Once, when I was in high school in the early 2000s, the church youth group I was a part of planned a paintball event. There was so much excitement leading up to it and some healthy competition-building. My brother, cousins and I went to flea markets, thrift stores and a nearby Army-Navy surplus store, hunting for camouflage clothing to wear so that we would not be spotted as easily in the wooded arena.
The day before the event, I had a brilliant idea. I knew that I was not going to be the last man standing — more likely, I would be among the first to go down. So I decided to accept my fate and infuse humor into the situation. I took an old white T-shirt, cut a piece out of it, and sewed it to the back of my camo shirt. I then took Sharpie markers and drew a large target on the shirt. I quite literally painted a target on my own back.
This memory came to mind as I reflected on recent events in our city, county, state and nation. A friend had admonished me for “reacting” to statements made by two Republican Lancaster County commissioners that fueled hate over a planned Drag Queen Story Hour at Lancaster Public Library.
My friend told me that rather than reacting, we — LBGTQ+ people, progressive Christians, citizens concerned with justice and democracy — need to focus on organizing, because that would be what would truly bring about change in our community. He said we need to organize in order to affect the power structures that have for far too long held up one group’s rights over another’s. If we ever are to live up to this nation’s motto, E pluribus unum — out of many, one — we must find common ground, unite and organize. I listened respectfully and was moved by his words. His dream is my dream too, but something still didn’t sit right with me.
You see, I don’t think that this is an either/or situation. Thinking that way locks us into a binary system that so many of us believe has had its time in the spotlight and needs to retire. I think that we need both: We need activists and action steps. We need agitators and organizers. We need planners and doers. We need those who can remain camouflaged and those willing to paint a target on their own backs. This duality seems like a better strategy to me.
My choice to attend three consecutive commissioners meetings recalled that camo shirt with the target on the back. When I ran across the paintball field in high school yelling, “Bet you can’t hit the target!” I drew fire and focus away from my teammates and they were able to gain a major advantage. It is similar now. As a transgender person myself, I often feel frustrated by the lack of visible, tangible support for me and my community. While people are planning and organizing in the safety of churches and homes, others are acting out in hateful and direct ways. That is the primary reason I willingly painted and will continue to wear a target on my back. It is for the sake of being a visible presence and voice standing up to say “no.”
I spent much of my life being bullied and scared into silence, and I will not sit quietly by as those in power seek to bully and silence the most vulnerable among us. I also choose this stance in solidarity and advocacy for those unable to take a seat at the table, whether because of genuine fear and anxiety about the risks involved, or because sitting in those meetings unlocks a world of past trauma, or because these spaces are not accessible to all of this county’s citizens. I will not avoid the hard things; I will not be absent when I am able to be present. No longer will our community be without a voice in spaces where decisions are made for and about us.
So while I will be involved in organizing and planning, I will not choose to believe that our work ends there. I will continue to draw the target on my back so that others do not have to, and so that we are visible and known, and we can truly belong in a city that is ours, too. We all have our parts to play and they are not all the same. Find yours and show up when and where you are needed, because you are needed.
Deklan Rupp is the coordinator of the Rivertown Pride Center in Columbia, a divinity student at Lancaster Theological Seminary and the minister of music at Vision of Hope Metropolitan Community Church in Mountville.
