Healing Waters

By Anderson C.

Tuesday morning in the shower, it hit me – the full weight of what had happened over the previous two days at General Convention.  My emotions rose up, mixing tears with the warm water streaming down my face.

I was thinking about how the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies  had both passed resolutions D019 and D002 that incorporate “gender identity and expression” into the non-discrimination canons for access to the ordination process and lay participation in The Episcopal Church.  The positive comments and arguments given by supporting and allied deputies were on my mind, as well as the final vote tallies.  An entire Christian denomination had just recognized and accepted trans people as valued members of the Church and removed barriers for their participation at all levels.  The enormity and impact of the outcome of these events were best summed up by my friend Vivian who, when I asked her for the reason behind her own emotional response, said, “Oh, just this business of changing the direction of American Christianity.” 

I was also remembering the previous evening, when trans people played a significant role in the Integrity Eucharist.  When I and other trans folks walked into the large room where the service was being held, we were directed to the first two rows of the center section of seating, where we found on each chair a printed piece of paper that said, “Reserved for VIPs and Transgender service participants.”  We also lead the procession to the stage, two columns of trans people leading TransEpiscopal members Reverend Cameron Partridge, Invocator of the service, and Reverend Carolyn Woodall, Deacon of the Eucharist, as well as Bishop Mary Glasspool, the Bishop Presiding and Bishop Gene Robinson, Preacher.

For his sermon, Bishop Robinson preached about the day, the passing of the two trans-inclusive resolutions and, in the House of Bishops, the passing of the trial liturgy for same gender blessings.  For me, the remarkable aspect of the Integrity Eucharist was the high level of trans inclusion, including in Bishop Robinson’s sermon. 

Clearly, these events could not have been realized without the support of friends and allies, including and perhaps especially members of IntegrityUSA and gay men, bisexual people and lesbians in the Church.  I considered that as I stood there in the service, surrounded by hundreds of supportive people, listening to Bishop Robinson telling us in the trans community that our work is not finished, with the promise, "We'll have your back."

This last sentiment was a new concept for me, not so much in intent because I have heard similar sentiments often enough before, but in action.  Since entering the GLBT community at the peak of the contentiousness around Rep. Barney Frank’s and the HRC’s 2007 actions to remove trans people from the protections of the Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), I am afraid to say that I have been repeatedly disappointed by the “support” of our GL colleagues.  My painful experiences in this regard have not been with the majority of the GL people with whom I have interacted, but there have been enough of them to render me jaded and cautious about overtures of support.  I have spent too much of my energy in GLBT activism engaged in educating people in the GL community whom I always expect will know better but who too often do not.  At times the behavior of well meaning allies has felt patronizing, and at times, attitudes have seemed dismissive or even downright hostile. 

Fortunately, that has all been turned around at this General Convention and during the Integrity Eucharist the other night.  I believe that Bishop Robinson is aware of the need for education of the “GL’s” about the “T’s” – he gave me hope during his sermon when he spoke twice to the non-trans people at the service, "Don't underestimate what there is to learn on this."  In addition, the overwhelming support that was extended toward us trans folks was palpable.  We were included, we were part of the collective spirit, and we were loved.  I believe the Holy Spirit moved through everyone in that room that night, and I felt in communion with the hundreds of people there.  When Bishop Robinson said, “We'll have your back,” I believed him. 

What rose up in me in the shower and since then has been an overwhelming pride in The Episcopal Church for remembering, supporting and being inclusive of some of her most vulnerable members.  Even though we trans people are few in number in the Church, we have been rendered significant by our non-trans Episcopal gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight brothers and sisters.  For this, I am grateful, I have begun to heal, and I am proud to be a member of The Episcopal Church.

** Photos by Anderson C. 

Truth to the Table

From Historic Trans ENDA Testimony to the "Stalling" of a 2006 Antibullying Guide in MA  

Today has been a historic day for transgender people in the U.S.  Kylar Broadus, founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, became the first openly transgender person to testify before the U.S. Senate.  The subject of his testimony was the Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act – ENDA—that has been stalled in Congress for several years now.  At our last General Convention in 2009, The Episcopal Church passed resolutions D012 and C048, putting us on record in support of an ENDA inclusive of gender identity and expression as well as of sexual orientation.

In his testimony, video of which can be viewed here, and a transcript of which can be found here, Broadus spoke of his transition (from female to male) as well as his work history.  Transition was for him “a matter of living the truth, and sharing the truth with the world, rather than living a lie and pretending to be somebody every day that I was not…. [I decided to] bring my full self to the table and to the world.”

