For 50 years, the LGBTQ+ community has fought for recognition, protection, welcome and full participation in American life. The victories during those years were extraordinary, but they also invite a larger question.
The question is no longer simply whether we will be given a seat at someone else’s table. It is about who built that table, who holds power there and who is still being left out.
For generations, equality has meant gaining admission to established institutions: marriage, the military, corporations, universities, political parties, churches and civic organizations. We understandably wanted access. We wanted recognition. We wanted the rights everyone else already possessed.
But access is not power. Representation is not leadership. And being invited into an existing system is not the same as transforming it.
Perhaps the next chapter of LGBTQ+ history cannot be about seeking inclusion within someone else’s limited vision of equality. It must be about using our experience, our voices and our hard-won power to build a more inclusive society for everyone.
That is what I mean by building a bigger table.
We should not simply ask corporations to put LGBTQ+ people in advertisements; we should ask who sits in the boardroom. We should not simply ask political leaders to march with us in June; we should ask whether LGBTQ+ people have a meaningful voice in shaping public policy throughout the rest of the year.
We should not simply ask churches to put a rainbow flag outside their buildings; we should ask whether LGBTQ+ people are welcomed into the rooms where theology, budgets, leadership and the future of those churches are actually determined.
We should not simply ask schools to tolerate LGBTQ+ students; we should demand educational environments where every young person can learn, belong and imagine a future without being turned into a political target.
And we should not measure progress solely by whether LGBTQ+ people have been allowed through the door. We should measure progress by who gets to decide what happens inside.
That is a very different standard. It is also a more demanding one. Because building a bigger table means accepting that the LGBTQ+ movement itself must continue to evolve.
We cannot build a bigger table while reproducing the exclusions that have existed within our own community. The experiences of a gay white man are not identical to those of a transgender teenager, a Black lesbian mother, a bisexual young adult, an LGBTQ+ immigrant or an aging queer person living alone.
If our movement is going to represent the future, it must make room for the full complexity of LGBTQ+ lives. That means listening to people whose experiences are different from our own. It means mentoring young leaders rather than simply celebrating the leaders of previous generations. It means caring for our elders rather than allowing their histories to disappear. It means investing in communities that have historically had fewer resources.
It means understanding that the fight for LGBTQ+ equality has never been isolated from the larger struggle for justice.
Our opponents understand this. They have learned that LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender people and LGBTQ+ youth, can be used as political symbols to generate fear, mobilize voters and distract from larger questions about power, inequality and democracy.
We should refuse to play that role. We are not political symbols. We are people. And we should stop allowing others to define the limits of our political imagination.
The LGBTQ+ movement has spent decades proving that we can survive rejection. Now we need to prove that we can build something better than the systems that rejected us.
That means building families where children do not have to earn belonging, churches where LGBTQ+ people are trusted with leadership, schools where difference is not treated as danger and workplaces where equality is lived, not merely promised.
It means building communities where our elders can age with dignity and our young people can imagine growing old, building political coalitions that recognize LGBTQ+ equality as part of the broader struggle for human dignity and building a culture in which the question is no longer whether LGBTQ+ people deserve to belong.
Of course we belong.
The harder and more important question is: What kind of society are we going to build together?
As a Christian pastor, I find the metaphor of the table particularly powerful. Jesus’ ministry was filled with tables. Again and again, the people society considered inconvenient, unacceptable or unworthy found themselves welcomed there.
Jesus did not make the table smaller to preserve someone’s sense of comfort. He made it bigger.
That is the kind of Christianity I believe our nation needs, and the kind of movement I believe the LGBTQ+ community can help lead. Because the goal of equality cannot simply be to become comfortable inside a system that once excluded us; the goal should be to transform that system so exclusion becomes harder for anyone.
That is the real promise of the bigger table.
It is not an LGBTQ+ table. It is not a progressive table. It is not a Christian table.
It is a human table.
And there is room for everyone.
Fifty years ago, our predecessors had the courage to knock on doors that were firmly closed.
They marched. They protested. They organized. They endured. They opened doors for us.
We honor them not simply by defending what they won but by continuing what they began.
So let us stop asking merely for a seat. Let us bring another chair, then another and another, until the table is large enough to honor those who came before us, hold those standing beside us and welcome those who have not yet arrived.
Because the next chapter of LGBTQ+ history should not be about finally being allowed to belong. It should be about creating a world where nobody has to ask permission to belong.
The first 50 years were about claiming a seat at the table. The next 50 should be about building one big enough for everyone.
The Rev. Dr. Neil G. Thomas is senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope UCC.