COLAGE, Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere, has put together a veritable motherlode of resources for families with a transgender parent.  It includes print publications, internet resources, email support groups, and much more.  COLAGE is a spectacular organization and this is a much-needed list.  Thanks so much!

The ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project has launched Get Busy, Get Equal, an online toolkit to empower grassroots organizing for change.  Their page on transgender resources is particularly good.  They also have a blog, newsfeed, and podcast.  Definitely worth a look. 

Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest.

California State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron George, writing for the majority in today’s ruling in favor of marriage equality.

And a comment from me: Thank you, Lord. Let justice roll.

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott graced last month’s Transforming Faith–Divining Gender conference not only with her warm and wise presence, but with a wonderful keynote address. In it she laid out seven reasons that religious groups should embrace their transgender members. Here’s a summary, taken from my notes:

1. The scriptures are trans-friendly; people who value them should be as well. For example, note the Yahwist creation account, in which God’s original creative impulse is toward a hermaphroditic creation. Jesus speaks well of eunuchs and condemns the use of “Raca,” which scholarship has shown means “effeminate” or “sissy.” Once we shed our cultural proclivities, we can see an ethos in scripture that takes a favorable view of gender variance and diversity.
2. Transgender members help congregations transcend gender stereotypes. The binary gender construct does not merely differentiate between genders, but unjustly elevates one over the other. Transgender people provide congregations with a unique reminder that stereotypes are not objectively concrete and need not bind us.
3. Transgender members remind congregations to use diverse and inclusive language when speaking about God. In Mollenkott’s words, “If God is male, then male is god.” Transgender people are particularly sensitive to the injustices caused by gendering God inappropriately. Transgender people do congregations a great service when they insist upon more accurate language for God.
4. Transgender people have traditionally been recognized in many cultures as bridges between the seen and unseen worlds. Mollenkott made particular note of how Milton genders his angel characters in Paradise Lost. There is tremendous depth to this tradition.
5. Transgender people have often reflected deeply on the connections between faith, justice, gender, and sex. Our congregations’ hang-ups on these topics have distracted them from far more important matters. Transgender people can educate their congregations on our lives and issues; they are “particularly suited to teach congregations about the multiple connections between sex, gender, and justice.” As outsiders, we bring a perspective our congregations need. Jesus himself defied many gender norms, and yet in spite of his gender transgression, subordinationism holds sway in many congregations. (Mollenkott drew very interesting linkages between the lengths to which some churches and theologians go to justify subordinationism and the reappearance of Arianism.)
6. As occupiers of the “forgotten middle,” transgender people can help congregations get over their addiction to certainty. Our dualistic, “good vs. evil” worldview threatens to destroy humanity and the world. (I was reminded here of Karen Armstrong’s work on the Axial Age, a period of history marked by terrible violence out of which arose today’s great religious traditions with their focus on selflessness and compassion.) “Sympathy cannot be confined to our own group,” Mollenkott said. Transgender people know what it means to occupy a middle that defies artificial dualism. This makes us particularly well suited to teach others to love the Other across dualistic divides; we’ve learned to let our pain express itself as support for others. (She made note here of the Drag Mothers who mentor young trans people in Chris Beam’s Transparent.)
7. Transgender people demonstrate powerfully that just as all races share one blood, so do all genders. Mollenkott reminded us of the old “one drop” rule of race, by which anyone who had one drop of African American blood was considered African American and a legitimate target of bigotry. The same rule, she said, holds today for gender norms. One drop of femininity equals feminine or “sissy,” as opposed to the pure or normative male. If we lined up the entire human race from darkest skin to lightest skin, she asked, where would “black” end and “white” begin? Similarly, if we lined up from most masculine to most feminine, where would “masculine” begin and “feminine” end? And, more importantly, what would those distinctions even mean in that context?

Please understand my reasons for not blogging today.  I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies.  My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination.  I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices.  Think about the voices you are not hearing today. 

What are you going to do to end the silence?

He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940), poet and activist.

And a comment from me:  In our fight for justice, name-calling must never be allowed to take the day. 

(I discovered this little poem a few days ago.  When I finally got around to researching it a bit, I learned to my surprise that today is the author’s birthday.)

What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures. … Ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth — an ordinary life.

Dr. Irena Klepfisz (bio), survivor of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, speaking to commemorate the 45th anniversary of that event.

And a comment from me:  This week marks the 65th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.  For a brief history of the uprising, read Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac entry from this past Saturday, April 12.

I just received this alert from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission:

On March 23, 2006, 19-year-old Darlyn Acevedo Ramirez was murdered in the city of Santiago de Cali, Colombia. This is one of 13 unsolved murders of trans women that have taken place in the past two years. Besides these terrible crimes, the physical, psychological and ethical mistreatment suffered by trans women in Santiago de Cali is a serious and continuous problem, and a daily violation of the human and constitutional rights of this community.

