About seventy Mormons marched in Saturday’s Washington, D.C. Pride parade, carrying the banner “Mormons for Marriage Equality.” Like the Mormons Building Bridges contingent in Salt Lake City, most of the LDS marchers wore Sunday dress.
At one point along the parade route, a man dressed in a blue t-shirt, camouflage cap, and Mardi Gras beads around his neck yelled, “Mormons! You’re Mormons!”
He pushed through the parade watchers and with tears in his eyes jumped into the Mormons for Marriage Equality contingent and started to hug the marchers.
“Oh my gosh! The Mormons are here!” he said. “I’m Mormon! I can’t believe you’re here. Thank you so much!”
One of the marchers hugged back and told him, “Yes, we’re here, and we love you.”
I’m aware that Mormons can be a sentimental, even lachrymose group. I’ve written about our tears from time to time. The tenderness many Mormons develop towards each other is hard to scrub, even after one has stepped away from the community. In their award-winning book American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides Us, political scientists David Campbell and Robert Putnam actually chart the degree of “warmth” members of a religious tradition feel towards their own. Mormons outrank just about every other religious group in intragroup “warmth.” The warmth is off the charts.
So too can be the feelings of loss when Mormons find themselves pushed outside of their communities by forces not of their own choosing.
Here is the Mormon in the blue t-shirt as he first discovers and then hugs the Mormons marching in the pride parade:
It’s a long time some of our people have been gone from us.
Did we know how to miss them?
(Photos courtesy of K. Waddoups)
