these actions will have on someone like me.  To that end, recognize the language of “legally permissible” which calls into question what is legal.  Am I or my work somehow potentially “illegal” now?

Again, as a student, I don’t know what this will bring.  I am excruciatingly aware however that this was done at the beginning of spring break when there is the least student presence on campus. If the “University of Virginia highly values diversity, including diversity of thought and experience, and fosters an inclusive environment, encouraging a culture of opportunity for all, which immensely enriches our Grounds, and is committed to providing every student an education that is free from discrimination and grounded in merit…”, they need to be willing to come out in the open and say to my face how on earth this policy helps me.

–ALD

University of Virginia Board of Visitors Resolution

Board of Visitors votes to dissolve Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion – Cavalier Daily

UVa Abolishes DEI Office – Daily Progress

Governor’s Statement on UVA Dissolving DEI Office