Cross-posted from the Walking with Integrity Blog:
Retired Bishop Barbara C. Harris has a saying that we are “an Easter people in a Good Friday world.” That’s what I find myself pondering as I think of the current state of affairs for trans people in the U.S. right now. If we are an Easter people—an Easter body—we are, as tomorrow’s passage from John 20 so strikingly depicts it, a risen body marked by wounds that remain open.
The U.S. trans community got some good news this week when the Department of Labor announced it has added "gender identity" to its equal employment statement. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's press release on the addition can be found here.
We also got some good news two weeks ago when the state legislature of Hawaii sent legislation to Governor Neil Abercrombi that would protect trans people in the area of employment. On Monday, April 18th, Hawaii’s House of Representatives passed Bill #546 which, as the Star Advertiser explained, “would bar employers from discriminating on the basis of gender expression, bringing Hawaii's labor law in line with similar protections in the areas of housing and public accommodations.” The governor is widely expected to sign this legislation.
That Hawaii already protects trans people from discrimination in several areas, particularly access to public accommodations, is also significant. In other states, public accommodations access is being hotly debated, with opponents of equal access often caustically terming such legislation “bathroom bills.” The specter these opponents raise in such debates is of vulnerable women and children being open to attack in women’s restrooms—if not by trans people, then by people posing as trans. With such fear tactics, they seek either to prevent the passage of laws that would safeguard trans access to public accommodations, or they seek to repeal legislation already on the books.
The state of Maine is currently considering just such a repeal, as shown by Integrity Maine member Ben Garren’s recent testimony against that repeal effort.
As of Monday, Texas became the home of another repeal effort, this one attempting to prevent trans people from marrying. As Bay Windows reported earlier this week, “The legislation…. would prohibit county and district clerks from using a court order recognizing a sex change as documentation to get married, effectively requiring the state to recognize a 1999 state appeals court decision that said in cases of marriage, gender is assigned at birth and sticks with a person throughout their life even if they have a sex change.” In addition to preventing future marriages, this legislation may well undermine the legal standing of existing ones—my own, for instance, if I lived in Texas.
Meanwhile on April 11th in Maryland, the Gender-Identity Discrimination Act (House Bill 235—which addressed employment but left out public accommodations) was effectively killed for the current legislative year when it was narrowly voted back to the state’s Judiciary Proceedings Committee. As the Baltimore Sun reported, “While the bill was being debated on the House floor, one delegate alluded to Cpl. Klinger, a comic-relief character from the TV show "M*A*S*H" known for wearing women's clothes while trying to get a psychiatric discharge from the Army. The delegate wanted to know if his colleagues wanted Klinger leading a day care center.”
On April 18th, one week after the bill was killed, a young transwoman named Chrissy Lee Polis was attacked by young non-trans women as she tried to enter a bathroom in a Baltimore MacDonald’s. The story of the beating, including a video taken by a MacDonald’s employee -- in which Polis can be heard asking “what bathroom am I supposed to use?!” -- went viral in the days that followed (youtube has now removed it). This story has been covered everywhere, from this call to action by Chris Paige of TransFaith online to an NPR story yesterday and a Washington Post piece earlier this week. A Baltimore Sun story from earlier today considers whether perhaps this horrifying event may be a moment we look back upon as a turning point.
As TransEpiscopal co-founder Donna Cartwright put it in a letter to the editor of the New York Times today, “Defiance of rigid cultural gender expectations still makes many people uncomfortable, and all too often we pay the price for others’ discomfort.” Nevertheless, she continues, “we can create new cultural space by being who we are, without apology.”
When I think about the process of creating that “new cultural of space,” I can’t help but be reminded of the mystical theology of Julian of Norwich, whose feast day falls on May 8th. I think of her vision of the body of Christ, its side mystically opened to all as to Thomas in the upper room—opened in a strangely infinite capacity as a place of refuge, a body of transformation, a passage of rebirth.
An Easter people in a Good Friday world indeed.
-Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge is a Lecturer and Interim Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard University
"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:27-29 (NRSV)
Showing posts with label transgender rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transgender rights. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sonia Burgess (1947-2010)
Although it happened almost six months ago many people here in the UK are still devastated by the sudden death of Sonia Burgess. The circumstances were incredibly shocking. On Monday 25th October 2010 Sonia was on her way to a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields. She had attended the previous talks in the series ‘Bible Opened for All’ and on this occasion Lucy Winkett would speak about ‘Being Biblical, Being a Woman’. The topic would have been of particular interest to Sonia, who had at this stage in her life lived mainly, though not quite exclusively, as a woman; but Sonia would never hear this talk. She was seen arriving on the underground platform at Kings Cross Station just prior to 6.30pm, accompanied by a younger woman, with whom she was talking excitedly. Within minutes Sonia fell to her death in the path of the arriving train. Her companion, Nina Kanagasingham, also a trans woman, was arrested at the scene on a murder charge and taken to a male prison. Her trial is scheduled for July.
Sonia was a friend. I had met her in January 2009 at a Rainbow Space (the LGBT group) event at St Anne’s Church, Soho, London, which was the church she belonged to at that time. Warm-hearted, petite and pretty, she seemed younger than me, though in fact she was a few years older, and she communicated well with the young trans people who had joined us for the meeting. When we chatted afterwards Sonia was somewhat apologetic about the fact that she still worked in male mode ‘as a human rights lawyer’. I remember saying that her job sounded demanding; she nodded but was in no way forthcoming about her work. I encouraged her to join Sibyls – the UK organisation that promotes Christian Spirituality for Transgender People – which she did, and I had the pleasure of meeting her at the bi-monthly meetings in London when Sibyls gather for prayer followed by a meal. The last time we spoke, at one of these occasions, I discovered that she had been brought up in the north of England, as I was, and that she had studied in Cambridge, a few years ahead of me. Slim and fashionably dressed – she had just been shopping at Zara – it was hard to believe that she was in her early sixties, and once again I saw her rapport with the young (in particular, a new Sibyls member who is also disabled).
So when, in late October 2010, headlines began to appear in the newspapers about a ‘man in a dress’ or ‘transvestite’ who had (allegedly) been ‘“pushed” under train’ never for a moment did I think that they were referring to Sonia. Although I knew that Sonia worked in male mode, I had not met ‘David’ (nor had most of David’s colleagues ever met Sonia), but in any case, to me, as to her many friends, including those at St Martin-in-the-Fields where she had begun to worship, she was a woman, kindly and vivacious: Sonia. Indeed, early reports of her death referred to her correctly as ‘a woman’; it was only when the police discovered documents on her person that related to her male identity that the crude and inaccurate headlines began to appear. The British press has a long-standing habit of sensationalising trans people’s lives, but on this occasion there was a huge outcry in protest, led by Trans Media Watch, which only this week gathered journalists from the press and television to launch its Memorandum of Understanding which seeks to improve the coverage of transgender people and issues in the media.
It comes too late for Sonia, but the handling of her story by the media has been the focus for an important discussion about the need for greater sensitivity and respect when discussing transgender people’s lives.
After the breaking news of the death of a transgender woman came the shock, for her friends, of hearing that it was Sonia. Nowhere, apart from her family, was the grief more deeply felt than by the congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields, where a meeting was called and a vast number of people gathered, along with her children, to share their memories of Sonia – and of David. One friend who attended it told me that the use of both male and female names and pronouns didn’t seem to matter as people spoke about their love and admiration for this remarkable person.
It was only at this point that David’s extraordinary career as the leading immigration lawyer of his generation became known to those of us who knew only Sonia, as well as his role in landmark cases that had led to greater transgender equality in the UK. One might have expected Sonia to mention the latter, if not the former, to trans friends and acquaintances, but such was her modesty that she never spoke of either! You can read more about her life, as David, and as Sonia, in the links that follow. Journalist Elizabeth Day’s sensitive article was written earlier this year to give a more rounded picture of Sonia/David in contrast to the sensational tabloid versions. Legal academic and trans activist Stephen Whittle knew Sonia professionally, and as a friend, over many years, and his obituary of her, written at the time, is passionate and revealing. My own brief post about Sonia, on the Changing Attitude blog, reflects on her death from a spiritual perspective, and, as you’ll have gathered, her Christian faith was important to her.
Christina Beardsley 15.03.11
Rev. Dr. Christina Beardsley is on the Board of Changing Attitude , which works for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the life of the Anglican Communion.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Winter Thaw for Trans Equality
Cross posted from Walking with Integrity
We are at the end of February, and this year’s very long season of Epiphany is almost at an end as well. Here in the Boston area, side streets are still littered with chairs and other detritus-- markers of the you-shovel-it-you-keep-it parking culture-- but snow banks are finally showing signs of letting go. Last week the state’s transgender community also received welcome news that perhaps the long-frozen nondiscrimination bill, too, might be starting to thaw.
As recently posted on Walking with Integrity, last week Governor Deval Patrick signed an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression for all who work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Boston Globe both reported on the move and published an editorial praising it, and yesterday the local LGBT paper Bay Windows published a comprehensive article on it as well.
As reported in all three pieces, this development both creates a sense of momentum for the statewide bill which would add "gender identity and expression" to the categories of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, and marital status, and prevent discrimination on those bases in employment as well as in housing, public accommodations, education, and credit.
The dire need for this protection was just underscored by the major new study released on February 4th by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality. They surveyed over 6,450 transgender-identified participants and learned the following, as summarized on NCTE's website:
"* Respondents were nearly four times more likely to live in extreme poverty, with household income of less than $10,000.
* Respondents were twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the population as a whole. Half of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace, and one in four were fired because of their gender identity or expression.
* While discrimination was pervasive for the entire sample, it was particularly pronounced for people of color. African-American transgender respondents fared far worse than all others in many areas studied.
* Housing discrimination was also common. 19% reported being refused a home or apartment and 11% reported being evicted because of their gender identity or expression. One in five respondents experienced homelessness because of their gender identity or expression.
* An astonishing 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide, compared to only 1.6% of the general population.
* Discrimination in health care and poor health outcomes were frequently experienced by respondents. 19% reported being refused care due to bias against transgender or gender-nonconforming people, with this figure even higher for respondents of color. Respondents also had over four times the national average of HIV infection.
* Harassment by law enforcement was reported by 22% of respondents and nearly half were uncomfortable seeking police assistance.
* Despite the hardships they often face, transgender and gender non-conforming persons persevere. Over 78% reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performance improving after transitioning, despite the same levels of harassment in the workplace."