He explained that as he came into a fuller sense of himself in the late 1980s-early 1990s, his work attire gradually shifted from women’s to men’s business attire, and his haircut significantly shortened.  His colleagues treated him well, but within six months of telling management of his decision to transition, he “was ‘constructively discharged’…. While my supervisors could tolerate a somewhat masculine-appearing black woman, they were not prepared to deal with my transition to being a black man.”  He concluded stating, “it’s devastating, demoralizing, and dehumanizing to be put in th[e] position” of being denied work because of being trans.

As it also emerged today, the same thing can be said for an anti-bullying guide produced under the Romney administration here in Massachusetts in 2006.  The Boston Globe reported this morning:  “Former governor Mitt Romney’s administration in 2006 blocked publication of a state antibullying guide for Massachusetts public schools because officials objected to use of the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgender’ in passages about protecting certain students from harassment, according to state records and interviews with current and former state officials.”  While at the time aids to the governor publicly attributed the delay to a standard review process, in fact an email from May, 2006 revealed otherwise:  “Because this is using the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgendered,’ DPH’s name may not be used in this publication,’’ wrote an official in the Department of Public Health.

In other words, the governor did not want to be associated with a guide for protecting youth who might grow up to be like Kylar Broadus, or any of the participants in Integrity’s new video Voices of Witness: Out of the Box. Gay and lesbian youth might be one thing, but bisexual and transgender youth were something else entirely.

A year and a half removed from the devastating landslide of LGBT suicides last fall, that covert distancing and delay looks even more unconscionable.  This afternoon Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley commented, “For the Romney administration to block a discussion on the impact of bullying on LGBT students was to fail to protect some of our most vulnerable children.’’

As General Convention draws near, one of the major priorities of both TransEpiscopal and IntegrityUSA is for The Episcopal Church to pass a resolution on the problem of LGBT bullying.  As Harry Knox recently reported, Integrity will be showing the film "Bullied" on July 8th.  Today's Senate testimony and Globe stories underscore the urgency of this work, particularly for bi and trans people, that, as Broadus put it,  all of us might be empowered to "liv[e] the truth and share [that] truth with the world."

Hope for Trans Folk from Harvey Milk

I've just returned from a rally for transgender equality in front of the Massachusetts State House organized by Join the Impact Massachusetts. Today's event was part of a week-long celebration of the legacy of Harvey Milk, who would have turned eighty years old today, had he lived.

I was one of several people who spoke on a range of topics related to pending trans legislation, from an overview of the national and state movement for trans equality, to how we are all impacted by the gender binary, trans or not. After the speeches, we marched down from the State House, to Government Center, to Downtown Crossing and then back up the State House, providing Saturday shoppers with an unexpected interlude.

I pray and, in the tradition of Harvey, hope that our legislators will hear us and finally get ENDA and the Massachusetts Trans Civil Rights Bill out of committee and passed.

CP

JTIMA Harvey Milk Day Rally for Transgender Equality
State House Steps, Boston, MA
Saturday, May 22, 2010

Hope from Harvey Milk

In his book The Mayor of Castro Street: the Life and Times of Harvey Milk, openly gay journalist Randy Shilts (may he rest in peace) described a San Francisco Sunday morning scene in 1978 when, with Harvey Milk sitting in the back pew, the Reverend William Barcus, priest of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, got up and denounced Proposition 6. This “Briggs Initiative” called for the removal of gay and lesbian people and possibly even their supporters from working in the California public schools. In an unusual move for a priest in that context, Barcus not only spoke of the God who stands with the marginalized, not only berated the fear-mongering, dehumanizing rhetoric of the Initiative and its backers, but he also witnessed to these truths with his own life, coming out as a gay man. He challenged people to, as he put it, “morally put yourself on the line, not after the fact, not after November 7th, but now” (pp. 241-242; for more on Rev. Barcus's sermon, see this LGBT chronology for the Episcopal Diocese of California by Rev. Kathleen McAdams).

On that morning I was across the Bay in Berkeley where I grew up, possibly in Sunday school, possibly sleeping in. I had no idea of the import of what was going on across the Bay and around my state. I was a shy new kindergartener, a little girl growing up to be a transman, a spouse, a dad, an academic and an Episcopal priest. What Harvey Milk inspired in William Barcus and countless others, I too came to appreciate as one who also knows something of what it feels like to be dehumanized.

What Harvey Milk goaded us into remembering with relentless wit and grit is the crucial importance of hope. Hope. “You gotta give ‘em hope,” he said again and again. He wasn’t the biggest fan of organized religion so-called, but by God he knew how to preach. Hope, he knew, is as essential to human life as the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Without hope we shrink into ourselves, our capacities squandered, our stature cut short. Our ability to hope, as human beings, is intimately tied to our dignity.

