Beloved community,

Pride Month has begun—not in celebration, but in sorrow.

On June 1, Jonathan Joss—a gifted Native American actor, a gay man, a husband—was shot dead outside his former home in San Antonio, Texas. What should have been a season of affirming love and liberation instead opened with yet another elegy.

Jonathan wasn’t only a public figure but a citizen of this country’s most marginalized margins. As an Indigenous man and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, he carried the compounded weight of two identities this nation has long sought to erase. He was no stranger to the violence that follows when racism and homophobia converge unchecked. Neither are we.

His husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, believes this was a hate crime—one that followed years of targeted harassment. But the San Antonio Police Department won’t name it that.

“No evidence,” they say. As if a body isn’t evidence. As if context isn’t evidence. It is as if history hasn’t taught us that the burden of proof always falls heaviest on those most targeted.

Jonathan’s murder didn’t come out of nowhere. It emerged from a culture that legislates against queer lives and ignores Indigenous ones. It came from a society that scapegoats trans people and stereotypes Native people—where authenticity itself is criminalized. It came from Texas, but it could’ve come from anywhere.

As people of faith and justice, our calling is clear. We must not just mourn—we must remember him rightly. That means naming every layer of his humanity. That means refusing the erasure of his Indigenous identity and queerness. That means speaking with bold tongues and tender hearts.

May our pride be a protest this month, our remembrance a revolution, and our faith birth the justice Jonathan deserved.

Amen.

Jonathan Joss’s life was stolen not only by a bullet—but by a climate cultivated through policy and propaganda.

His death didn’t happen in a vacuum. It unfolded in the shadow of a nation sliding deeper into legislative assault against LGBTQIA+ people.

In Texas alone, lawmakers introduced more than 50 bills this past year that target LGBTQIA+ rights—from stripping gender-affirming care from trans youth to silencing conversations about queer existence in classrooms. This isn’t policy. It’s persecution.

And when laws are erased, people follow suit.

The Human Rights Campaign didn’t mince words when it declared a state of emergency for LGBTQIA+ people in the United States. That wasn’t hyperbole. That was a prophetic alarm.

Discriminatory laws don’t just stay on paper. They take root. They animate fear. They embolden bigotry. They grant moral license to hate.

Jonathan’s murder must be understood within this wider war on queer lives. This is systemic violence dressed in legislative garb.

Anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric doesn’t simply rile up debate—it fuels dehumanization. Every bill that defines queer existence as a threat or sickness is another match tossed into the dry brush of American hatred.

Every politician who trades dignity for votes in a culture war economy has blood on their hands. And churches that stay silent amid this onslaught must reckon with their complicity.

Jonathan Joss wasn’t just a victim of a gun. He was a casualty of an ideology.

Let this Pride Month be a turning point—not just in memory but in mobilization. We must fight the bills, name the hate, and make policy a tool for protection, not persecution.

God’s justice demands no less.

Jonathan Joss should be alive today.

Instead, his blood cries out from the San Antonio soil, joining a long-silenced chorus of LGBTQIA+ souls lost to violence—souls too often forgotten or misnamed. His murder isn’t an anomaly.

It’s a continuation of a crisis. A Native man. A gay man. A married man. A beloved artist. Executed. And yet, authorities resist naming this atrocity for what it very well may be: a hate crime.

That refusal is violence, too.

San Antonio Police Department’s statement that “no evidence currently suggests a hate crime” resounds like so many dismissals we’ve heard before—where hate hides behind legal technicalities and procedural ambiguity.

The department also claims that a hate crime designation doesn’t come into play until judicial proceedings. When institutions ignore lived experience and pattern, they send a message: some lives are not worth the truth.

We must not let that message stand.

LGBTQIA+ people—especially those of color—live at a deadly intersection of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. The Church knows this. The State knows this. We know this. And still, the systems keep spinning, churning out grief after grief, funeral after funeral.

We must demand that law enforcement investigate these cases with rigor and moral clarity. We must urge elected officials to pass legislation that names and counters this violence. And we must interrogate every cultural norm, every sermon, every policy that renders LGBTQIA+ lives disposable.

Jonathan Joss’s death cannot become just another statistic or hashtag. His life, love, and loss demand transformation—not only of laws, but of hearts.

Let us refuse to be silent.

Let us honor him by building the world he deserved: a world where love doesn’t cost your life and justice doesn’t come too late.

Lord, let it be so.

Grief has a way of revealing what we’d rather not see. The murder of Jonathan Joss, a Native American man loved by many and cherished by his husband, confronts us with one painful truth.

