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?

[It takes] humble sensitivity . . . to live as a biblical people in a place where you are only one voice of many and are not necessarily the dominant voice.  [Churches] must respect that they are only one voice in a number of voices, and the ability to dialogue in a pluralistic world is not so much about prison as they are about creating healthy places where their voices can be heard.  I do not fear prison as much as I would be concerned about simply being ignored or marginalized even more because I have chosen to speak with a sense of entitlement and assumed moral authority that others around me have not granted. In Canada we earn the right to speak, and speak we do with courage and sensitivity.

Dr. Gary Nelson, General Secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries, responding to the recent assertion by Southern Baptist Convention President Dr. Frank Page’s that pastors in Canada can be jailed for speaking against homosexuality

And a comment from me:  Page’s original comments came in the context of an interview in which he decries an alleged liberal bias in the media.  It strikes me as curious that a theology that affirms the righteousness and justice of the market economy would be so fearful of the marketplace of ideas.  Can a fundamentalist theology of human sexuality compete in a marketplace where all ideas are placed on an even field?  More importantly, can they compete in a way that upholds the traditional Baptist value of soul competency and refuses to descend into oversimplifying the issues, mocking the competition, or fear-mongering?  Time will tell.

Thanks to Ethics Daily.

Perusing my Google Alerts today, I came across a wonderful post at the blog Emphatic Asterisk titled “What if I were Gay?“  In it, the author, a straight woman who blogs as Shush, considers what her life might have been like had she entered into a lesbian relationship when offered the opportunity at some point in her past.  Though some of my readers may not agree with everything Shush has to say, I’d like to point her out to you as someone who is really thinking, not merely (as William James said) “rearranging her prejudices.”  She’s doing the kind of imaginative, open-ended thinking that is the only possible foundation for true compassion, which is why I was so encouraged to find her today.

Shush, you’re in my RSS reader.  Thanks again!

(That title is going to drive some Google traffic my way, don’t you think?)

Debra Hafner, Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, recently taught a course at Union Theological Seminary in New York on contemporary issues in sexuality. In an era of church history in which these kinds of issues dominate the conversation in nearly every denomination, in which we’re tearing ourselves apart over them, you’d imagine almost every seminary offers courses like this, wouldn’t you?

And you know what? You’d be wrong.

Debra decries the situation on her blog:

Unfortunately most clergy do not take a course on sexuality during their seminary years. As clergy, we are expected to be able to counsel couples and individuals about relationships, often without any specific training or background.

I brought this up during a class discussion at my seminary last week. My professor, who is a seasoned educator, respected scholar, and quite progressive, shook his head. “There has never been such a course here, and there never will be. Our constituents wouldn’t support it.” (By “constituents,” of course, he means “the people who keep our endowment flush.”)

Wake up, seminaries. Wake up, denominations. Wake up, “constituents.” Ignoring these issues isn’t going to make them go away. It is a disservice to your graduates, and an even greater disservice to the congregations they will serve.

(Debra and the Institute have started a Facebook group for seminarians to address these issues, so if you’re on Facebook, check it out!)