When others deny transgender people our dignity, they attack the heart of our humanity. This happens as much in quiet, behind the scenes ways as in the bold, openly violent ways we mark every year at Trans Day of Remembrance. I am thinking of the violence of intentionally identifying us with wrong names and pronouns; the violence of quietly tossing our resumes in the proverbial circular file; of falsely telling us the apartment is already rented; of telling us we must wait our turn to ensure being treated with dignity and respect; and particularly in this climate, of shamelessly labeling legislation that would safeguard our basic civil rights a “bathroom bill.”

I’m honestly not sure how much transgender people were on Harvey’s radar in the late seventies, but I have no doubt that our struggle today would inspire and galvanize him. He would tell us that no matter what indignities we have suffered, no matter who might have rejected us, we do not have the option of giving up hope. In his Hope Speech, he said, “if there is a message I have to give… it's the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it's a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope.” Harvey knew his election was a foot in the door for all who are marginalized. But he also knew that the hope he inspired was not automatic. It was something he called on each person in his audience to give. And I would submit, Harvey’s legacy renders that hope as something we must also claim.

The program for his memorial service at the San Francisco Opera House contained a line from Victor Hugo that he had recently hand-copied and posted on the wall of his office: “All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come” (Shilts, 286). Trans people of Massachusetts, from around the nation and indeed the world, partners, allies, families and friends, lawmakers, people of all faiths: the time for full equality for transgender people has indeed come. The time is now for all of us — and particularly, I would say, for religious leaders of all traditions— to “morally put ourselves on the line,” as Reverend Barcus put it, for the dignity that is our birthright. The time is now for our legislators beneath this gleaming dome to finally take up the Massachusetts Transgender Civil Rights Bill, and for our legislators in Washington to take up ENDA, and pass them. Thank you.

CP

Epiphany: Trans Folks “Among Us”

About a week ago I picked up a voicemail from my mom: “Sweetheart, I was wondering if you’ve heard about Amanda Simpson, the transgender woman who was appointed by President Obama this week?” I had indeed heard about Simpson whose appointment as Senior Technical Adviser for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security rightly has been hailed as a milestone in the push toward full equality for trans people.

Then on Tuesday, January 5th, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration had “inserted language into the federal jobs Web site explicitly banning employment discrimination based on gender identity.” This move was hailed by the ACLU as “frankly a bigger deal” than the expected insertion of trans inclusive language into the federal handbook for supervisors and managers.

As we move into the season of Epiphany, my question is: what do these developments and the debates swirling around them, reveal about the place and progress of trans folks “among us”? Because if Epiphany – from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning manifestation or revelation – is a celebration of the light of Emmanuel, God-among-us, then part of this celebration requires our search for how God is revealing Godself among us and prodding us to move forward.

Of her own appointment Simpson stated, "I'm truly honored to have received this appointment and am eager and excited about this opportunity that is before me. And at the same time, as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others."

Predictably, the religious right has received these developments as portents of doom. In response to the updated federal employment protections, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council argued that trans people should be treated with reparative therapy. Simpson’s appointment prompted the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody to warn Obama not to alienate conservative Evangelicals with "the transgender thing”, while Peter Labarbera of Americans for Truth wondered, "Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?"

Simpson herself later gestured toward the difficulty of being a pioneer in a stigmatized group, remarking to ABCNews.com, “I'd rather not be the first but someone has to be first, or among the first.” Yes, being among the first trans presidential appointees — and certainly the first to be publicly debated — has to be very tough, and she is certainly right to worry about being tokenized, scrutinized, or worse. Any trans person trying to build a career, including within the church, can attest to strains that fall on us. Indeed, a November 2009 survey jointly conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force revealed that 97% of respondents had been harassed or mistreated on the job and 26% had been fired simply for being transgender.

Stories and statistics like these reveal how crucial it is to finally pass the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which has stalled in congress and which President Obama has said he will sign. The Episcopal Church urged the passage of a fully inclusive ENDA at its General Convention last summer.

Meanwhile, even some defenders of trans equality – such as the January 9th piece by Christine Wicker, author of The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church – reveal by their held noses just how far we have to go.

