“One Nation, Indivisible”: Inclusion and Support for LGBTQ+ On Flag Day During Pride Month
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June 14, 2024
For Pride Month, we have been discussing and demonstrating allyship with our LGBTQ+ friends. Allyship rests in holding ourselves accountable for the support and inclusion of marginalized groups. In thinking about how “inclusion” could have somehow become a controversial concept, I began to think about our Flag (because it’s Flag Day). I belong to a fabulous organization that starts almost every event with the members reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. We all know it. I bet you are saying it in your head right now. The original draft had us pledging allegiance to the flag and our Republic, one nation, indivisible. Allyship, inclusion, indivisible—concepts grounded in the notion of “incapable of being divided.”
Indivisible seems to be the lost word in the Pledge. We don’t fight over it. We don’t have any law suits over the word indivisible. Yet it is a powerful word. Clearly our enemies fear us being indivisible. Through social media, our enemies around the world are trying to make us the Disunited States of America and the European Disunion. One look at the bots on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok reveals that the traps of social media have us walking right into exclusion, no longer one nation, no longer indivisible.
This month, we can change the narrative. We can have a big tent. We can embrace our marginalized friends. We can show the world that “indivisible” means just that: we are incapable of being divided and we are incapable of dividing ourselves. With liberty and justice for all. That’s our Pledge. (Now, let’s talk about those last words: “for all.”)