Among the rights violated in this case are:

• The right to life;
• The right to and security of the person;
• The rights to be free from discrimination;
• The right to equal protection before the law; and
• The right to simple and prompt recourse to a competent court for protection

ACTION

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and Santamaria Foundation GLTB of Colombia ask your support in seeking the urgent resolution of these crimes as well as in instituting measures to prevent them from happening in the future. We request that letters be sent immediately to the Colombian authorities, demanding immediate action to investigate and prevent these terrible human rights violations.

Read the entire alert here, where you can also find a sample letter you can cut and paste along with email addresses for Columbian government officials. 

In the past two years, the community of over 3,000 Cali trans women has experienced 13 homicides and over 30 attempted murders.  That means that a trans woman in this community has more than a 1-in-70 chance of being a victim of a life-threatening attack.  And before you object by noting that Columbia has one of the highest murder rates in the world, note also that a trans woman’s chance of getting murdered is over 20 times the national average.  And that not a single case has been solved. 

Please take a moment to send some emails.  If you won’t do that much, please take ten seconds to pray that this violence will end.

One becomes a member of a church by baptism. Those who advocate giving pastors the authority to determine membership ignore the significance of the sacrament.

Methodist theologian Gayle Carlton Felton, writing in a new pamphlet entitled Concerning Church Membership and the Authority of the Pastor

And a comment from me: Churches and leaders of all denominations and traditions that style themselves “welcoming, not affirming” of LGBT people must become aware of the ecclesiological and sacramental implications of that stance.  I would wager that the vast majority of these churches and leaders have not yet done the theological heavy lifting Felton calls them to here.

Thanks to Religion Is a Queer Thing.

Real Live Preacher has written perhaps the most compelling modern parable I have ever read.  Please take a minute or two and read it.

If I were going to be preaching this Sunday, I’d scrap everything I’d prepared to this point and just read RLP’s parable.

Writing in the (Raleigh, Durham & Chapel Hill) Independent Weekly, Patrick O’Neill covers what didn’t happen at February’s New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

While there were several positive signs as this new group tries to form its identity, for those hoping to see a loving hand extended to gays and lesbians, or to hear a stronger rebuke of U.S. imperialism, the gathering was disappointing.

Opposition to the Iraq War received some airtime, but the U.S. Army was allowed to set up a booth to recruit Baptist chaplains. Race was a hot topic, but abortion and capital punishment were not. Most notably, the gathering did not offer an official embrace to the LGBT community.

[Rev. Tony] Campolo joined others at the gathering who wore rainbow-colored stoles as a sign of solidarity with gays and lesbians. Campolo said he wanted to let them know “we were aware that they were there, and we loved them and accept them as brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The Rev. Nancy Petty, co-pastor of Raleigh’s Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, an open and affirming congregation that includes many gays and lesbians among its membership, said she attended the New Baptist Covenant gathering as a representative of Pullen, but did so at “a high cost, emotionally.”

Petty, who is lesbian, said it was a “slap in the face” that gays and lesbians were denied an opportunity to be part of the planning for the Atlanta event.

“There seems to me to be a real incongruency between what they were preaching and what they were practicing,” Petty said. “No one was asking them to endorse gays and lesbians. All that we were asking was to have a place at the table.”

Rev. Petty’s words are important. In their evaluation of the current situation faced by LGBT Baptists and our allies, they offer hints of a strategy for moving forward. We must secure for ourselves a place at the table. As I wrote in my own evaluation of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration,

As long as we allow our organizations to be treated as less legitimate than others’, our voice will be muffled. As long as we allow our issues to be thought of as less urgent than those of other constituencies, our issues will be brushed aside. The courageous support of straight allies such as [author John Grisham] and friends of unity such as [President Jimmy] Carter and Campolo will be squandered if we don’t do more than simply show up. A ministry of presence is vital, to be sure, but it is insufficient. We must “make the most of every opportunity in these evil days.” We will never see the change we long for, and we believe God longs for, if our motto is, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going to say it too loudly if that makes you uncomfortable.”

How do we secure a place at the moderate Baptist table? We begin by asking for one. Wherever and whenever moderate Baptists meet, LGBT Baptist organizations should ask to be included. We have as much right as any other constituency to make this request.

When our requests are denied, as they were for the New Baptist Covenant Celebration, we should ask why. We are right to ask others to explain why they choose to exclude us.  And we should let those who deny participation to us know that we will make their reasons public, so that they can be tested by the broader priesthood of believers.

When their reasons for excluding us fall into the category of political exigency, we should have the courage to hold them publicly accountable. When their reasons stem from a theology of exclusion, we should have the courage to say that out loud and to offer in their place a mature and robust theology of inclusion.

Politics and theologies of exclusion have famously split Baptists in America in the recent past, as O’Neill notes in his article, and they they have the potential to do so again if they are not confronted. Our silence at being officially marginalized does not serve unity, but rather endangers it.

(Thanks to the Gay Religion newsblog.)