Colleges and universities around the country are in full celebratory mode as they navigate graduation season. My social media timelines are full of friends sharing cap and gown pictures of their children and themselves, celebrating various milestones in their lives.

Some schools have chosen to keep a graduation ceremony that I’d never heard of before: a Lavender Ceremony. It honors the LGBTQ+ students graduating from college.

The first Lavender Ceremony was held in 1995. Dr. Ronni Sanlo was denied the right to attend the graduations of her children because of her sexual orientation, which gave her a window into the pain some of her students felt when their parents abandoned them.

Sanlo created the Lavender Ceremony to help address the pain that college students who face similar rejection feel. At these ceremonies, queer graduates have the opportunity to celebrate this significant achievement surrounded by people who not only share their lived experience, but who embrace their humanity. I had the privilege of donning a stole on one of my church’s college students at a Lavender Ceremony this year.

It’s a beautiful ceremony, but I have a question about the branding:  Why lavender? Why not a rainbow, since that’s the symbol most associated with the LGBTQ+ community?

The color lavender has historical significance to the queer community. During World War II, gay men and lesbians were taken prisoner and sent to concentration camps alongside Jews, Roma people and those with mental disabilities. Gay men and lesbians were forced to wear pink and black triangles, respectively, to publicly mark their homosexuality.

After World War II, gay and lesbian activist groups reclaimed the color lavender–a combination of pink and black–as an early symbol of resistance, predating the rainbow flag that is all but ubiquitous with gay pride today.

Lavender was also used in a demeaning manner throughout Western history, but especially during the age of moral panic in the mid-1900s in the United States. During the Cold War, social anxieties in America were high as government agencies and average citizens alike feared Soviet infiltration into American life. For whatever reason, it was commonly believed that gay men and lesbians posed a security risk to federal employees.

As a result, laws criminalizing “sexual perversion” came to the forefront of social life and forced many LGBTQ+ activities underground. The movement was dubbed the Lavender Scare, effectively running parallel to the similar Red Scare, though lasting longer.

In short, the color lavender reminds us both of the struggle our elders went through to embrace who they are and the rebellious celebration of being openly ourselves. It highlights the tension of leaning into the liberation of self-affirmation while acknowledging the risk that living life out and open poses.

Under the current presidential administration, Lavender Ceremonies are more relevant than ever. They highlight the tension between living out of the closet and the rising need for the safety the closet promises, but can’t guarantee.

Do you go to the ceremony to receive a stole? Do you go to support your friends but don’t go up yourself? 

If you choose to go, will you invite your family? Who will you ask to don you with your stole?

These questions must be at the heart of the graduates every year, but this year, the tension between being out and being safe is much tighter than it has been in previous years. This tension is high in my mind, especially as we see tragedies such as the federal government unceremoniously dismissing trans military personnel from service alongside Colorado making misgendering someone a criminal offense.

Keeping track of which states are safe to travel to has become dizzying, the whiplash scrambling my brain.

I can’t promise my youth that it’s safe to publicly be themselves right now. That reality weighs heavily on me, especially as a pastor who preaches that God loves and affirms them just as they are.

Sure, one might argue that there’s never a time when it’s 100% safe to publicly be yourself as a marginalized person in America. But it is a clearly more hostile time for queer people and immigrants to be themselves right now. I fear for them, their safety, and their future.

John tells us in First John that perfect love casts out fear. But I have to ask,  “Whose love?”

What does it mean for others’ love to be so strong that I no longer have to fear for my safety when my wife and I go out to dinner? What would it look like for our love to be so strong that a queer college graduate can attend a Lavender Ceremony without fear of repercussions?

What if this perfect love isn’t only about casting fear out of ourselves, but also about creating a world in which our neighbors’ fear is cast out as well? Maybe then, love will finally be complete, punctuated with God’s lavender heart, open to all.

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