At his first Pride parade, a 'recovering bigot' tells people: 'I am sorry!'
Justin Nash had an apology to make. He wasn't sure if anyone at the Denver Pride Parade would welcome it, but he woke up Sunday morning convinced that he had to try. He changed his lunch plans and set out for the parade so he could share it, written in marker on a poster board, with as many people as he could.
Nash, 53, sat in his wheelchair on Colfax Avenue along the parade route, looking a little out of place in chinos and a Texas Rangers ball cap. But he gave a sheepish smile and held up his sign for the brightly colored streams of passersby to see.
"Recovering bigot," it read. "I am sorry!"
It added that Nash was offering free hugs. The marchers who streamed through downtown Denver that morning took him up on that offer, again and again, as onlookers cheered.
"You are forgiven, and we love you and thank you," one person said. Another draped him in a necklace of rainbow-colored flowers.
Photos and videos of the "recovering bigot" went viral as Nash's striking message of support - and humility - resonated on social media. Nash didn't do it as a stunt, he told The Washington Post. He didn't even plan on attending the parade that day.
Nash had instead driven to Denver with his wife from their home in Amarillo, Tex., to visit family on Saturday. But when he learned that the city's Pride parade was taking place the next day, he saw an opportunity to continue a long, personal journey. For about two decades, he had been on a quest to unlearn beliefs about the LGBTQ+ community that he said he internalized from his family and past religious beliefs growing up in the Texas Panhandle - beliefs he now deeply regrets.
"For me to sit in that parade with that sign was 20 years in the making," Nash said.
Nash described his previous beliefs in uncertain terms. He was taught that being gay is wrong. He's never yelled hateful things or outright shunned someone over it, he said, but he recalled an upbringing in which some friends and family cavalierly dismissed other sexualities and races in crude terms.
It left Nash feeling some discomfort with friends and colleagues who were gay, he said. He once cut off a friend in high school who came out to him.
"It was like anyone that was different from you was not okay," Nash said.
Nash said that a rereading of the Bible in the early 2000s prompted him to reconsider his beliefs. The words spoken by Jesus Christ, highlighted in red in his book, "just told me to love," Nash said. Soon after, a lesbian friend asked Nash, "Do you think I'm living in sin?" Nash suddenly wasn't sure.
Nash's son, as well as like-minded friends at church and his former job as a paramedic, pushed him to be a more loving person, he said. He tried, year by year. He recalled reaching out in 2021 to a colleague in a same-sex marriage to ask about how to overcome his ignorance. The next day, she gave him a rainbow pin.
"I was so moved at the immediate acceptance, the immediate forgiveness by my co-worker," Nash recalled. "She doesn't even really know me."
But Nash had never been to a Pride gathering or any event celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. It felt like a sign when he arrived in Denver over the weekend and noticed the colorful livery. He lay awake in his hotel room on Saturday evening debating the decision to attend - and to declare that he was once wary of those he would be celebrating. Would he be shunned?
"It doesn't matter," Nash recalled thinking. "I just decided, 'Well, this is what I need to do for me.'"
Nash and his wife drove to a Walmart the next morning to buy a poster board for his message. The words he wanted to use came to him quickly. "Bigot," while strong, captured his regret. Nash insisted on "recovering," not recovered - "I still have to keep going," he said - and he hoped his "I'm sorry" might symbolize an apology for any harm that LGBTQ+ people had suffered from anyone else.
"To say, 'You're loved'," Nash said. "'I love you, and I hope all these people who hurt you will come around.'"
Kaylie Miller, who was attending the parade with her wife, Ashley, quickly spotted Nash as she approached the block where he sat holding his sign. At first, she feared he was a protester. Then she got closer and read his sign.
"I was so overcome with joy," Miller said. "I just literally started jumping up and down across the crosswalk."
Miller ran over to Nash and asked if Ashley could take a picture of them.
"He said to me, 'Only if I get to look you in the eyes and say I'm sorry and give you a hug first,'" Miller recalled.
A steady stream of marchers peeled off from the street to embrace Nash throughout the morning. He counted them - 76 hugs in total. In snatches of conversation, people thanked him and asked him about his past.
"I learned a lot about love and inclusion from the people that I previously had a barrier against," he said.
Miller posted her photo with Nash on Instagram and reconnected with him after the parade. Miller and Ashley, who have a podcast about mental health and the LGBTQ+ community, plan to record an episode with him, she said. The earnestness of Nash's apology, without excuses or explanation, struck a chord with the couple. She wasn't surprised that photos of him went viral.
"It was this moment of, like, walls breaking and humans connecting again," Miller said. "And I think our world is craving that."
Nash is also glad - if a little taken aback - that his story has reached so far. It was the urging of friends and family that pushed him to change his views, he said. He hopes he can pay it forward.
"I hope what I did can give permission to some people like me to move in that direction," Nash said.
Nash only responded to one comment he saw online: one that said he would have to show more work to win forgiveness. Nash agreed. As he took the long, eight-hour drive home to Amarillo on Tuesday, he reflected on everything he had learned at the parade - and where else he could bring his sign. Nash plans to find and attend more events supporting the LGBTQ+ community in Texas, wearing a pin with a new term he learned on Sunday.
"'Ally,'" Nash said. "That's beautiful. That's perfect."
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