Pride Month is a time to celebrate the beauty, joy and resilience of our LGBTQ+ community, and to imagine a future where every LGBTQ+ kid can grow up happy, healthy, safe and strong.
But Pride can’t end when June does. Supporting queer and trans young people is year-round work, and this year’s Children’s Minnesota booth at Twin Cities Pride offered a perfect reminder of how we do it, one tiny LEGO brick at a time.
One mural, many hands
Our booth featured a gigantic LEGO art mural to be built by festival goers. As each visitor to our booth placed their pieces into the mural template, the template gradually became an incredible, welcoming and celebratory work of art to be placed in our St. Paul hospital. (A similar LEGO artwork created by last year’s festival goers is now hanging in our Minneapolis hospital.)
What’s amazing about these murals isn’t just their beauty, but that many people, steps and details had to come together to create them. It’s a perfect metaphor for how we continue to work toward queer and trans equality and inclusion not just in June, but year-round.
The murals feature more than 42,000 individual LEGO pieces. Hundreds of people placed these small bricks into the template over three days. Could someone build the mural alone? Maybe, but it might overwhelm them. Could a few people do it? Probably. Could we all make it happen by doing our own small part to create something beautiful? Absolutely. Working toward LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion is very much like building that mural. When each person contributes in some way, we can create an awe-inspiring outcome.
A role for everyone
The other lesson is about the Pride LEGO builders that visited our booth. They came in all shapes and sizes, all ages, all races and ethnicities. We all have a part to play. Kids, too. They might need us to set an example of how to place their LEGO onto the larger mural. They might have a hard time visualizing the end result. But this is how it is with LGBTQ+ inclusion and allyship. It’s helping kids understand that addressing antigay speech on the playground is doing their part. So is standing up for a kid being picked on because of their gender identity. Kids might need us to give them ideas of what to say or how to say it. They might need to learn more about why their actions are important and how it makes their school, sports team or neighborhood better in the long run. But they have a part to play, too.
Many ways to build
If you think pressing the LEGO bricks into the template was the only thing involved in building the LEGO mural, let me stop you right there. There isn’t just one way to do activism or be an ally. It wasn’t just the builders that made it happen. It was also the LEGO sorters, who weeks beforehand made small packets of LEGO for each festival attendee to use to add to the mural. It was the booth volunteers who showed frustrated kids and adults the best way to press their bricks onto the larger mural. It was the team that built the huge and sturdy easel that held the gigantic Lego mural. It was the artist who designed the mural and the team that gave feedback on the design.
It was even the software developer that created a tool to transform an art design into a LEGO brick mural template, not knowing that it would be used to create an amazing work of inclusion and belonging for a children’s hospital one day.
There is no one way to contribute to a better future for LGBTQ+ youth. We just each need to do our part to build a greater whole. We can do that by using inclusive language. By parenting in a way that celebrates differences in sexual and gender identity. By voting for politicians who are invested in protecting LGBTQ+ rights in Minnesota and beyond. By putting up a yard sign that signals inclusion and belonging. By challenging school officials when they try to censor books, exclude trans students from participating in activities or ban them from bathrooms. By adjusting our language to indicate to our kids, friends and family that they belong. By not assuming the identity of someone’s romantic partner or someone’s pronouns but instead asking with genuine openness. We can do our part by saying I love you, always and no matter what, to every queer and trans kid and person in our lives.
Starting with DUPLO
Another thing I love about LEGO as a metaphor for activism and allyship: How our ability to build with them, understand them and create with them grows and changes. When my kids were little, they used DUPLO. We had a big tub of them, and my kids had a blast creating with them. I still remember when they switched to standard LEGO bricks when they were around 4 years old, their tiny fingers mastering the fine motor skills to fit the pieces together.
I also remember watching them navigate between following the LEGO directions and sometimes building from their own imaginations. Seeing the complexity grow over time of both the LEGO building sets they could accomplish on their own and the intricacies of their own creations. My kids now build huge adult sets that I used to have to build for them. One of my kids recently built a LEGO slot machine using only his imagination and a small tip or two from the internet.
We don’t have to be ready to do all the work of LGBTQ+ activism and be the “perfect” ally to start building a better tomorrow. Start with the DUPLO if that’s easier, simple everyday things that make a difference. Maybe you work up to the more complex LEGO bricks. You’re building either way. Maybe follow directions to build what someone else envisioned. Or maybe start with your own imagination and create something new. It doesn’t matter where the idea came from or how simple or complex it is. It’s still taking action toward a better future.
Building beyond June
As we transition from Pride month to the rest of the year, just remember that our actions and our words matter, not just in June, but all year round. Be a builder. Be a helper. Be an example. Big or small, simple or complex, any and all steps you take matter. Pride all year means doing what we can, when we can, to create a future together, where LGBTQ+ young people have access to the healthcare, education and social support they need to thrive. A future where all young people feel loved and valued.
Dr. Kade Goepferd
Chief education officer and pediatrician in the Gender Health program
Dr. Kade Goepferd (they/them) founded the Gender Health program at Children’s Minnesota and continues to advocate for advancing equitable health care for all children. They have received several local and national awards for their work in advocacy and education and gave their first TED talk, “The Revolutionary Truth about Kids and Gender Identity” at TEDx Minneapolis in 2020.
