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