Wicker argued that to oppose Simpson’s appointment for conservative Christian reasons is to “favor one religious view over all others.” As a thirty-year veteran of the aerospace and defense industry, Simpson is enormously qualified for the job, end of discussion. And yet Wicker could not resist distancing herself from a community that clearly makes her uncomfortable: “She was so unhappy as a man that she went through the horrific process of changing her gender. Most of us can't begin to imagine what would cause a person to do something so strange. Thinking about it gives us the queasy feeling that the world is changing too quickly, in the wrong direction.” And then, “So where should the rest of us come down on this issue? If Amanda Simpson is qualified for the job, she ought to get it – even if the rest of us think she's weird or don't even think she is a she.”

And while I do wonder who needs enemies with friends like Wicker, her comments raise a key point. Certain pathologizing terms from her piece -- “unhappy”, “horrific”, “weird”, “strange” – could have sprung from the pen of a religious right critic. But one seemingly innocuous phrase does much more damage: “the rest of us”.

Yes, it’s the old us-them thing. I could simply say that this distinction is fundamentally false, because on one level it is. But on another level, and more crucially, questions like “where should the rest of us come down on this issue?” have a performative impact—they create distinctions. They instantiate division under the guise of (reluctant) charity. That’s the kind of charity on which Epiphany should train our eyes.

And then open our hearts. Because, in an odd way, Wicker’s unfortunate commentary remind me of Simpson’s repeated statements of being “among the first.” “Among”, it turns out, derives from the Middle English “ongemang” which literally means “in the crowd or company of” and shares the same root with the verb “to mingle.”

In other words, Simpson is not alone. Trans people are “among us”. Trans people are us. May the God who is among us strengthen and inspire us to reveal that truth in our relationships, our communities, and in our advocacy this season.

Today, in Your Hearing

As Congress gears up to begin hearings on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) tomorrow (September 23, 2009), I am grateful to recall how decisively The Episcopal Church declared its support for transgender civil rights in general, and a fully inclusive ENDA in particular, this summer at its 76th triennial General Convention.

I remember the various stories that came out over the course of the Convention about trans people, our vulnerability to discrimination and violence as well as the progress we are making in all areas right now. The stories came from TransEpiscopal members, several of whom testified at General Convention hearings, and on the floor of the House of Deputies. Stories came, seemingly out of the blue, from people I had never met. And I remember how bishops rose, one after another, to speak in support of Anti-Discrimination protections such as ENDA. It was incredibly moving.

But what’s incredibly sad is, as the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force recently learned in a joint study, 97% of those who are gender non-conforming and/or transgender identified have experienced mistreatment, harassment, or discrimination in the worplace. As long as there is no federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act, that statistic is in danger of staying right where it is, because gender identity and expression are not protected categories in most states.

But even more important than a statistic is the impact of that statistic, and the experiences underlying it, on a community that so needs hope. How many trans people give up on their dreams because they fear not simply discrimination itself but the lasting emotional impact of discrimination? I’m talking about a sense of self worth, a sense of confidence in oneself and the knowledge that one has an important contribution to make in this world. Hope is as much at stake in ENDA as the concrete issue of job retention or opportunity.

That’s exactly where The Episcopal Church’s actions add a small contribution-- hope and solidarity. We cannot make nondiscrimination a reality simply with our words. What we can and did do is to add our voice to a growing chorus, specifically a chorus of people of faith.

And I think those words, that chorus, can do more than we might imagine.

If you are trans, and you are reading this, I invite you to imagine yourself, as the gospel of Luke portrays it (Lk 4:16-20), in the synagogue at Nazareth, as Jesus steps forward and reads from the prophet Isaiah (61:1, 2):

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Imagine Jesus rolling up that scroll and sitting down. Imagine your own eyes fixed on this person who read this proclamation of hope with such intensity. And then hear him say to you: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Imagine that today, in your hearing, you are released from the weight not only of discrimination and violence itself, but also from the fear generated by it. Imagine that you can simply be yourself as God has created you and calls you to be.

Passing ENDA is absolutely essential, and will go a long way toward alleviating the pressure that weighs on all whose gender identity and/or expression does not conform to social norms. But even ENDA cannot by itself put an end to that pressure with which we wrestle every day.

Religious bodies have a crucial part to play in freeing us from this captivity, because it is so often religious traditions that are invoked to undermine our sense of human worth. And because of their role in creating anti-transgender messages, one of the important modes for this work is proclamation. In many and various ways, trans people need to hear: today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. You are set free from stigma and stereotypes, you are released from prisons of gender conformity, you are invited to hear this as the year of God’s favor.

Religious bodies, including the Episcopal Church, have only just begun to take up that work, but when they do, it is powerful.

And so, tomorrow the voice of ENDA renews its cry in the wilderness-- prepare the way.

But today, today may we hear words of hope.

CP