An interview from the Bay Windows story shows both some of the unexpected ways that people's transgender status can come up in an employment application process and the reality that there are indeed workplaces where people are free to do their jobs and be themselves. Diane DeLap, who works for the Department of Workforce Development, explained how her application process inadvertently revealed her transgender status to her prospective employer: "'One of the interesting things was that the Massachusetts Employment Application requires the inclusion of discharge papers if you have a history in the military,' DeLap said. She had served in the Navy for four years, and included her discharge papers with her application. 'Of course, the military doesn’t change names for anything,' DeLap said, laughing, 'so it had my old name on there and all the other papers had the new name on there, so the fact that I was transgender became a topic of discussion very early in the hiring process. They determined that it shouldn’t make any difference.'"
DeLap clearly had a good experience in her interview process, and others I know also have had positive experiences coming out at work. Increasingly, there is good news of that sort to tell, and it is important to share it along with the alarming statistics and stories, as both are realities right now. The latter tells us how much work we have to do while the former encourages us that it has already begun and we can indeed do it.
As with marriage equality, which received a major boost from the Obama administration this week, I am hopeful that the ice is truly beginning to thaw for transgender equality, that momentum is finally building toward passage of key legal protections. It is up to us to keep that momentum going.
The executive summary of the NCTE/NGLTF survey can be found here, and the full report here.
CP
We are at the end of February, and this year’s very long season of Epiphany is almost at an end as well. Here in the Boston area, side streets are still littered with chairs and other detritus-- markers of the you-shovel-it-you-keep-it parking culture-- but snow banks are finally showing signs of letting go. Last week the state’s transgender community also received welcome news that perhaps the long-frozen nondiscrimination bill, too, might be starting to thaw.
As recently posted on Walking with Integrity, last week Governor Deval Patrick signed an executive order banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression for all who work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Boston Globe both reported on the move and published an editorial praising it, and yesterday the local LGBT paper Bay Windows published a comprehensive article on it as well.
As reported in all three pieces, this development both creates a sense of momentum for the statewide bill which would add "gender identity and expression" to the categories of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, and marital status, and prevent discrimination on those bases in employment as well as in housing, public accommodations, education, and credit.
The dire need for this protection was just underscored by the major new study released on February 4th by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality. They surveyed over 6,450 transgender-identified participants and learned the following, as summarized on NCTE's website:
"* Respondents were nearly four times more likely to live in extreme poverty, with household income of less than $10,000.
* Respondents were twice as likely to be unemployed compared to the population as a whole. Half of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace, and one in four were fired because of their gender identity or expression.
* While discrimination was pervasive for the entire sample, it was particularly pronounced for people of color. African-American transgender respondents fared far worse than all others in many areas studied.
* Housing discrimination was also common. 19% reported being refused a home or apartment and 11% reported being evicted because of their gender identity or expression. One in five respondents experienced homelessness because of their gender identity or expression.
* An astonishing 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide, compared to only 1.6% of the general population.
* Discrimination in health care and poor health outcomes were frequently experienced by respondents. 19% reported being refused care due to bias against transgender or gender-nonconforming people, with this figure even higher for respondents of color. Respondents also had over four times the national average of HIV infection.
* Harassment by law enforcement was reported by 22% of respondents and nearly half were uncomfortable seeking police assistance.
* Despite the hardships they often face, transgender and gender non-conforming persons persevere. Over 78% reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performance improving after transitioning, despite the same levels of harassment in the workplace."
An interview from the Bay Windows story shows both some of the unexpected ways that people's transgender status can come up in an employment application process and the reality that there are indeed workplaces where people are free to do their jobs and be themselves. Diane DeLap, who works for the Department of Workforce Development, explained how her application process inadvertently revealed her transgender status to her prospective employer: "'One of the interesting things was that the Massachusetts Employment Application requires the inclusion of discharge papers if you have a history in the military,' DeLap said. She had served in the Navy for four years, and included her discharge papers with her application. 'Of course, the military doesn’t change names for anything,' DeLap said, laughing, 'so it had my old name on there and all the other papers had the new name on there, so the fact that I was transgender became a topic of discussion very early in the hiring process. They determined that it shouldn’t make any difference.'"
DeLap clearly had a good experience in her interview process, and others I know also have had positive experiences coming out at work. Increasingly, there is good news of that sort to tell, and it is important to share it along with the alarming statistics and stories, as both are realities right now. The latter tells us how much work we have to do while the former encourages us that it has already begun and we can indeed do it.
As with marriage equality, which received a major boost from the Obama administration this week, I am hopeful that the ice is truly beginning to thaw for transgender equality, that momentum is finally building toward passage of key legal protections. It is up to us to keep that momentum going.
The executive summary of the NCTE/NGLTF survey can be found here, and the full report here.
CP
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Bishops' Letter Contributes Momentum on Trans Civil Rights in MA
As the Massachusetts Judiciary Committee pushed back its deadline for reporting on the Transgender Civil Rights Bill to early June, Boston-based LGBT paper Bay Windows has reported on two new voices of support, Boston City Council and the letter sent last week by Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Roy "Bud" Cederholm (Bishop Gayle Harris did not sign because she had not yet returned from a leave of absence). Read the whole article here. Excerpts are reposted below.
I would like to add that the article cites Virtue online as the place from which it got the text of the letter. Virtue Online reprinted without acknowledgment my exact post (which I posted with permission from the Communications Office of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to three blogs: TransEpiscopal, Walking with Integrity, and the Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality). This made it look as if Virtue Online actually had permission to post the letter, which it did not.
CP
Transgender Rights Bill receives more support, extended deadline
by Hannah Clay Wareham
Associate Editor
Tuesday May 11, 2010
Amid resolutions and commendations, hopes are high for bill to pass.
Support for "An Act Relative to Gender-based Discrimination and Hate Crimes" (S. 1687/H. 1728), known as the Transgender Civil Rights Bill, is growing in Boston. The City Council last week passed a unanimous resolution backing the bill and joined the Episcopal Diocese of Masscahusetts in publicly voicing their support. The Transgender Rights Bill will remain under consideration by the Judiciary Committee for at least another month.
Gunner Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), said that the organization "is grateful for the continued support of the Boston City Council and hopes that our state leaders will follow this wise example and extend civil rights to our state’s transgender citizens."
The Transgender Civil Rights Bill offers crucial employment protections for transgender people and outlaw anti-transgender workplace discrimination. If the bill is passed, the category of "gender identity and expression" will be added to the Massachusetts hate crime, employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and public education non-discrimination laws.
The legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary on May 6 extended the bill’s deadline, giving it at least another month to remain under consideration. The original deadline required that the bill be reported out of committee by May 7.
"As they say on ’Monty Python,’ we’re not dead yet," DeeDee Edmondson, political director of MassEquality, said. "The Judiciary Committee and our coalition [of organizations working together to pass the bill] now can get down to the business of producing a piece of legislation that can put transgender people back to work and bring stability and dignity to families throughout the Commonwealth."
snip
On April 30, Episcopal Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Roy "Bud" Cederholm of the Diocese of Massachusetts sent letters to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo urging the lawmakers to pass the Transgender Rights Bill. Attached were resolutions stating the full support of both the Episcopal Diocese of Masschusetts and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.
"As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families," Shaw and Cederholm wrote in the letter, which was subsequently printed by VirtueOnline.org. "Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons, and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends, and community leaders."
The letter encouraged lawmakers to act quickly in passing the bill. "Adding gender identity and expression to the state’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws is no isolated concern of a special interest group," the letter read. "The disproportionate suffering of transgender people should grieve the hearts of all who love justice and liberty."
The Transgender Rights Bill received an intensified focus from a wide variety of mainstream media outlets after Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker pledged on Saturday, April 17, that he would veto the bill if elected.
I would like to add that the article cites Virtue online as the place from which it got the text of the letter. Virtue Online reprinted without acknowledgment my exact post (which I posted with permission from the Communications Office of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts to three blogs: TransEpiscopal, Walking with Integrity, and the Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality). This made it look as if Virtue Online actually had permission to post the letter, which it did not.
CP
Transgender Rights Bill receives more support, extended deadline
by Hannah Clay Wareham
Associate Editor
Tuesday May 11, 2010
Amid resolutions and commendations, hopes are high for bill to pass.
Support for "An Act Relative to Gender-based Discrimination and Hate Crimes" (S. 1687/H. 1728), known as the Transgender Civil Rights Bill, is growing in Boston. The City Council last week passed a unanimous resolution backing the bill and joined the Episcopal Diocese of Masscahusetts in publicly voicing their support. The Transgender Rights Bill will remain under consideration by the Judiciary Committee for at least another month.
Gunner Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), said that the organization "is grateful for the continued support of the Boston City Council and hopes that our state leaders will follow this wise example and extend civil rights to our state’s transgender citizens."
The Transgender Civil Rights Bill offers crucial employment protections for transgender people and outlaw anti-transgender workplace discrimination. If the bill is passed, the category of "gender identity and expression" will be added to the Massachusetts hate crime, employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and public education non-discrimination laws.
The legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary on May 6 extended the bill’s deadline, giving it at least another month to remain under consideration. The original deadline required that the bill be reported out of committee by May 7.
"As they say on ’Monty Python,’ we’re not dead yet," DeeDee Edmondson, political director of MassEquality, said. "The Judiciary Committee and our coalition [of organizations working together to pass the bill] now can get down to the business of producing a piece of legislation that can put transgender people back to work and bring stability and dignity to families throughout the Commonwealth."
snip
On April 30, Episcopal Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Roy "Bud" Cederholm of the Diocese of Massachusetts sent letters to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo urging the lawmakers to pass the Transgender Rights Bill. Attached were resolutions stating the full support of both the Episcopal Diocese of Masschusetts and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.
"As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families," Shaw and Cederholm wrote in the letter, which was subsequently printed by VirtueOnline.org. "Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons, and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends, and community leaders."
The letter encouraged lawmakers to act quickly in passing the bill. "Adding gender identity and expression to the state’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws is no isolated concern of a special interest group," the letter read. "The disproportionate suffering of transgender people should grieve the hearts of all who love justice and liberty."
The Transgender Rights Bill received an intensified focus from a wide variety of mainstream media outlets after Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker pledged on Saturday, April 17, that he would veto the bill if elected.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
MA Bishops Send Letter to Legislators in Support of Transgender Nondiscrimination Bill
Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Roy ("Bud") Cederholm of the Diocese of Massachusetts this week sent letters to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo pressing them to pass the state's Transgender Civil Rights bill. "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes" (House Bill #1728 and Senate Bill #1687) is slated to either make it out of the Judiciary Committee or die there for a third straight year this Friday, May 7th.
The bishops' letter follows unprecedented coverage of the bill by Boston area newspapers (including a supportive op ed by the Globe), after Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker announced that he would veto the legislation if it crossed his desk. His team handed out fliers referring to the legislation as "the bathroom bill," taking up the rhetoric of the virulently anti-LGBT group Mass Resistance (and groups battling similar legislation in other states) which tries to stoke fears that such legislation will make women and children vulnerable in bathrooms and locker rooms.
