It's been a tense, exciting day in the Boston area as the
legislation known as the "Transgender Equal Rights Bill" makes its
way out of the Judiciary Committee for the first time in six years. The bill is heading to the legislature
with a vote expected tonight or tomorrow as the winter recess approaches.
Yesterday the Boston
Globe and Boston
Herald reported on the impending vote, and this
morning both papers reported on dueling press conferences in which
the bill's opponents called the vote a "distraction" from economic
issues. When one such
representative argued, "The goals of the advocates is to have this
litigated in the courts,” he was confronted by Ken and Marcia Garber. The Garbers' transgender son was, as
the Globe explained,"bullied and discriminated against before he lost his
life to a drug overdoes at the age of 20." When the representative
"said he did not have time to answer their question because he was late to
a meeting," the Garbers, faithful members of Dignity Boston,
"challenged Lombardo’s contention that the transgender bill is a distraction
from bills that would protect the state’s economic future, [saying] 'Some of
these people will never have a future if they don’t do something' to pass the
legislation."
The trans community had strong victories late last Spring
with Connecticut and Nevada added to the ranks of the now fifteen states and 132
counties and cities with nondiscrimination
and hate crimes protections.
This drama happens to be unfolding during Massachusetts'
"Transgender
Awareness Week," in which a number of colleges, universities and
other community spaces are holding trans-themed events. The culmination of the week is the
twelfth annual observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). Though international in scope, the TDOR
movement was sparked by a death here in Allston, about a mile away from where I
write. Rocker Rita Hester
was murdered on November 28, 1998 almost three years to the day after the loss
of Chanelle Pickett on November 20, 1995.
A growing number of Episcopal (and other) congregations have been
hosting TDOR events in solidarity with trans communities, even as the
observances themselves usually avoid the languages, music or imagery of
specific (or at least any one) religious traditions. Indeed, in his TDOR welcome at a packed Cathedral Church of St.
Paul last November, Bishop M. Thomas Shaw offered an apology to the
gathered community for the ways in which Christian communities in particular
have failed to welcome trans people and have, as he put it,
"misrepresented God" to us.
I posted a piece about that TDOR here.
This Sunday the Boston TDOR will take place once again at
the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.
Today Bishop Shaw reiterated his support, that of the
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (as of its 2008 Convention), and that of The
Episcopal Church (as of the 2009 General Convention) for the legislation. His statement reads,
"Hopeful that after six years the transgender equal
rights bill will come to the Massachusetts Legislature for a vote this week, I
continue to urge lawmakers to support it.
Now is the time to carry civil liberty for all people another step
forward by safeguarding the equality and honoring the human dignity of
transgender people. Passing the
bill this week will serve as a powerful sign of hope, particularly as Transgender
Day of Remembrance is being observed at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul in
Boston this Sunday. I pray that
Massachusetts will open this new door this week so that we might step through
it together toward social justice for all."
The full text of the statement is available on the Diomass
website, here.
As it so happens, Sunday is also one of the major examples
of what I call "hinge days" in the liturgical year, those days in the
Christian calendar that form us with peculiar intensity as we move from one
liturgical season to the next.
November 20th marks the last Sunday after Pentecost, otherwise known as
the Feast of Christ the King or the Reign (or perhaps, as Verna Dozier might
put it, the Dream) of Christ. Sunday's gospel text from Matthew 25 issues the ultimate
challenge of justice from the Son of Humanity, enthroned in eschatalogical
splendor: will we feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the
imprisoned? As we "do it unto
the least of these," we "do it unto" Christ, we are reminded
with unsettling specificity.
As the battle over this legislation heats up, I find myself
seeking to be present to it as a holy time and space, as an invitation to be,
as Bishop Shaw often puts it, opened.
It strikes me that this openness is not simply a static state of welcome
and inclusion, but an ongoing process of being opened, transformed by
God, ushered into new ways of being in the world, into a new time and
space that Christians name as the reign or dream of God. That notion of
openness is unsettling and challenging indeed, but hopeful and promising beyond
our wildest imaginings. May it be—may
it become – so.
CP