Picture this: A crowded church building in the Castro at midnight on Christmas Eve in the 1980s and 1990s. Three hundred LGBTQ people, many living with HIV/AIDS, along with our friends and families, crammed into the pink and purple stucco and wood frame sanctuary on Eureka Street (now a condominium building!). Each person held a candle (careful to avoid burning the hair of the people around them) as we sang "Silent Night, Holy Night." Warmth, light, joy, hope — and acceptance — filled the room with a sound that certainly must have rivaled the angels singing on the first Christmas night. One particularly magical night it even snowed, a rare occurrence in the city.
We gathered to remember a story about an unconventional Holy Family, who had been told there was no place for them. We were lesbians separated from their children. We were gay men ostracized by our families because of our medical condition. We were friends and lovers. Many were refugees from other parts of the country who had come to San Francisco to make a new community because we were estranged from where we had come from. We were spiritual seekers from many faith traditions, our sexual orientation or gender identity rendering us unwelcome or out of place in most churches. On these special nights at the old Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco on Eureka Street — a proudly separate church just for queer people and our allies — miracles seemed possible and sometimes were achieved.
Some of my best Christmas memories are not from childhood, but from a particular period in the history of our community during the 1980s and 1990s when we were under political and religious assault. When we heard of ancient oppressors like Herod or Caesar Augustus in the Gospels, we identified current opponents of our civil rights like Ronald Reagan, Lyndon LaRouche, George Bush, and Lou Sheldon or religious leaders who were bishops or evangelists.
On Christmas Eve, when we heard about Mary and Joseph and Jesus fleeing persecution, we identified with their struggle to find a safe place to really call home, where we could nurture love and hope, just like the weary couple who sought refuge in order to give birth to love incarnate. Our church was more like a stable than a cathedral. We became our own Holy Family, our own angel choir. And the candles we lit in the darkest midnight became our own stars. I am certain I saw a star shining over our little village.
We sought and found tidings of comfort and joy — to quote "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlefolk." And, in the midst of great opposition, we also found courage. This was before legalized same-sex marriage was even a dream, and before medications gave us a future we were afraid we might never see. AIDS was like a 15-year COVID.
I'm recalling these memories to remind us collectively of our resilience and our strength. Perhaps you were born after this time, or lived elsewhere, but I want to testify that we are part of a community who never gives up or gives in. Ancient stories are valuable, not just because they recall the past but because they inspire us in the present. And, this year, we need inspiration.
The Christmas story has particular resonances for our queer communities — and for any community imperiled by prejudice, and vulnerable for that matter, because they are undocumented, or transgender, or in need of reproductive health care. Mary, Joseph and Jesus become refugees and asylum seekers because Roman occupation made their lives untenable. A census displaced them and consigned them to a district with insufficient affordable housing. After Jesus was born, they fled to Egypt fearing for their lives.
The age of tyrants is not over. Our incoming president promises mass deportations and threatens to violate the sanctuary of schools, hospitals, and even places of worship in pursuit of undocumented friends and neighbors. We found our courage in 1986 when state Proposition 64 sought to round up and quarantine people with HIV, and we expressed our commitment not to allow our friends to be taken from us. We remembered that unjust laws cannot be enforced if we refuse to submit to them. In 1994, when the majority of Californians voted for Proposition 187, which would deny health care and education to undocumented immigrants, San Franciscans voted in the greatest number in the state against this ugly provision, which was later declared unconstitutional. We were proud that people came here to find a better life, because that's what most of us came here seeking, and we protected and encouraged the medical refugees who came here seeing HIV treatment not available in other states or countries.
In the late 1990s, when some hardened their hearts against queer homeless youth in the Castro, we banded together to provide emergency winter shelters and to provide needed social services. We need to muster that courage and activism again in the face of threatened family separation and mass deportation. That's our best Christmas gift to each other.
This Christmas, I urge you to find a welcoming place to light candles, hear angels sing, and create chosen holy families of every configuration. When we sing about peace in ancient Bethlehem, pray for peace in modern day Palestine and Israel. And come seeking comfort and joy, and also courage for the struggle ahead. Make Christmas real by promising solidarity to immigrants and asylum seekers, so that no one feels out of place and there is room for all in the inn.
The Reverend Jim Mitulski, a gay man, is the pastor of the Congregational Church of the Peninsula UCC in Belmont, California and was pastor during the AIDS years of Metropolitan Community Church-San Francisco.
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