The bishops' letter (posted with permission) follows:
April 30, 2010
The Hon. Deval L. Patrick
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02108
Dear Governor Patrick,
We write to express our strong support for an act to add gender expression and identity to our Commonwealth’s antidiscrimination and hate crimes laws, and to ask you to work to ensure its passage.
As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families. Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends and community leaders. Again and again, we hear how they have struggled against incredible odds and pressures to be true to their identity as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.
It pains us that even as transgender people claim their identities and step into newness of life, they face discrimination and violence that undermines their human dignity. A November 2009 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 97 percent of respondents had been harassed or mistreated on the job, and 26 percent had been fired for being transgender. You will recall that in November 1998, an Allston transgender woman, Rita Hester, was murdered and her killer never found. This local tragedy led to an annual Nov. 20 international Transgender Day of Remembrance, for transgender people who have died, especially those who have been killed or taken their own lives. It is fitting that our state should model amendment of life and hope for a future that is better than this sad past.
Adding gender identity and expression to the state’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws is no isolated concern of a special interest group. The disproportionate suffering of transgender people should grieve the hearts of all who love justice and liberty. Both the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church are on record in support of full equality for transgender people (resolutions attached).
So many of the arguments against the full inclusion of transgender people in our society are driven by unfounded fear. Transgender people are simply seeking the removal of barriers that prevent them from flourishing as full members of and contributors to society. One need not fully comprehend what it is like to walk in their shoes to provide them with the protections every citizen—every person—is due. Please act to ensure their rights.
Faithfully,
The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE
Bishop
The Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm
Bishop Suffragan
Enc.
Resolution D012: Support of Transgender Civil Rights
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one's gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim's gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further
Resolved, That the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to appropriate congressional leadership to the Chair of the National Governors Association, the President of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and to the President of the U. S. Conference of Mayors.
Voted by the 223rd Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Nov. 7-8, 2008, Hyannis:
Resolution in support of transgender civil rights and inclusion in the ministries of all the baptized
Resolved, that the 223rd Convention of the Diocese of Massachusetts supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one’s gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim’s gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further
Resolved, that the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to the Massachusetts State Legislature, and the Massachusetts representatives in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention submit to the General Convention the following resolution: Resolved that the words “gender identity and expression” be inserted into Title III, Canon 1, Sec. 2 directly following the words “sexual orientation” and before the words “disabilities or age.”
The bishops' letter follows unprecedented coverage of the bill by Boston area newspapers (including a supportive op ed by the Globe), after Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker announced that he would veto the legislation if it crossed his desk. His team handed out fliers referring to the legislation as "the bathroom bill," taking up the rhetoric of the virulently anti-LGBT group Mass Resistance (and groups battling similar legislation in other states) which tries to stoke fears that such legislation will make women and children vulnerable in bathrooms and locker rooms.
The bishops' letter (posted with permission) follows:
April 30, 2010
The Hon. Deval L. Patrick
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02108
Dear Governor Patrick,
We write to express our strong support for an act to add gender expression and identity to our Commonwealth’s antidiscrimination and hate crimes laws, and to ask you to work to ensure its passage.
As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families. Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends and community leaders. Again and again, we hear how they have struggled against incredible odds and pressures to be true to their identity as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.
It pains us that even as transgender people claim their identities and step into newness of life, they face discrimination and violence that undermines their human dignity. A November 2009 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 97 percent of respondents had been harassed or mistreated on the job, and 26 percent had been fired for being transgender. You will recall that in November 1998, an Allston transgender woman, Rita Hester, was murdered and her killer never found. This local tragedy led to an annual Nov. 20 international Transgender Day of Remembrance, for transgender people who have died, especially those who have been killed or taken their own lives. It is fitting that our state should model amendment of life and hope for a future that is better than this sad past.
Adding gender identity and expression to the state’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws is no isolated concern of a special interest group. The disproportionate suffering of transgender people should grieve the hearts of all who love justice and liberty. Both the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church are on record in support of full equality for transgender people (resolutions attached).
So many of the arguments against the full inclusion of transgender people in our society are driven by unfounded fear. Transgender people are simply seeking the removal of barriers that prevent them from flourishing as full members of and contributors to society. One need not fully comprehend what it is like to walk in their shoes to provide them with the protections every citizen—every person—is due. Please act to ensure their rights.
Faithfully,
The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE
Bishop
The Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm
Bishop Suffragan
Enc.
Resolution D012: Support of Transgender Civil Rights
Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one's gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim's gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further
Resolved, That the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to appropriate congressional leadership to the Chair of the National Governors Association, the President of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and to the President of the U. S. Conference of Mayors.
Voted by the 223rd Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Nov. 7-8, 2008, Hyannis:
Resolution in support of transgender civil rights and inclusion in the ministries of all the baptized
Resolved, that the 223rd Convention of the Diocese of Massachusetts supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one’s gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim’s gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further
Resolved, that the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to the Massachusetts State Legislature, and the Massachusetts representatives in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives; and be it further
Resolved, that this Convention submit to the General Convention the following resolution: Resolved that the words “gender identity and expression” be inserted into Title III, Canon 1, Sec. 2 directly following the words “sexual orientation” and before the words “disabilities or age.”
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Observing Easter as Exodus
The following is a sermon that my seminarian for this year Kori Pacyniak and I composed and delivered together. We were inspired to do a combined sermon because of our discovery in conversation that we were both puzzled by the same, somewhat obscure, facet of Sunday's gospel passage. In addition, I had already planned to incorporate a story told by Rhiannon O'Donnabhain at an event we put on at St. Luke's and St. Margaret's to honor her and GLAD's February legal victory (which I mentioned in a recent blog post about recent major happenings in the transgender community). We shared Rhiannon's words in the sermon and in blog form with her permission.
CP
****************************************************************
St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
Easter 3: Sunday, April 18, 2010
Cameron Partridge & Kori Pacyniak
An Exodus Observed
CP: Welcome to the third Sunday of Easter, day fifteen of the Great Fifty Days. In these poignant days we encounter again and again, in manners both mundane and mysterious, the reality of resurrection life. On Easter Sunday itself we stood before the empty tomb and met in the Gospel of Luke an exodus of the body. Last week in the Upper Room we stood in awe with Thomas and the terrified disciples and received an invitation into a body marked by exodus. This week, by the Sea of Tiberias, we observe an Easter exodus in progress. We watch as Peter responds to the revelation that Easter is neither something that simply happened to his beloved Jesus, nor something from which he should run away, but rather an event toward and into which he must move. Easter as exodus transforms resurrection into action, into movement outward, into freedom and newness of life. Peter enacts the dynamics of this Easter Exodus encounter with his very clothing; he must put on resurrection like a garment lest, as Paul puts it in Second Corinthians, he simply be found naked (2 Cor 5:3). And yet…
KP: What was the one line that leapt out at me when I looked at today’s readings? “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.” How could it be that I didn’t remember ever hearing this line before? I think I would have remembered something this odd and perhaps even shocking. Slightly disturbed by my faulty memory, I glanced through various translations and discovered that the version I would have grown up with did not mention nakedness at all. Was it really just a translation issue or did some authorities not want to deal with the questions that this would inevitably bring? Why was Peter naked while fishing and why did he put on clothes to go swim to the Lord? Though I have no answer to the first question, it seems less consequential than the second question. Why did Peter put on clothes before jumping into the water to swim to Jesus? It seems contrary to every aspect of common sense. It was just after dawn, the water would still be cold and more wet clothes would mean one would be colder longer. Generally speaking, you take off your clothes to go swimming. What was it about this instance, about being told that it was Lord on the shore that makes Peter seem to defy common sense and reason?
CP: Of course, I too was struck by — even stuck on — Peter’s nakedness and how he responds with such seeming lack of logic to the presence of his risen Lord on the beach. Now, commentaries suggest that perhaps “naked” doesn’t mean “buck naked” but simply scantily clothed; Peter may have been wearing a only fishermen’s smock which he then tucks into his cincture before jumping into the water (see Raymond Brown, citing Barret, Lagrange & Marrow, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI. The Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Double Day, 1970), 1072). But regardless, when presented with the presence of the risen Jesus, he does two things that pull in different, almost opposite, directions: 1) he covers up his nakedness, his unreadiness, the vulnerability with which he was caught offguard; and, or rather, but 2) he still leaves everything behind and dives into the water, wanting nothing more than to be with the one who had called him with the words “follow me.” What we are observing here is a resurrection exodus in progress, in all its messiness. This is an ordinary person like each of us responding to the invitation of Easter that calls us out from our routines, disrupts our patterns of life, exposes our vulnerabilities, retells our stories in the ever-new frames of salvation history, as our current Prayers of the People puts it, as in the liturgy of Easter Vigil.
KP: We heard one such story here recently. On Thursday evening, April 8, you may recall, SLAM hosted an event to honor Rhiannon O’Donnabhain and the attorneys from GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the folks who helped bring Massachusetts equal mariage) who represented her in the case O’Donnabhain vs. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The IRS had audited Rhiannon’s 2002 tax return and had deemed as “cosmetic” rather than “medical” the expenses she had written off related to her transition from male to female. They had asked her to pay back her refund, but she had refused. The case went to trial here in Boston in July, 2007, and on February 2nd the decision was announced: she had won. This was a huge victory for the trans community across the US, an early legal building block for victories yet to come.
CP: But what struck several of us, as we sat where you are and listened to Rhiannon and GLAD lead attorney Karen Lowey, were their stories. How Rhiannon’s courage propelled her out from routine and complacency into a terrifying limbo. And how that in-between place became a place where her community rose to the challenge, where her connection with community buoyed her and enabled her to move forward, even amid fear and anxiety. This was not the first time she had moved outward in this way; the story she told was a very personal one about her original decision to transition, which she has written out and given us permission to share today.
KP: “For a very long time, I felt that I was treading water in a very cold and deep ocean, barely keeping my head above water. I was afraid to start swimming for fear that someone might laugh at the way I swim… I couldn’t even see the shore…. It was always so far away. I didn’t even know which direction to swim. I was drowning! Finally, I realized what I had to do to live…… I had to start swimming! To save my life! I took a risk and started swimming because I didn’t want to drown. I wanted to live! I had been swimming for what seemed like forever and I could finally make out a distant shore! It was still a long way off, but at least I could see it! I was still not a very good swimmer. I made mistakes along the way. I had never done this before! But I was determined. I would reach that far-away shore! Finally the shore got nearer and nearer. I had never been a quitter, and I was determined to succeed at what I set out to do! In my mind, I visualized that I emerged from the water riding a white horse up onto a beautiful sunny beach. In my visualization, I had already done it…! And I did do it! I rode up and out of the water on that beautiful white horse onto the beach and rode into to a new life!”
