In this week’s Torah portion, Shlach L’cha, Moses sends twelve scouts into the Promised Land so they can give a report on what the Israelites can anticipate when they arrive. Upon the scouts’ return, only two of them give a positive assessment while the other ten paint a picture of impossibility. The Israelites panic and God’s frustration with them results in the punishment that the Israelites must wander in the desert until the vast majority of them die, and it will be the next generation that gets to enter the Promised Land.

Some scholars have suggested that Moses set the scouts up for failure. When he sends them off, he charges them to report on whether “the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not?...”

They are all binary questions. The people must only be strong or weak, the country either good or bad. When assessing the land the scouts were attempting to put what they saw in only one of two boxes, rather than recognizing the nuance and diversity of the world in which we live.

June is Pride Month. It is a time in which we affirm that seeing the world in binaries can be destructive to each of us individually and to our community as a whole. We affirm that not every human being has a gender identity that is either male or female, or is attracted exclusively to men or to women, or has a body that looks one way or another. We affirm that not every family can be put in a box, and that love is, well, love, in all of its beautiful diversity and complexity.

And it calls upon us to act. Because if we don’t keep focused on where we need to go, confident in our strength and committed to our hope, we will never get there. Fortunately, we have a powerful opportunity to do so. We can work to support the Equality Act. Currently, federal law does not explicitly prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, federal funding, education, credit, and jury selection based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act would amend existing civil rights laws to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination. If you live in Michigan, regardless of which political party you support (which, by the way, is often posed as a binary), you can thank Senators Stabenow and Peters for being cosponsors of the Equality Act. And then contact everyone you know outside of Michigan to ask their senators to do the same.

As we read this week’s Torah portion, and bemoan the fate of our spiritual ancestors, let’s affirm our commitment in this generation to see the world differently. Let’s not keep wandering in the desert. Let’s move forward.