It’s Pride month, and next Saturday I’m going to be standing in Roswell Town Square at 9:30 in the morning, probably already too warm, listening to the remarks at the gazebo before we set off at 10.

It’s the second annual Roswell Pride Walk and the first-ever Pride Fest. I went to the inaugural walk last year. I’m going again. And I want to tell you why before I tell you to come find me there.

Here’s the thing that got me thinking about it. I was looking at my own content calendar last week and realized I have posts scheduled clear through the end of June, and not one of them so much as mentions Pride. Fruit salad. Steak. The deer who ate my garden down to nubs. All the things I actually do, and none of the thing I actually believe. I sat with that for a minute, because a throwaway line buried in a Friday Roundup wasn’t going to cut it, and saying nothing definitely wasn’t.

So let me point you to the page on this blog called Where I Stand. If you’ve never clicked it, there’s a list there of what I believe, and the very first line (line one, above food justice, above the environment, above all of it) is that LGBTQ+ people deserve full equality and dignity. Not because it tested well. Because I put it there first, on purpose.

This is the why.

The honest answer starts at my table, because that’s where I do most of my believing.

It starts with Aldin, who y’all have met on here plenty. Aldin is gay, which he’ll tell you himself somewhere in the first five minutes, usually right before he tells you which Ariana Grande era he’s in. He makes and decorates cakes that put my best work to shame. We have a daily Diet Coke ritual (ice, True Lime or True Grapefruit, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise) and a standing Thursday lunch at Playa Bowl, where we both get the Nutella açaí bowl and pretend it counts as health food. He and his partner are Disney people down to the bone; they’re going three times this year, including a quick four-day trip this month for his birthday. He is, in his words, one of the girls, and he’s rainbow and sparkle all the way down, and the world is better lit for it.

It’s Carson, who was my neighbor back at the townhouse and sat next to me on the HOA board, which is its own kind of foxhole. He’s Ari’s neighbor now, and still one of my favorite people to text. Carson is my political partner; we’ve sat through election nights together, compared notes on local and national races, talked through who we’re voting for and why, and eaten a lot of good meals while we did it. He once called me a true ally, which I’ll be honest is one of the compliments I’m proudest of, and he’s a true ally right back, especially for women. He’s also my skin-care guru, because the man knows exactly how to take care of his skin and look incredible doing it, and he’s never once made me feel dumb for asking. Carson is the other half of the rainbow-and-sparkle contingent, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

And it’s Ari, who is non-binary and trans and entirely open about it (they have the t-shirts). Ari runs the local trap-neuter-release colony and is the reason Callie and Finn live in my house instead of under a bush in an apartment complex. For Ari, Pride looks a little different; it’s less about the flag and more about being gendered correctly when you talk about them, which costs the rest of us exactly nothing and means everything. So I do it. They. Them. It’s not hard, folks; it’s just respect, and respect is free.

My values aren’t an abstraction. They have names, and they eat at my table.

It goes wider than my own kitchen, too. A lot of the people who shaped how I cook and how I write about it are queer. Michael Twitty, whose The Cooking Gene changed my life and is the reason I credit African American foodways the way I do, is gay. David Lebovitz, one of the original food bloggers and a big part of why my writing sounds the way it does, is gay. James Beard, the man they named the awards after, was gay at a time when that could end you. Yotam Ottolenghi, whose vegetables I would follow into battle, is gay. That’s just off the top of my head; there are surely others who keep their personal lives private, and that’s theirs to keep. But the through-line is hard to miss once you start looking; so much of the food world I love was built by people the rest of the world kept telling to be quiet.

Here’s the part I don’t usually put on a food blog.

I was born in Dallas, lived there until I was six, and then my dad’s work took us overseas. Angola. South Africa. Singapore. We came back to the States when I was thirteen so my brother and I could go to high school, and I lived in Austin straight through college. Those eight years overseas were the longest stretch of my childhood, and they were foundational in a way Texas never quite was.

South Africa especially. I was a kid in a country that had organized its whole self, its laws and its neighborhoods and its drinking fountains, around the idea that some people were worth less than others for something they were born as. I saw what that does. Not in a textbook; out the car window. And I came out the other side with one conviction wired so deep I’ll never get it out, and wouldn’t want to: every single human being deserves to be treated the same.

That’s where line one comes from. Not from a hashtag. From a childhood that showed me the alternative.

So I’ll be at the gazebo Saturday morning. I believe what I believe. I’m always open to a conversation. I am not open to hate, and I’m done pretending neutrality is a virtue when it isn’t.

Come walk with us. Roswell Town Square, remarks at 9:30, walk at 10, festival until 4. There’s music and local vendors and a bounce house, and there’s open space to throw down a blanket and make a day of it. Find me; I’ll be the one who dressed wrong for the heat.

P.S. There is reportedly an after-party at Pop Alleigh. I am too old for an after-party and I am going anyway.

P.P.S. The bounce house is not for me. I want this on the record. (It is a little bit for me.)

P.P.P.S. If you’re reading this and line one of that list scares you, you’re still welcome here. The table’s big. But the line stays first.