CP: Resurrection is about living, swimming, riding, into new life. It means being willing to move outward from our history into our future, always bearing that history with us—indeed, sometimes burdened by it—even when the shore is further than 100 yards away, even when we can’t see it. Resurrection is something into which we are thrown like the deep end of the pool. It is an event and a process, indeed, an Exodus that leads to life more beautiful and mysterious than we can imagine. At its beginning we can only catch the smallest of glimpses, but it is there, waiting for us. We have to be willing to be vulnerable, to take the risk of diving in and swimming-- even if we stop to cover our nakedness first -- to leave behind the familiar to encounter the living Christ, knowing that we will never be the same.
KP: Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he showed himself in this way. Amen.
CP
****************************************************************
St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
Easter 3: Sunday, April 18, 2010
Cameron Partridge & Kori Pacyniak
An Exodus Observed
CP: Welcome to the third Sunday of Easter, day fifteen of the Great Fifty Days. In these poignant days we encounter again and again, in manners both mundane and mysterious, the reality of resurrection life. On Easter Sunday itself we stood before the empty tomb and met in the Gospel of Luke an exodus of the body. Last week in the Upper Room we stood in awe with Thomas and the terrified disciples and received an invitation into a body marked by exodus. This week, by the Sea of Tiberias, we observe an Easter exodus in progress. We watch as Peter responds to the revelation that Easter is neither something that simply happened to his beloved Jesus, nor something from which he should run away, but rather an event toward and into which he must move. Easter as exodus transforms resurrection into action, into movement outward, into freedom and newness of life. Peter enacts the dynamics of this Easter Exodus encounter with his very clothing; he must put on resurrection like a garment lest, as Paul puts it in Second Corinthians, he simply be found naked (2 Cor 5:3). And yet…
KP: What was the one line that leapt out at me when I looked at today’s readings? “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.” How could it be that I didn’t remember ever hearing this line before? I think I would have remembered something this odd and perhaps even shocking. Slightly disturbed by my faulty memory, I glanced through various translations and discovered that the version I would have grown up with did not mention nakedness at all. Was it really just a translation issue or did some authorities not want to deal with the questions that this would inevitably bring? Why was Peter naked while fishing and why did he put on clothes to go swim to the Lord? Though I have no answer to the first question, it seems less consequential than the second question. Why did Peter put on clothes before jumping into the water to swim to Jesus? It seems contrary to every aspect of common sense. It was just after dawn, the water would still be cold and more wet clothes would mean one would be colder longer. Generally speaking, you take off your clothes to go swimming. What was it about this instance, about being told that it was Lord on the shore that makes Peter seem to defy common sense and reason?
CP: Of course, I too was struck by — even stuck on — Peter’s nakedness and how he responds with such seeming lack of logic to the presence of his risen Lord on the beach. Now, commentaries suggest that perhaps “naked” doesn’t mean “buck naked” but simply scantily clothed; Peter may have been wearing a only fishermen’s smock which he then tucks into his cincture before jumping into the water (see Raymond Brown, citing Barret, Lagrange & Marrow, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI. The Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Double Day, 1970), 1072). But regardless, when presented with the presence of the risen Jesus, he does two things that pull in different, almost opposite, directions: 1) he covers up his nakedness, his unreadiness, the vulnerability with which he was caught offguard; and, or rather, but 2) he still leaves everything behind and dives into the water, wanting nothing more than to be with the one who had called him with the words “follow me.” What we are observing here is a resurrection exodus in progress, in all its messiness. This is an ordinary person like each of us responding to the invitation of Easter that calls us out from our routines, disrupts our patterns of life, exposes our vulnerabilities, retells our stories in the ever-new frames of salvation history, as our current Prayers of the People puts it, as in the liturgy of Easter Vigil.
KP: We heard one such story here recently. On Thursday evening, April 8, you may recall, SLAM hosted an event to honor Rhiannon O’Donnabhain and the attorneys from GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the folks who helped bring Massachusetts equal mariage) who represented her in the case O’Donnabhain vs. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. The IRS had audited Rhiannon’s 2002 tax return and had deemed as “cosmetic” rather than “medical” the expenses she had written off related to her transition from male to female. They had asked her to pay back her refund, but she had refused. The case went to trial here in Boston in July, 2007, and on February 2nd the decision was announced: she had won. This was a huge victory for the trans community across the US, an early legal building block for victories yet to come.
CP: But what struck several of us, as we sat where you are and listened to Rhiannon and GLAD lead attorney Karen Lowey, were their stories. How Rhiannon’s courage propelled her out from routine and complacency into a terrifying limbo. And how that in-between place became a place where her community rose to the challenge, where her connection with community buoyed her and enabled her to move forward, even amid fear and anxiety. This was not the first time she had moved outward in this way; the story she told was a very personal one about her original decision to transition, which she has written out and given us permission to share today.
KP: “For a very long time, I felt that I was treading water in a very cold and deep ocean, barely keeping my head above water. I was afraid to start swimming for fear that someone might laugh at the way I swim… I couldn’t even see the shore…. It was always so far away. I didn’t even know which direction to swim. I was drowning! Finally, I realized what I had to do to live…… I had to start swimming! To save my life! I took a risk and started swimming because I didn’t want to drown. I wanted to live! I had been swimming for what seemed like forever and I could finally make out a distant shore! It was still a long way off, but at least I could see it! I was still not a very good swimmer. I made mistakes along the way. I had never done this before! But I was determined. I would reach that far-away shore! Finally the shore got nearer and nearer. I had never been a quitter, and I was determined to succeed at what I set out to do! In my mind, I visualized that I emerged from the water riding a white horse up onto a beautiful sunny beach. In my visualization, I had already done it…! And I did do it! I rode up and out of the water on that beautiful white horse onto the beach and rode into to a new life!”
CP: Resurrection is about living, swimming, riding, into new life. It means being willing to move outward from our history into our future, always bearing that history with us—indeed, sometimes burdened by it—even when the shore is further than 100 yards away, even when we can’t see it. Resurrection is something into which we are thrown like the deep end of the pool. It is an event and a process, indeed, an Exodus that leads to life more beautiful and mysterious than we can imagine. At its beginning we can only catch the smallest of glimpses, but it is there, waiting for us. We have to be willing to be vulnerable, to take the risk of diving in and swimming-- even if we stop to cover our nakedness first -- to leave behind the familiar to encounter the living Christ, knowing that we will never be the same.
KP: Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he showed himself in this way. Amen.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Overwhelming Catch
As we near the end of Epiphany, season of illumination, the signs of God's presence among us begin to overwhelm. Two images from yesterday's readings for the fifth Sunday in Epiphany offer a strange combination-- one of abundance and the other of desolation-- that echo two major, recent events in the U.S. trans community.
In the gospel of Luke we had the improbable plenitude of fish pulled up by Peter and his companions upon the prompt of Jesus. So many were these fish that they threatened to sink the boats into which they had flopped. "Go away from me!" cried an unnerved Peter, knee deep in slimy muck, "I am a sinful man."
And in the Hebrew Bible reading, we had the fearsome scene of Isaiah's prophetic call, in which seraphim touch his lips with a live coal and God commands him to speak difficult truths to a people far from ready to hear them. The passage ends with successive images of desolation.
For trans people in the U.S., the last two weeks have brought an overwhelming combination -- to consider only two major news stories-- of grief and victory: a week of desolation in which the Houston trans community grappled with the murder of one of its own, followed by a precedent-setting decision by the US Tax Court in favor of a Massachusetts trans woman.
In July of 2007, a Boston area woman named Rhiannon O'Donnabhain decided to sue the IRS. At issue was the agency's denial of her tax write-off of expenses related to her transition from male to female. As the original Boston Globe article reported, she could have repaid "the approximately $5,000 she received in her tax refund, but decided to challenge the IRS because she believes the ruling against her was rooted in politics and prejudice." O'Donnabhain declared, "'This goes way beyond money. If I were to give the money back, it would be saying it's OK for you to do this to me. It is not OK for them to do this to me or anyone like me."
You tell 'em, I remember thinking as I read the story. I never tried to write off expenses related to my own transition-- I remember thinking about it, and even discussing the possibility in a peer support group, but I didn't try. I sure could have benefited from it on my then graduate student budget (almost every insurance company explicitly denies coverage for any medical care related to transition).
Then last week we got the very good news that the US Tax Court ruled 11-5 in O'Donnabhain's favor in this first-of-its-kind decision. Not only is it a ruling that respects O'Donnabhain; it's also a decision that could begin to open the door for insurers to consider procedures related to bodily transition as medical, not cosmetic. See the National Center for Transgender Equality's report on the case here.
As Jennifer Levi, Massachusetts-based attorney for the Transgender Project at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), commented in last week's Boston Globe story:
“I think what the court is saying is that surgery and hormone therapy for transgender people to alleviate the stress associated with gender identity disorder is legitimate medical care."
GLAD senior staff attorney Karen Loewy added in a press conference, “It’s incredibly big to have a statewide court setting a national precedent. This is the first time a court that has jurisdiction nationally has reached this conclusion.”
As Chuck Colbert reported, "the tax court ruled that GID [Gender Identity Disorder, which is listed in the DSM] is a 'disease' within the meaning of the tax code. The court said the IRS’s claim that all the treatments were 'cosmetic' was 'at best a superficial characterization of the circumstances that is thoroughly rebutted by medical evidence.' The court said that the IRS must consider sex reassignment surgery in the same manner, for example, as an appendectomy or even heart surgery."
Not all procedures one might undergo would necessarily count as medical, for tax deduction purposes, but the fact that some clearly do is a big deal for those trans folks who medically transition.
I add that caveat about transition because it's important to remember that a) not all trans folks actually do medically transition, and that b) those who do change their bodies do so in a variety of ways, contra the assumptions underlying the oft-asked query, 'have you had the surgery?'. Plus, c) in addition to differences of embodiment, there are also a variety of ways that people narrate their experience. While plenty of folks resonate with statements such as O’Donnabhain's of feeling "trapped in the wrong body", many of us don't experience ourselves in those terms.
That said, this is a major victory that brings us a step closer to being treated with the dignity we expect and deserve.
And, frankly, the trans community really needed some good news last week. Because two weeks ago we began mourning the death of yet another trans person found murdered, this time in Houston. Ical's death marks the seventh time a gender variant person has been murdered in Houston over the past ten years, as Chris Seabury reported for Edge Boston. Ical died, as the Executive Director of the the Transgender Foundation of America, Cristan Williams, put it in an interview with KHOU, "struggling for her life." “It’s personal," Wiliams continued, "I feel it on a personal level."
