LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The month of June honors and celebrates Pride.

The celebrations often include parades, festivals, and events surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. But, how do those who identify as LGBTQ+ practice faith? 

What You Need To Know

  • The month of June honors and celebrates Pride

  • The celebrations often include parades, festivals and events surrounding the LGBTQ+ community

  • May O'Nays is a drag performer who writes drag revivals 

  • The revivals are one way the performer works to reconcile faith and sexuality

“I’ve been doing drag going on for four years,” said May O’Nays.

She gets ready in the makeshift makeup room, adding the final touches to her nails.

“My dad’s a minister. I grew up in rural Indiana, in the Methodist church,” O’Nays said.

Out of Drag, May O’Nays is Andrew Schaftlein.

“Becoming a dad helped me. It kind of spurred me to examine my childhood and all of the not-so-helpful things I was taught about being LGBT and being a Christian,” O’Nays said.

O’Nays said for a short while, she paused on her faith.

“I spent my kind of mid- to late 20s kind of deconstructing my faith and what do I actually believe and what does the Bible actually say about being gay. And I took a pretty big hiatus from a faith community,” O’Nays said.

After some therapy, she wrote her first drag revival, which was received well by some pastors. 

“I was like, that’s interesting, cause it was pretty critical of, you know, certain aspects of religion. And then, through that conversation, the first drag revival was born. So it was actually a way to facilitate me kind of telling my faith journey and struggles with organized religion,” O’Nays said. 

Mary Ann Macklin is the interim minister at the First Unitarian Church in Louisville.

She describes her struggle with faith during the 1980s.

“I was a lawyer at the time, and I remember thinking about ministry, about going into it and seeing them as like, I couldn’t do that,” Macklin said.

Now she shares messages of inspiration.

“For me, as a Unitarian Universalist, we save lives, I mean, people, members of the LGBTQ community can lose hope,” Macklin said.

Hope, even a sprinkle, can help reaffirm a person and their values.

“But it was just them just saying, I see you and I have no expectations, but you’re welcome here,” O’Nays said.

O’Nays say this is the third year they’ve put on a drag revival and plan to continue in years to come.

Related Stories