Last month, the White House released its 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy. The 16-page document names three categories of threat the federal government intends to “neutralize” and “cripple” — drug cartels, Islamist terror groups and, I am quoting directly, “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

This is not a fringe proposal. It is not a leaked memo. It is the official counterterrorism strategy of the United States government.

If you believe that transgender and nonbinary people have the right to exist — to be known, to be safe, to live without fear — your government has named people like us as threats to be mapped and neutralized. That is the moment we are in. And it is precisely why Pride matters more than ever.

The word “pride” carries baggage, I know. In religious contexts especially, we’ve inherited warnings about pride as arrogance, as the first of the deadly sins. But that is not what Pride means in June. The pride we celebrate is something simpler and more radical: the courage to be known. The refusal to accept the premise that your existence is a problem to be solved.

Here in Maine, and in communities across this country, that courage is under direct assault. And the cost isn’t borne only by LGBTQ+ people.

Research on LGBTQ+ youth is consistent: When young people are affirmed — at home, at school, in their communities — their mental health outcomes are dramatically better. But the same environment that makes it safe for a transgender teenager to exist is the same environment that makes it safe for every kid who doesn’t fit the mold. Rigid boxes hurt everyone. When we break them open, we free everyone.

There’s something else worth saying. Pride invites all of us — not just LGBTQ+ people — to ask a harder question: What parts of myself have I hidden because they didn’t fit what was expected of me? The grandmother never allowed to grieve out loud. The man who performed certainty when he felt only doubt. The person who spent decades living a life they didn’t choose. When a community makes room for the full spectrum of human identity, it gives everyone permission to lay down their masks. That is not just good for LGBTQ+ people. It is good for all of us.

Flourishing is not passive. It requires us to make room — in our families, our policies, our institutions — for the full range of humanity. It means supporting organizations on the front lines of this fight. It means speaking up in rooms where it’s uncomfortable. It means showing up for one another, in ways small and large, again and again.

That is what Pride is. Not a parade, not a logo, not a month on a calendar. It is a practice. A practice of seeing each other, claiming each other and refusing to disappear.

We are here. We are together. And only together can we all flourish.

The Rev. Dr. Kharma R. Amos is minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick, uubrunswick.org.

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