Ical was found at 2 in the afternoon in an empty lot. Local leaders feel strongly that given her proximity to a busy intersection, someone must have seen something. And given that the murder took place in Houston's Montrose neighborhood, an LGBT stronghold, witnesses (if there are any) could well be LGBT themselves. But relations between the LGBT community and the Houston police are not strong, Williams commented: "The LGBT community feels very isolated because of the Houston Police Department’s (HPD) often violent past towards LGBT Houstonians." She is calling for the appointment of an LGBT police liaison.
Ical's memorial service was held two weeks ago today. Featuring a moment of silence followed by a moment of noisemaking, the service aimed both to honor Ical's memory and to "encourage people to make noise about the violence that is inflicted on our community," as Kelli Busey reported on planetransgender.
This is the local news coverage of the memorial:
It is crucial to make some noise, not only in memory of those we have lost but also out of sheer determination to forge our way forward. Thank God for the community in Houston, for the ways in which they are clearly claiming their power. Thank God for the courage of Rhianon O'Donnabhain who was willing to make noise and say "this is not OK."
The catch of the trans community at this time and place is indeed overwhelming, a decidedly mixed bag. As we progress, we find ourselves still very much in the wilderness.
As we move toward my very favorite Sunday in the liturgical year, Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, I am mindful of the combination of glory and grief that are mysteriously incorporated in the image of the Transfiguration. The New Zealand Prayerbook's revision of the 1928 BCP collect for the Transfiguration says it particularly well:
God of life and glory,
your Son was revealed in splendour
before he suffered death upon the cross;
grant that we, beholding his majesty,
may be strengthened to follow him
and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory;
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever.
Amen.
CP
Friday, January 22, 2010
“Do That Which Scares Me”: Fear and Transgender Equality in Massachusetts
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-Rom 8:38-39
A lobby day for transgender equality yesterday capped off what has been, to put it mildly, an extraordinarily intense week here in Massachusetts.
I attended the lobby day in support the H1728/S1687 “An Act Relative To Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes” bill with my partner and our three-month-old son, and delivered a brief invocation at the end of the speeches in my capacity as Co-Chair of the locally based Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality.
The mood in the historic Nurses Hall at the State House was tense, energetic, and laced with anger in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s Tuesday defeat of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley. Brown’s win removes Senate Democrats’ sixty-vote supermajority and imperils the passage of national health care reform legislation.
Coakley had been widely backed by the state’s transgender community, as Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition Executive Director Gunner Scott forcefully expressed in a Bay Windows opinion letter last September: “as State Attorney General, Martha Coakley came out early for transgender civil rights as the first statewide elected official to publicly support ‘An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.’” Coakley also “sought civil rights injunctions in numerous cases involving hate crimes against LGBT victims” including one “against two men who attacked a transgender teenager in a Dorchester pizza shop.”
Meanwhile, as Chuck
Colbert reported in Bay Windows yesterday, the Massachusetts LGBT community was angered this election by “anti gay-baiting robo calls” that began plaguing Massachusetts phone lines three days before voters hit the polls. Originating “in a 202 area code from the Washington, D.C. [area], a recorded male voice asks residents if they view marriage defined as ‘only between one man and one woman.’ If they indicated ‘Yes’ they were urged to vote for Brown, ‘the only candidate with a proven track record’ of supporting traditional marriage. The call also labeled Coakley as a ‘radical’ same-sex marriage supporter who opposed letting the people vote on the issue and who used taxpayer dollars to support a same-sex marriage ‘agenda.’”
With the Supreme Court just yesterday approving by a 5-4 margin that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited amounts on federal elections, the floodgates of such robo-calls and other methods of bombardment would appear to be opening at the national level. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued that to prevent such spending is to censure free speech. “When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,’’ he wrote.
Add to this mix the continuing cloud of grief and anxiety hovering over the many intersecting communities devastated by last week’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Numerous people in New England had connections to the events in Haiti, including members of the large Boston Area Haitian community, the Sisters of Saint Margaret, and medical teams from Boston based Partners in Health.
And add to that list the trans community which learned last weekend of the death of Flo McGarell, a visual artist and transman from Newbury, Vermont, who lived in the city of Jacmal for the past six years, serving as director of the FOSAJ, a non-profit art center. The New England Cable News did what struck me as a very respectful interview with McGarrell’s grieving parents and, perhaps without meaning to, gestured toward the complexity of McGarrell’s gender identity and expression. In an in-depth interview with the art 21 blog about his wildly creative art, Flo described himself as “a total gender mash up” which was “a constant and humorous topic of discussion” in Jacmal. When asked about what guided his artistic vision, Flo answered:
“Don’t hide, don’t lie.
Do that which scares me.
Resist the urge to settle.
Be as many things as possible in this lifetime.”
His loved ones are organizing memorials and tributes at this site.
With such losses along with the sour economy on the minds of lobby day attendees yesterday, a fundamental question emerged: how can we help return a sense of confidence to lawmakers who may be afraid to fight for any legislation considered “controversial” right now? How can we break through this late-January crust of fear?
Fear may be eroding Massachusetts’s transgender nondiscrimination legislation, just as it is at work in the stalled Employment Nondiscrimination Act in Washington. D.C. How is it that over 105 state lawmakers (out of a total of 200) have signed on as co-sponsors of the MA bill, that a poll conducted last November by Lake Research Partners showed that 76% of Massachusetts residents and 80% of Massachusetts women support it, that Governor Deval Patrick has signaled his enthusiastic support, and still this bill has not gotten out of committee? We cannot let the events of this week, devastating as they are, deter us from this crucial task.
As I think and pray about all of these swirling currents, as I watch the dynamics of fear playing out all around me, I can’t help but think of McGarrell’s conscious ethic of fearlessness. And that sentiment, in this week’s context, draws my mind to the Apostle Paul writing to communities in Rome about the eager longing with which creation waits to be set free from its bondage. We may groan inwardly now, he says, and we may feel alone in our labor, but the Spirit indeed intercedes for us, and urges us onward, never, ever separate from the love of God, as we collaborate in building God’s glorious dream.
As the three of us emerged from the State House, we were dazzled by a brilliant, cold blue sky and streams of sunlight.
****************************************************************************
Here is the invocation, which uses language tailored for a group of numerous religious (and nonreligious) traditions:
Nurses’s Hall, State House
Boston, Massachusetts
January 21, 2010
An Invocation for Transgender Lobby Day
May the Holy One of all our traditions bless, protect and empower us, illumining us with insight, calm and unfathomable fortitude.
May we be reminded of the remarkable strength that lies within us, urging us onward even in face of the steepest odds.
May our hearts be filled with gratitude and awe for the sacred community gathered here today: trans people, partners, allies, families of all configurations, people of all races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, national origins, religious and spiritual traditions, professions and vocations.
May the Divine Spirit flowing among us stir up our prophetic anger at the evils of apathy and expediency as much as of bigotry and ignorance.
And may we go forth with boldness, empowered to bear witness to the truth of our lives and the birthright of our human dignity.
All this we ask in the name of the All-Holy One who urges us into life and love, and sets us free. Amen.
CP
-Rom 8:38-39
A lobby day for transgender equality yesterday capped off what has been, to put it mildly, an extraordinarily intense week here in Massachusetts.
I attended the lobby day in support the H1728/S1687 “An Act Relative To Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes” bill with my partner and our three-month-old son, and delivered a brief invocation at the end of the speeches in my capacity as Co-Chair of the locally based Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality.
The mood in the historic Nurses Hall at the State House was tense, energetic, and laced with anger in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s Tuesday defeat of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley. Brown’s win removes Senate Democrats’ sixty-vote supermajority and imperils the passage of national health care reform legislation.
Coakley had been widely backed by the state’s transgender community, as Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition Executive Director Gunner Scott forcefully expressed in a Bay Windows opinion letter last September: “as State Attorney General, Martha Coakley came out early for transgender civil rights as the first statewide elected official to publicly support ‘An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.’” Coakley also “sought civil rights injunctions in numerous cases involving hate crimes against LGBT victims” including one “against two men who attacked a transgender teenager in a Dorchester pizza shop.”
Meanwhile, as Chuck
Colbert reported in Bay Windows yesterday, the Massachusetts LGBT community was angered this election by “anti gay-baiting robo calls” that began plaguing Massachusetts phone lines three days before voters hit the polls. Originating “in a 202 area code from the Washington, D.C. [area], a recorded male voice asks residents if they view marriage defined as ‘only between one man and one woman.’ If they indicated ‘Yes’ they were urged to vote for Brown, ‘the only candidate with a proven track record’ of supporting traditional marriage. The call also labeled Coakley as a ‘radical’ same-sex marriage supporter who opposed letting the people vote on the issue and who used taxpayer dollars to support a same-sex marriage ‘agenda.’”With the Supreme Court just yesterday approving by a 5-4 margin that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited amounts on federal elections, the floodgates of such robo-calls and other methods of bombardment would appear to be opening at the national level. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued that to prevent such spending is to censure free speech. “When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,’’ he wrote.
Add to this mix the continuing cloud of grief and anxiety hovering over the many intersecting communities devastated by last week’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Numerous people in New England had connections to the events in Haiti, including members of the large Boston Area Haitian community, the Sisters of Saint Margaret, and medical teams from Boston based Partners in Health.
And add to that list the trans community which learned last weekend of the death of Flo McGarell, a visual artist and transman from Newbury, Vermont, who lived in the city of Jacmal for the past six years, serving as director of the FOSAJ, a non-profit art center. The New England Cable News did what struck me as a very respectful interview with McGarrell’s grieving parents and, perhaps without meaning to, gestured toward the complexity of McGarrell’s gender identity and expression. In an in-depth interview with the art 21 blog about his wildly creative art, Flo described himself as “a total gender mash up” which was “a constant and humorous topic of discussion” in Jacmal. When asked about what guided his artistic vision, Flo answered:
“Don’t hide, don’t lie.
Do that which scares me.
Resist the urge to settle.
Be as many things as possible in this lifetime.”
His loved ones are organizing memorials and tributes at this site.
With such losses along with the sour economy on the minds of lobby day attendees yesterday, a fundamental question emerged: how can we help return a sense of confidence to lawmakers who may be afraid to fight for any legislation considered “controversial” right now? How can we break through this late-January crust of fear?
Fear may be eroding Massachusetts’s transgender nondiscrimination legislation, just as it is at work in the stalled Employment Nondiscrimination Act in Washington. D.C. How is it that over 105 state lawmakers (out of a total of 200) have signed on as co-sponsors of the MA bill, that a poll conducted last November by Lake Research Partners showed that 76% of Massachusetts residents and 80% of Massachusetts women support it, that Governor Deval Patrick has signaled his enthusiastic support, and still this bill has not gotten out of committee? We cannot let the events of this week, devastating as they are, deter us from this crucial task.