This world—and too often, the Church—continues to be unsafe for LGBTQIA+ people of color. And in this sacred month of Pride, we are challenged not to turn away but to turn toward liberation, love, and reckoning.

Theologian Fr. Bryan Massingale reminds us in Racial Justice and the Catholic Church that the Church has been complicit in creating a culture that fosters homophobia. He names the ecclesial silence, allowing hatred to fester in pews and pulpits.

But he also offers a vision of what could be: “We need a liberating theology that hears the voices of the excluded and affirms their dignity as bearers of the divine image.” Jonathan was such a bearer.

The Rev. Dr. Horace Griffin, in Their Own Received Them Not, pulls no punches in describing the alienation that Black LGBTQIA+ people endure within the Black Church.

He writes, “The Black Church has far too often mirrored the heterosexism of the dominant culture, rather than modeling God’s inclusive love.”

Griffin offers more than critique—he offers hope that a truly inclusive Church can emerge, one that doesn’t just tolerate queer people. Still, he celebrates them as integral to God’s beloved community.

Dr. Miguel Díaz echoes this call through his sacramental imagination, asserting that our understanding of God must include marginalized bodies. “To be in communion with the marginalized,” Díaz writes, “is to encounter the crucified Christ in our midst.”

In his life and his unjust death, Jonathan Joss invites the Church to such communion. Theologian Ish Ruiz, whose ministry and scholarship straddle queerness and Catholic identity, calls us to rethink belonging.

“God delights in our queerness,” Ruiz insists, “and calls us into full participation in the life of the Church—not despite our identities, but through them.” That delight, when denied by institutions, becomes a wound. But when embraced, it becomes resurrection.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey, a fierce theologian and advocate, roots her liberation theology in lived experience. “There is a spiritual violence,” she warns, “in requiring LGBTQ persons to choose between their faith and their identity.”

Jonathan Joss should never have had to make such a choice. No one should.

In his seminal work The Man Jesus Loved, the late Rev. Dr. Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., challenged the biblical foundations of heteronormative dominance.

“To ignore or suppress the homoerotic dimensions of biblical texts is to engage in theological malpractice.” Jennings invites us to read Scripture with queer eyes—and in doing so, to see Jesus standing with the oppressed.

To honor Jonathan Joss is to name this murder not just as a crime, but as a theological emergency. We are called to embody a faith that makes room at the table, tears down walls, and preaches a Gospel where love is not a liability. God help us to be that Church.

Demand a Thorough Investigation: Contact the San Antonio Police Department and urge them to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding Jonathan Joss's death, including the potential for hate crime charges.(mysanantonio.com)

Support LGBTQIA+ Organizations: Donate to and volunteer with organizations that advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights and provide support to victims of hate crimes.

Advocate for Inclusive Policies: Engage with your local and state representatives to support legislation that protects LGBTQIA+ individuals from discrimination and violence.

Educate Your Community: Host or participate in events that raise awareness about the challenges faced by LGBTQIA+ people, particularly those who are also people of color.

We gather in the shadow of grief but do not stand in defeat. We name the name of Jonathan Joss—a Native son, a creative soul, a beloved husband—whose light was stolen too soon. But we do not bury the call; his life still speaks.

Jonathan’s story demands more than mourning. It demands movement.

So may we honor him not just with words, but with a sacred commitment to justice. Let our prayers stretch beyond pulpits and pews. Let them take root in public policy, community care, and the kind of prophetic truth-telling that flips tables and topples lies.

May we celebrate not only diversity but also divinity in diversity. Every gender, every sexual identity, and every cultural story bears the unmistakable fingerprint of the Divine. We must not merely tolerate difference—we must treasure it.

And may we—yes, we—be vessels of compassion that disrupt cruelty. May we be courageous enough to name hate crimes when the state stays silent. May we be bold enough to protect queer and trans lives when systems fail to do so.

Jonathan deserved a world that saw him fully—loved him fully. Protected him fully.

So let us build that world in our sanctuaries, city halls, classrooms, kitchen tables, and every space where injustice still breathes.

Let love be louder than the bullets. Let hope rise higher than the hatred. And let our faith be more than ritual—let it be resistance.

In the name of justice, in the name of memory, and in the name of the One who calls each of us beloved—

Go in peace, but never in passivity.

Amen and amen.

This edition of Politically Pastoral is dedicated to the memory of Jonathan Joss and all LGBTQIA+ victims of hate-fueled violence. May their lives inspire us to action and transformation.