Firebirds on the Fourth: A Pride Manifesto

On Visibility, Community, and the Future We Build

Jul 04, 2025

“The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”
— Patrick Henry

🫖 Welcome to the Tea Table

Hello, my friends, and welcome.

Whether this is your first time at our tea table or you are a frequent guest, you are among friends. Here, we make room for all—share a cup of courage and speak truths together. Here, your voice has value. We defend your right not only to be heard, but to be seen. To sit in silence, to rest, and to gather your strength for the road ahead.

🗽 A Firebird’s Fourth

Today, Friday, July 4th, marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—the day our nation declared, Enough.

In doing so, we created something radical: a country not bound by shared faith, culture, or language, but built on an idea:

All people are entitled to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

We have not always honored that promise. We have excluded, oppressed, and erased based on skin, gender, origin, faith, and love. We still wrestle with the cost of that failure.

But the power of this country lies not in its perfection—but in its promise. When you protect the ideal, when you rise with others who believe in it too, you become the American the founders dreamed of.

🌈 Pride Was Just the Beginning

This Pride, we told stories of those who defied silence. Who lived loudly and loved defiantly. Who changed the world.

These were not random stories. They were chosen to show the common threads that made their lives powerful—and to remind us what we carry forward.

Now, as Pride draws to a close, we open the aviary. We release our firebirds. They are stories with wings. They bring courage. They spark change. They carry hope.

This article sets the tone for what comes next—for all of us. These are our battle plans. They are written with clarity and love. They are forged from truth, and built for flight.

🔥 Lesson One: Visibility

As Harvey Milk once said, and we have echoed all month:

Visibility is key.

This Pride, many of you admitted how little you knew about our heroes. Some names were new. Others surprised you with their power. That’s the point.

Visibility is not about recruitment or celebration. It’s not even about remembrance, though that matters. Visibility is for the children.

So that every child can see someone they recognize.
So that every child can hope.

Visibility breaks hate. It collapses caricature. It reminds the world: we are not ideas. We are people. We are your teachers, your teammates, your family, your friends.

And so, we must stay visible—not as tropes or tokens, but as whole, complex humans.

At this tea table, we ask nothing of you we don’t do ourselves. So we’re proud to announce a new weekly series: Firebird Fridays. Each week, we’ll tribute an LGBTQ+ icon, activist, or ally—starting with The Birdcage, starring the incomparable Nathan Lane and beloved ally Robin Williams, in collaboration with

Hundred Tomatoes

We invite you to help shape this series. Who has lifted you? Who deserves a spotlight? Let’s build this aviary together.

🧨 When Visibility Becomes a Weapon

But visibility is not always passive. It’s a power—and a boundary.

We must stop offering shelter to those who walk among us in secret, only to stay silent when our lives are attacked. Some come into our spaces, seeking community—but leave quietly when our safety is on the line.

To them we say: no more.

Your coming out story is your own—unless your silence causes harm. If you benefit from this community and then abandon it in public, that truth belongs to us. As Larry Kramer taught: truth is a tool, and sometimes a weapon.

We are done celebrating cowards who cower in the face of our erasure. If you cannot speak for us, you do not speak from us.

🏘️ Lesson Two: Community

In every firebird story we’ve told, no one stood alone. Victory came in fellowship. Change came from collective power.

And yet, this Pride, I’ve watched us fracture. Small mistakes met with fury. Questions met with scorn. Friends—this is not strength. This is brittleness.

If every challenge looks like a nail, we become hammers. But hammers don’t build homes.

We feel deeply—that is a gift. But our responses must match our goals. We cannot meet every ignorant question with rage and expect to grow allies. Yes, allies may ask clumsy questions. That’s part of learning. Meet it with clarity. With patience.

This is not about being perfect. It’s about being generous. Generosity builds community. Bitterness breaks it.

We have to stop assuming bad faith. We must meet people where they are—and guide them where we need them to be.

🎯 Lesson Three: Messaging

Friends, we have a messaging problem.

We’re focused on categories, definitions, and structures. We’re debating language before we’ve built trust. We’re boring people before we’ve moved them.

Let me offer a shift.

Take the debate over transgender healthcare. It’s been framed around clinics, clauses, and bans. But the argument is simpler than that:

In a free society, medical decisions belong to the patient and their doctor.
Government interference violates Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Full stop.

When you reframe the issue like this, you don’t just win the argument—you make the argument irrelevant. You elevate it beyond the fog of fear. You unite the audience in shared values.

This strategy works for reproductive rights, assisted death, and harm-reduction services too. We are strongest when we return to first principles—and speak plainly.

💥 Allies: I Want Your Anger

To our allies, we make one final ask:

I want your anger.

I’ve heard you. You’re afraid to say the wrong thing. You don’t want to talk over us. You don’t want to get it wrong.

But silence is no longer neutral.

You will make mistakes. We will too. But if your first instinct is to avoid the fight altogether, you’re asking us to do all the work while you wait for clarity. We don’t have time for that.

Stop asking what you can do. Just do something. Use your skills, your platform, your presence. Use your privilege in places we are not welcome.

If you’re a doctor in a hostile state, comply maliciously. Deny the prescriptions they value most. If you are a person of faith, speak up. Use your scripture to defend—not to destroy. Take a note from our rhinestone saint, Dolly Parton.

When we raise our voices, we’re labeled bitter. When you raise yours, you’re called principled. Use that. Channel your rage into action.

🎇 The Final Flight

This, then, is our plan.

We march behind firebirds—those icons who soared from silence into story. They taught us the value of visibility, the strength of fellowship, and the power of inclusive truth.

From Larry to Kiyoshi, from Moms’ booming laugh to Barbara’s quiet persistence, they did not become bitter. They became builders. They turned toward each other. And they changed the world.

Some of the first Pride events took place on this very date—Independence Day. That wasn’t coincidence. It was a call: that these rights, these dreams, were never meant to be hoarded. They are meant to be shared.

So tonight, as you watch the fireworks crackle in the sky, look up.

Look for the firebirds.

They are rising.
They are calling.

And they are not flying alone.

Behind them in the sky you will see a chariot of flame pulled by hippos in armor dressed for battle, the keeper of the firebirds following behind tending to the heroes, helping them soar, and following their light across the sky.

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
— Toni Morrison

Until our next bold move,
~ Lady LiberTea✨🫖