As I think and pray about all of these swirling currents, as I watch the dynamics of fear playing out all around me, I can’t help but think of McGarrell’s conscious ethic of fearlessness. And that sentiment, in this week’s context, draws my mind to the Apostle Paul writing to communities in Rome about the eager longing with which creation waits to be set free from its bondage. We may groan inwardly now, he says, and we may feel alone in our labor, but the Spirit indeed intercedes for us, and urges us onward, never, ever separate from the love of God, as we collaborate in building God’s glorious dream.
As the three of us emerged from the State House, we were dazzled by a brilliant, cold blue sky and streams of sunlight. ****************************************************************************
Here is the invocation, which uses language tailored for a group of numerous religious (and nonreligious) traditions:
Nurses’s Hall, State House
Boston, Massachusetts
January 21, 2010
An Invocation for Transgender Lobby Day
May the Holy One of all our traditions bless, protect and empower us, illumining us with insight, calm and unfathomable fortitude.
May we be reminded of the remarkable strength that lies within us, urging us onward even in face of the steepest odds.
May our hearts be filled with gratitude and awe for the sacred community gathered here today: trans people, partners, allies, families of all configurations, people of all races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, national origins, religious and spiritual traditions, professions and vocations.
May the Divine Spirit flowing among us stir up our prophetic anger at the evils of apathy and expediency as much as of bigotry and ignorance.
And may we go forth with boldness, empowered to bear witness to the truth of our lives and the birthright of our human dignity.
All this we ask in the name of the All-Holy One who urges us into life and love, and sets us free. Amen.
CP
Monday, January 11, 2010
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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
A November to Remember for LGBT Episcopalians in the Diocese of Massachusetts
I wrote this piece for the Walking with Integrity blog
November in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachsusetts has been quite the month on the LGBT front with big ticket items during our Diocesan Convention, to Transweek and Transgender Day of Remembrance, to this weekend’s announcement about the role of clergy in same sex marriage.
At our Diocesan Convention during the first weekend of November, a resolution was overwhelmingly passed expressing our hope that Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III would give clergy permission to legally solemnize same sex marriages. +Tom has long been a supporter of LGBT people in general -- – and speaking as a trans priest whom he ordained, I mean it when I include the T – and equal marriage in particular, stepping out in support of equal civil marriage during this state’s protracted battle over it.
But once gay couples were legally allowed to wed, Episcopal clergy were still limited to blessing said couples. And while I realize just being allowed to do blessings would be a coup in some dioceses, here being limited to blessings felt like a pastoral nightmare. I can’t tell you how many clergy have had repeated conversations with couples about how they could solemnize some marriages but not others. Some clergy have refused to solemnize any marriages in the in-between time of the past five years. And so, while the conversation about whether we should even “be in the marriage business” as legal representatives of the state goes on, that is a conversation that I suspect will take this church a long time to sort out. It’s a lot more difficult to disentangle than I think people on all sides of the debate realize. In the meantime, to me it has made no sense to refuse to let same sex couples in the solemnization door while we figure out whether we want to restrict our involvement in all marriages to blessings.
Another way I have personally faced this issue is in doing trans marriages. We who are trans also face limitations in our ability to wed. Much depends not only on whether our partnerships are gay, bi, or heterosexual – just like everyone else -- but also on whether our legal documentation (e.g. drivers licenses) accurately reflects our gender. And when I say accurate, I mean whether it reflects our identities, not the meanings that others might write on our bodies. In some states changing appropriate identification is easier than in others (for instance, Ohio is notoriously difficult). So when a couple with a trans member has approached me to do their wedding (and I have now done several), one of the things I have had to ask at some point is what the gender markers their drivers licenses say. In some cases I have been able to bless only and in others I have been able to bless and solemnize. Each time I have been aware that I am part of the ongoing transformation of marriage in this time and place. Because, as I see it, marriage is not now and has never been static. Its meaning and form has long been changing. What was the miracle that Jesus undertook at Cana? The transformation of water into wine. Our relationships are to be sacred vessels in which we walk together through the changes and chances of this life.
But I have to say—and I say this as someone who obviously cares a lot about the marriage debates -- all the energy we pour into marriage can get pretty irritating to the trans community. Because even though we are impacted by the rules regarding marriage as well, marriage is not the most important thing to the trans community (insofar as we can say there is a single trans community—there are indeed numerous communities). Protecting our most basic human rights are. Keeping members of our community safe from violence – as our sisters of color most often experience – and free from often blatant discrimination on the job, in schools, housing, credit, and medical care, is what we are most concerned about. And so we are pleased that the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act is finally now law, but we wait eagerly for the passage of a fully inclusive Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the passage of local and state laws that safeguard us in our various communities.
November is a month that the trans community around the globe is increasingly claiming as its own. The main impetus for this is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) which takes place every year on November 20th. Fourteen years ago, an African American Bostonian named Chanelle Pickett was murdered here in Boston on that date. I remember it well because I was a first year MDiv student interning at the Victim Recovery Program at the Fenway Community Health Center at the time, and it was also my birthday. Three years later, on November 28th, 1998 another African American woman named Rita Hester died in Brighton, MA, three blocks from the congregation I now serve, St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s. This murder sparked a vigil on Brighton Avenue across from the place she was last seen. One year later, the trans community in San Francisco marked that anniversary with the first ever Transgender Day of Remembrance. And so the TDOR tradition, which is now international, was born.
Last year for the first time Boston’s TDOR was held at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s, in a secular event that packed the small church. This year, once again, we were asked to host this event (read about it here in the Allston/Brighton TAB; photos by Marilyn Humphries are here). It was a particular honor to be able to share with the gathered community that at its General Convention this past summer The Episcopal Church went on record in support of our full civil rights. And in another important demonstration of support and encouragement, the Crossing, the emergent church style congregation at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, held a special service in honor of TDOR on Thursday evening, November 19th, also hosting Transcriptions, the local trans/queer themed open mic. More and more Episcopal congregations are opening their arms to trans people.
And then yesterday lay and ordained leaders in Diomass received a beautifully clear letter from our bishop declaring that as of Advent I clergy in this diocese are indeed authorized to solemnize the marriages of same sex couples (read about it in the Boston Globe or Bay Windows) . No more do gender markers on licenses As I talked about it on the phone with a friend and fellow trans priest, I said, “what a relief!” He replied, “I know—now I wanna run out and find a gay couple to marry!”
And so life here in Massachusetts continues to move forward with blessings amid all our complexities. But to me the greatest gift of all this November is my son who was born in mid-October. Today, literally as I wrote this piece, he smiled at me for the first time. God is so good.
CP
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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
Monday, August 31, 2009
Congratulations, Rev. David Weekley and Epworth UMC
Yesterday Rev. David Weekley, who transitioned from female to male in the 1970s and was ordained as a pastor in the United Methodist Church 27 years ago, came out to his congregation. I was honored to meet David this past June at the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference-- I moderated a panel of trans clergy on which he sat.
One thing I want to correct from the otherwise accurate below story is that this sentence -- "the Methodist church also will withhold church membership from anyone who is openly gay"-- is incorrect. Plenty of openly gay people attend United Methodist Churches and their memberships are not subject to removal.
But what an extraordinary story, on which the Regal Courier has taken the lead:
Congregation embraces transgender minister as his secret is revealed
Rev. David Weekley hopes his story will help change United Methodist Church doctrine
BY CHRISTINE MCFADDEN
The Portland Tribune, Aug 30, 2009, Updated 11.4 hours ago
As soon as he raises the topic of gay rights to his conservative clergyman friend one day at lunch, he knows it’s a mistake.
He knows that the United Methodist Church long ago retained the right to turn away openly gay clergy members.
So Weekley listens to his friend espouse the opinion of the church, and buries his secret deeper. No one can ever find out that Weekley, a married father of five in Southeast Portland and a Methodist clergyman of 27 years, was born female.
Until now, there has been just one openly transgender Methodist clergyman in the U.S. to retain his ordination (That man, Drew Phoenix, 50, had his ordination challenged by members of the church after coming out publicly in 2007 to his congregation in St. John’s of Baltimore United Methodist Church in Maryland.)
Today, Sunday, Aug. 30, Weekley — who leads the congregation at the Epworth United Methodist Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood in inner Southeast Portland — became the second.
Just months after telling his own children that he was not their biological father, Weekley, who is in his late-50s, came out to his congregation of 221 members.
Standing behind his pulpit, Weekley began his usual worship service. About halfway through, he paused to share a personal message he called “My Book Report.”
He told them that in 1984, just nine years after undergoing extensive sex-reassignment surgeries, he was ordained by the Methodist Church without telling anyone of his original gender at birth.
Following his story, the congregation, who had remained silent throughout his talk, broke into thunderous applause. Church members then proclaimed their support for their pastor.
“It doesn’t change him; he’s still Reverend David, and that’s what counts,” says congregation member Robbie Tsuboi, who has been attending Epworth since 1964.
“I think it was a really, really positive reaction. From what I understand, it was 100 percent support within the church.”
Given the church’s stance on gay rights and its previous reaction to Phoenix’s revelation, Weekley hadn’t known what to expect. According to the Methodist “Book of Discipline,” performing a same-sex wedding, even in a state where it is legal, is an offense that could lead to discipline from Methodist church leaders.
Besides opposing the ordination of gay clergy, the Methodist church also will withhold church membership from anyone who is openly gay.
That’s why Weekley’s action is gaining national attention, including support from the one person who preceded him down this road.
“I’m very happy that he’s going through with this” Phoenix says. “It takes a lot of courage to do what David’s doing.”
Inspired by the past
Weekley’s original plan was to keep quiet throughout his career, waiting until retirement to finally come out. But a trip he took with church members in June 2008 changed his mind.
Weekley joined members of his congregation, which is 95 percent Japanese-American, on a pilgrimage to the remnants of a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Minidoka, Idaho, just outside of Twin Falls.
The experience touched him deeply. He had faith that a congregation like his own, many of them having experienced prejudice and alienation would be a safe place to come out, he says.
He was right.
“We at Epworth support him,” says congregation member Kazuko Hara, who has been attending Epworth’s services for more than 50 years. “I am supportive of him and will stand by him.”
“I think that they’re looking at his heart,” adds Kaau Ahina, who has been attending Epworth for three years. “They love him for who he is, and (his wife) Deborah.”
Following Sunday morning’s service, Weekley answered questions from the congregation about his decision and his life. One member asked: Was he relieved to have revealed the truth about his life? Weekley exhaled. “Extremely,” he answered.
“Twenty-seven years is a long time,” he says. “I have a lot to say and now I can finally say it.”
Despite anticipating that some of his congregation would leave the church, Weekley actually heard that some members plan to become more involved following his disclosure on Sunday.
“I don’t think I anticipated that so much,” he says smiling.
Weekley is accustomed to being a minority. In fact, he is a minority of a minority, serving as the second-ever Caucasian pastor at Epworth, a church first established in Portland’s old Japantown (today’s Old Town/Chinatown) in 1893, which later moved to Southeast Portland.
Although Weekley himself is not Japanese-American, many of his congregation members speak Japanese and offered mottos as themes for the pilgrimage to the internment camp.
They were: “Gambate,” meaning “Go for it;” “Shigatanai,” meaning “It cannot be helped;” and “Gaman,” meaning “Bearing the unbearable with dignity and grace, creating beauty from hardship.”
This motivation, along with the newfound knowledge that he wasn’t the only transgender clergyman in the world, inspired him to share the truth.
“I knew there were a few transgender people on the planet, but I didn’t think it was a large population,” he says. “It’s not something that you share. You don’t say, ‘by the way, were you born that way?’ It just doesn’t come up.”
In June, Weekley attended a health conference in Philadelphia for transgender people, where he met with more than 40 other religious leaders like himself.
“Jewish, Shinto, Pagan — every faith had at least one transgender leader there and (we) started a trans-religious network,” he says.
He and Deborah returned home ready to come out with the truth, they say.
“He’s not (been) happy,” says Deborah, 60, who works as a massage therapist. The two have been married for 13 years. “He’s becoming more agitated as the years are passing in hiding. He’s not thriving. I want him to thrive.”
Childhood as a girl
Born in Cleveland as a girl, Weekley always knew he was different.
“I always saw myself as a little boy,” he recalls. “My best friend was Gary. I liked sports. At a very young age, it didn’t seem like it was any problem.”
Going to school was more troublesome, he says.
“The teachers didn’t like me — each year that got worse,” he says.
From being blamed by teachers for things she didn’t do, to being slapped across the face by her fourth-grade teacher, Weekley says he didn’t feel he received any adult support until 10th grade, after being referred to a school psychologist.
“I really wanted to drop out of school,” he says. “It was a horrible time. I didn’t fit in, I didn’t look like a girl, I was different.”
As a young teenager, Weekly as a girl joined the marching band because she was comfortable in the unisex uniforms. At home, her parents just thought she dressed like a hippie.
His mother was a Catholic homemaker and his father worked in management and didn’t attend church. The two parents, political opposites, had one other son.
Things changed when Weekley was about 14, he remembers. While at a friend’s house, she overheard her friend’s mom talking on the phone to a neighbor about Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transgender woman to undergo reassignment surgery in Sweden.
“I started listening and I got really excited,” he says. “After that day I knew what I would do: I would start saving my money and go to Sweden. That was the plan.”
Transitioning to a new life
When a family friend referred her to a doctor, she learned that she wouldn’t have to go as far as Sweden.
At that time, only two clinics existed in the U.S. that were capable of performing sex-reassignment surgery. One happened to be in Cleveland.
“It was a miracle,” he remembers thinking.
Before she could go under the knife, however, she had to endure a six-month process required by the clinic, which included thorough medical and psychological tests and interviews.
She eventually began hormone therapy.
“I went home and popped one and stood in front of the mirror and waited,” he says.
After three months and not much progress, she began non-reversible injections.
Before the surgeries, Weekley had to hire an attorney and go through the lengthy process of changing all of his legal documents.
The courts, he says, were “horribly prejudicial,” and “didn’t easily change the documents.”
The first surgery took place in August 1974, when he stayed in the hospital for three weeks after receiving a phalloplasty — cosmetic surgery of the penis. The second surgery took place the following December for chest surgery, and Weekley went back once more for additional treatment in June 1975.
While he says his family visited him in the hospital for just one of the surgeries, he kept a strong relationship with his grandfather. “(He) taught me how to tie a tie,” he says.
His insurance paid for all of the surgeries, but today most insurance plans wouldn’t cover them because gender reassignment is not considered a “life threatening” condition, Weekley says. “They have no idea how wrong they are,” he says.
For his new name, Weekley chose David, meaning “Beloved of God.”
Adulthood as a man
After his sex-change operations, Weekley studied psychology at Boston University and, while in graduate school at Miami University of Ohio, began to feel drawn to the church.
Weekley had previously stayed away from church due to the hateful things he had heard regarding homosexuals and other minorities. However, after feeling a connection to the United Methodist Church, he joined.
That connection, among other reasons, led him to attend seminary school at Boston University School of Theology. He earned a Master of Divinity Degree in philosophy, theology, and ethics.
This was something he never thought he would do, despite being passionate for preaching at a young age.
“I used to preach to my stuffed animals and I don’t know why,” he says. “My growing up was so horrific that I couldn’t speak in public.”
However, once he entered the Methodist church, he reentered the closet.
“One of the greatest ironies and pains is that the church is the place I’ve had to go back in the closet,” he says. “I’ve stood with colleagues who have said horrific things to me, and they don’t even know it.”
Weekley moved to Portland in 1993 to serve a local church, eventually ending up at Epworth United Methodist.
Gay rights within the Methodist church are undoubtedly political, he says. While the church has its own official stand, progressive members are tolerant toward gay rights, which clashes with the conservatives’ beliefs.
The majority of Methodists in the U.S. reside in the Bible Belt and are conservative, which enabled delegates at the 2008 general conference to pass a new rule stating that no United Methodist funds could be used to educate people on gay and lesbian issues.
At the last general conference, there was talk of the church formally splitting.
“Over the years it’s gotten less vociferous, but there is still no resolution,” Weekley says.
Some progress has been made at the smaller, localized annual conferences.
Weekley’s progressive Oregon-Idaho conference recently had the highest percentage of votes for an “All means all” declaration, which would amend the church’s bylaws to include everyone in the church.
The declaration was narrowly defeated nationally, however, showing that, “the conservatives have enough people and power to always defeat the rest of the denomination,” he says.
Weekley has advocated for inclusivity, not just to national audiences but also to much smaller ones, serving as dean of a summer church camp this year at Epworth.
Though the camp focused mainly on the civil rights movement, a portion focused on breaking traditional sex roles and accepting different kinds of families.
One parent withdrew children from the camp after learning of its liberal content.
“Can girls play baseball? Can boys play with dolls? Of course you can,” Weekley says. “And that was apparently enough for this person to decide not to bring their kids.”
Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best
Despite keeping his secret for the past 27 years, Weekley has led a “blessed” life, he says. “God got me through.”
He has been married twice, and his children and current wife Deborah provide a steady stream of support. The couple have five children (two from a previous marriage) ranging in age from 21 to 39, as well as six grandchildren.
Weekley is up for a national award at this year’s Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation, (a movement to increase the awareness of issues in the gay community and promote inclusivity in the church) and is writing a book about his coming-out experience.
The book’s working title is “In From the Wilderness: The Practice of Gaman.”
He shared his first manuscript with his congregation on Sunday as well. It features his experience at Minidoka and an annotated bibliography of resources for others out there in similar situations.
However, now that he has come out publicly, Weekley and his wife are preparing for any potential backlash. In fact, that’s why he’s asked that his birth name not be published — for fear that hate groups would use it as negative propaganda.
They have taken some necessary precautions in case of any trouble that could arise from aggressive prejudice.
“Trust God, but tie your camel,” Weekley says, quoting a Middle Eastern proverb.
Phoenix, the other openly transgender United Methodist clergy person in the U.S., had charges filed against him from clergy in his conference and was brought before the Judicial Council (the United Methodist Church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court).
The charges to have him removed from the church proved to be unfounded and Phoenix was able to retain his ordination. He is working in Anchorage, Alaska, in environmental health and justice and calling on Congress to pass legislation ending the discrimination he endured.
While the Book of Discipline forbids gays from joining the church, nothing explicitly turns away transgender people, which protects Phoenix and Weekley.
However, conservative Methodists have been battling the “All Means All” declaration, working to exclude transgender people.
Both Phoenix and Weekley could potentially face having their credentials taken away if legislation is passed at the next general conference (which takes place every four years) in 2012 banning transgender people.
“There’s always that possibility — just like there was in 2008,” Phoenix says.
Although Greg Nelson, director of communications for the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, thinks that it’s likely similar legislation will be brought up again soon, he believes that, “it’s important that this came out before the conference in 2012.
While Weekley and his wife are preparing for the worst, they are optimistic about the future of the church.
Weekley says that he has, for the past 27 years, thought about switching to a church that is more accepting of his choices, but ultimately decided to stay loyal.
“There have been many times I’ve thought about walking away and considering a different denomination,” he says, “but my heart has always caused me to remain in the hope of effecting change.”
He remains hopeful that the Methodist church can one day retain the same acceptance toward gay rights and perhaps pass legislation similar to the Episcopal Church, which recently adopted protections for gays and transgender people.
“This really puts it all on the line,” Weekley says of his decision to share his news with his congregation and the world. “I’m not leaving, I’m just coming out. I’m not walking away, but I’m not staying quiet and hidden anymore.”
cmcfadden@portlandtribune.com
One thing I want to correct from the otherwise accurate below story is that this sentence -- "the Methodist church also will withhold church membership from anyone who is openly gay"-- is incorrect. Plenty of openly gay people attend United Methodist Churches and their memberships are not subject to removal.
But what an extraordinary story, on which the Regal Courier has taken the lead:
Congregation embraces transgender minister as his secret is revealed
Rev. David Weekley hopes his story will help change United Methodist Church doctrine
BY CHRISTINE MCFADDEN
The Portland Tribune, Aug 30, 2009, Updated 11.4 hours ago
As soon as he raises the topic of gay rights to his conservative clergyman friend one day at lunch, he knows it’s a mistake.
He knows that the United Methodist Church long ago retained the right to turn away openly gay clergy members.
So Weekley listens to his friend espouse the opinion of the church, and buries his secret deeper. No one can ever find out that Weekley, a married father of five in Southeast Portland and a Methodist clergyman of 27 years, was born female.
Until now, there has been just one openly transgender Methodist clergyman in the U.S. to retain his ordination (That man, Drew Phoenix, 50, had his ordination challenged by members of the church after coming out publicly in 2007 to his congregation in St. John’s of Baltimore United Methodist Church in Maryland.)
Today, Sunday, Aug. 30, Weekley — who leads the congregation at the Epworth United Methodist Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood in inner Southeast Portland — became the second.
Just months after telling his own children that he was not their biological father, Weekley, who is in his late-50s, came out to his congregation of 221 members.
Standing behind his pulpit, Weekley began his usual worship service. About halfway through, he paused to share a personal message he called “My Book Report.”
He told them that in 1984, just nine years after undergoing extensive sex-reassignment surgeries, he was ordained by the Methodist Church without telling anyone of his original gender at birth.
Following his story, the congregation, who had remained silent throughout his talk, broke into thunderous applause. Church members then proclaimed their support for their pastor.
“It doesn’t change him; he’s still Reverend David, and that’s what counts,” says congregation member Robbie Tsuboi, who has been attending Epworth since 1964.
“I think it was a really, really positive reaction. From what I understand, it was 100 percent support within the church.”
Given the church’s stance on gay rights and its previous reaction to Phoenix’s revelation, Weekley hadn’t known what to expect. According to the Methodist “Book of Discipline,” performing a same-sex wedding, even in a state where it is legal, is an offense that could lead to discipline from Methodist church leaders.
Besides opposing the ordination of gay clergy, the Methodist church also will withhold church membership from anyone who is openly gay.
That’s why Weekley’s action is gaining national attention, including support from the one person who preceded him down this road.
“I’m very happy that he’s going through with this” Phoenix says. “It takes a lot of courage to do what David’s doing.”
Inspired by the past
Weekley’s original plan was to keep quiet throughout his career, waiting until retirement to finally come out. But a trip he took with church members in June 2008 changed his mind.
Weekley joined members of his congregation, which is 95 percent Japanese-American, on a pilgrimage to the remnants of a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Minidoka, Idaho, just outside of Twin Falls.
The experience touched him deeply. He had faith that a congregation like his own, many of them having experienced prejudice and alienation would be a safe place to come out, he says.
He was right.
“We at Epworth support him,” says congregation member Kazuko Hara, who has been attending Epworth’s services for more than 50 years. “I am supportive of him and will stand by him.”
“I think that they’re looking at his heart,” adds Kaau Ahina, who has been attending Epworth for three years. “They love him for who he is, and (his wife) Deborah.”
Following Sunday morning’s service, Weekley answered questions from the congregation about his decision and his life. One member asked: Was he relieved to have revealed the truth about his life? Weekley exhaled. “Extremely,” he answered.
“Twenty-seven years is a long time,” he says. “I have a lot to say and now I can finally say it.”
Despite anticipating that some of his congregation would leave the church, Weekley actually heard that some members plan to become more involved following his disclosure on Sunday.
“I don’t think I anticipated that so much,” he says smiling.
Weekley is accustomed to being a minority. In fact, he is a minority of a minority, serving as the second-ever Caucasian pastor at Epworth, a church first established in Portland’s old Japantown (today’s Old Town/Chinatown) in 1893, which later moved to Southeast Portland.
Although Weekley himself is not Japanese-American, many of his congregation members speak Japanese and offered mottos as themes for the pilgrimage to the internment camp.
They were: “Gambate,” meaning “Go for it;” “Shigatanai,” meaning “It cannot be helped;” and “Gaman,” meaning “Bearing the unbearable with dignity and grace, creating beauty from hardship.”
This motivation, along with the newfound knowledge that he wasn’t the only transgender clergyman in the world, inspired him to share the truth.
“I knew there were a few transgender people on the planet, but I didn’t think it was a large population,” he says. “It’s not something that you share. You don’t say, ‘by the way, were you born that way?’ It just doesn’t come up.”
In June, Weekley attended a health conference in Philadelphia for transgender people, where he met with more than 40 other religious leaders like himself.
“Jewish, Shinto, Pagan — every faith had at least one transgender leader there and (we) started a trans-religious network,” he says.
He and Deborah returned home ready to come out with the truth, they say.
“He’s not (been) happy,” says Deborah, 60, who works as a massage therapist. The two have been married for 13 years. “He’s becoming more agitated as the years are passing in hiding. He’s not thriving. I want him to thrive.”
Childhood as a girl
Born in Cleveland as a girl, Weekley always knew he was different.
“I always saw myself as a little boy,” he recalls. “My best friend was Gary. I liked sports. At a very young age, it didn’t seem like it was any problem.”
Going to school was more troublesome, he says.
“The teachers didn’t like me — each year that got worse,” he says.
From being blamed by teachers for things she didn’t do, to being slapped across the face by her fourth-grade teacher, Weekley says he didn’t feel he received any adult support until 10th grade, after being referred to a school psychologist.
“I really wanted to drop out of school,” he says. “It was a horrible time. I didn’t fit in, I didn’t look like a girl, I was different.”
As a young teenager, Weekly as a girl joined the marching band because she was comfortable in the unisex uniforms. At home, her parents just thought she dressed like a hippie.
His mother was a Catholic homemaker and his father worked in management and didn’t attend church. The two parents, political opposites, had one other son.
Things changed when Weekley was about 14, he remembers. While at a friend’s house, she overheard her friend’s mom talking on the phone to a neighbor about Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transgender woman to undergo reassignment surgery in Sweden.
“I started listening and I got really excited,” he says. “After that day I knew what I would do: I would start saving my money and go to Sweden. That was the plan.”
Transitioning to a new life
When a family friend referred her to a doctor, she learned that she wouldn’t have to go as far as Sweden.
At that time, only two clinics existed in the U.S. that were capable of performing sex-reassignment surgery. One happened to be in Cleveland.
“It was a miracle,” he remembers thinking.
Before she could go under the knife, however, she had to endure a six-month process required by the clinic, which included thorough medical and psychological tests and interviews.
She eventually began hormone therapy.
“I went home and popped one and stood in front of the mirror and waited,” he says.
After three months and not much progress, she began non-reversible injections.
Before the surgeries, Weekley had to hire an attorney and go through the lengthy process of changing all of his legal documents.
The courts, he says, were “horribly prejudicial,” and “didn’t easily change the documents.”
The first surgery took place in August 1974, when he stayed in the hospital for three weeks after receiving a phalloplasty — cosmetic surgery of the penis. The second surgery took place the following December for chest surgery, and Weekley went back once more for additional treatment in June 1975.
While he says his family visited him in the hospital for just one of the surgeries, he kept a strong relationship with his grandfather. “(He) taught me how to tie a tie,” he says.
His insurance paid for all of the surgeries, but today most insurance plans wouldn’t cover them because gender reassignment is not considered a “life threatening” condition, Weekley says. “They have no idea how wrong they are,” he says.
For his new name, Weekley chose David, meaning “Beloved of God.”
Adulthood as a man
After his sex-change operations, Weekley studied psychology at Boston University and, while in graduate school at Miami University of Ohio, began to feel drawn to the church.
Weekley had previously stayed away from church due to the hateful things he had heard regarding homosexuals and other minorities. However, after feeling a connection to the United Methodist Church, he joined.
That connection, among other reasons, led him to attend seminary school at Boston University School of Theology. He earned a Master of Divinity Degree in philosophy, theology, and ethics.
This was something he never thought he would do, despite being passionate for preaching at a young age.
“I used to preach to my stuffed animals and I don’t know why,” he says. “My growing up was so horrific that I couldn’t speak in public.”
However, once he entered the Methodist church, he reentered the closet.
“One of the greatest ironies and pains is that the church is the place I’ve had to go back in the closet,” he says. “I’ve stood with colleagues who have said horrific things to me, and they don’t even know it.”
Weekley moved to Portland in 1993 to serve a local church, eventually ending up at Epworth United Methodist.
Gay rights within the Methodist church are undoubtedly political, he says. While the church has its own official stand, progressive members are tolerant toward gay rights, which clashes with the conservatives’ beliefs.
The majority of Methodists in the U.S. reside in the Bible Belt and are conservative, which enabled delegates at the 2008 general conference to pass a new rule stating that no United Methodist funds could be used to educate people on gay and lesbian issues.
At the last general conference, there was talk of the church formally splitting.
“Over the years it’s gotten less vociferous, but there is still no resolution,” Weekley says.
Some progress has been made at the smaller, localized annual conferences.
Weekley’s progressive Oregon-Idaho conference recently had the highest percentage of votes for an “All means all” declaration, which would amend the church’s bylaws to include everyone in the church.
The declaration was narrowly defeated nationally, however, showing that, “the conservatives have enough people and power to always defeat the rest of the denomination,” he says.
Weekley has advocated for inclusivity, not just to national audiences but also to much smaller ones, serving as dean of a summer church camp this year at Epworth.
Though the camp focused mainly on the civil rights movement, a portion focused on breaking traditional sex roles and accepting different kinds of families.
One parent withdrew children from the camp after learning of its liberal content.
“Can girls play baseball? Can boys play with dolls? Of course you can,” Weekley says. “And that was apparently enough for this person to decide not to bring their kids.”
Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best
Despite keeping his secret for the past 27 years, Weekley has led a “blessed” life, he says. “God got me through.”
He has been married twice, and his children and current wife Deborah provide a steady stream of support. The couple have five children (two from a previous marriage) ranging in age from 21 to 39, as well as six grandchildren.
Weekley is up for a national award at this year’s Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation, (a movement to increase the awareness of issues in the gay community and promote inclusivity in the church) and is writing a book about his coming-out experience.
The book’s working title is “In From the Wilderness: The Practice of Gaman.”
He shared his first manuscript with his congregation on Sunday as well. It features his experience at Minidoka and an annotated bibliography of resources for others out there in similar situations.
However, now that he has come out publicly, Weekley and his wife are preparing for any potential backlash. In fact, that’s why he’s asked that his birth name not be published — for fear that hate groups would use it as negative propaganda.
They have taken some necessary precautions in case of any trouble that could arise from aggressive prejudice.
“Trust God, but tie your camel,” Weekley says, quoting a Middle Eastern proverb.
Phoenix, the other openly transgender United Methodist clergy person in the U.S., had charges filed against him from clergy in his conference and was brought before the Judicial Council (the United Methodist Church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court).
The charges to have him removed from the church proved to be unfounded and Phoenix was able to retain his ordination. He is working in Anchorage, Alaska, in environmental health and justice and calling on Congress to pass legislation ending the discrimination he endured.
While the Book of Discipline forbids gays from joining the church, nothing explicitly turns away transgender people, which protects Phoenix and Weekley.
However, conservative Methodists have been battling the “All Means All” declaration, working to exclude transgender people.
Both Phoenix and Weekley could potentially face having their credentials taken away if legislation is passed at the next general conference (which takes place every four years) in 2012 banning transgender people.
“There’s always that possibility — just like there was in 2008,” Phoenix says.
Although Greg Nelson, director of communications for the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, thinks that it’s likely similar legislation will be brought up again soon, he believes that, “it’s important that this came out before the conference in 2012.
While Weekley and his wife are preparing for the worst, they are optimistic about the future of the church.
Weekley says that he has, for the past 27 years, thought about switching to a church that is more accepting of his choices, but ultimately decided to stay loyal.
“There have been many times I’ve thought about walking away and considering a different denomination,” he says, “but my heart has always caused me to remain in the hope of effecting change.”
He remains hopeful that the Methodist church can one day retain the same acceptance toward gay rights and perhaps pass legislation similar to the Episcopal Church, which recently adopted protections for gays and transgender people.
“This really puts it all on the line,” Weekley says of his decision to share his news with his congregation and the world. “I’m not leaving, I’m just coming out. I’m not walking away, but I’m not staying quiet and hidden anymore.”
cmcfadden@portlandtribune.com
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