I didn’t know a single transgender
person I didn’t know the mother or the
father the brother or the sister of a
transgender person but as that day
unfolded my life changed I was
transformed by an untold number of
transgender persons their family members
and friends who reached out to me and
loved me even though the Church of Jesus
Christ which I serve as a pastor too
often has not loved them before we go on
I need to acknowledge the story I had to
tell you it’s not really my story it’s
the story of one of the most
misunderstood maligned mistreated people
groups of our time I stand before you as
someone with five or six kinds of
privilege that allows me to be heard
today I am a white straight male Baptist
pastor middle aged from Texas
and because of those things people will
listen to me who will not right or wrong
listen to those who have first-hand
stories to tell but it is those stories
that have changed me now here’s the
backstory to why I’m standing before you
today since September of last year our
church has been involved in a detailed
study on questions about inclusion of
the LGBT community in the life of the
church we’ve been asking whether there
should be any limitations to full
membership and participation in the
church based on one’s gender identity or
sexual orientation and I must tell you
that this has been the most difficult
and painful conversation i’ve ever known
in my lifetime in the church we’ve lost
members we’ve lost money
we’ve lost friends simply for asking the
questions that we’ve posed along the way
in our study process with a 19 member
group we researched and studied and
prayed and did all sorts of things and
about five months into that some members
of the study group said look we have
talked a lot about the L and the G in
LGBT but we really don’t know much about
the B and the T could we please talk
about that well as it turned out we had
two members of the study group who were
well equipped to help us with the
transgender component of that one of
them is a pediatrician who works in a
low-income clinic in Dallas and
coincidentally has a number of LGBT
patients the other is a geneticist who
recently retired as a genetic counselor
at our Children’s Medical Center in
Dallas
and so together dr. Rhonda Walton and
Gayle Brookshire both of whom are
present here in the room today they
collaborated to create this presentation
and dr. Walton presented it to us I can
still see the room this classroom where
we met on this Sunday afternoon and the
whiteboard where dr. Walton wrote out
words and drew diagrams to help us
understand the difference between gender
identity and sexual orientation
how is really different than LGB
we learned that gender identity is about
who you are and sexual orientation is
about who you love and that these are
different things and often unrelated to
each other
dr. Walton helped us understand the
increasing body of medical and
scientific research that is teaching us
that so much of gender identity is
formed in the womb in ways that we have
not understood in ways that we cannot
see before a child is ever born and she
talked to us about babies who are born
with ambiguous genitalia and the
difficult decisions that are made about
that and who makes those decisions and
then she quoted the Bible to us she
reminded us that in the book of Genesis
that is sacred to Jews and Christians
alike we learn we are taught that all of
us all humans are created in the image
of God and then she said this she said
I’ve got to believe that just because
someone received a different hormone or
a different chromosome or a different
enzyme does not mean that they received
any lower dose of the image of God
because she had taught us that these
three things Anatomy chromosomes and
brain cells for most of us line up like
cherries on a slot machine to give us
unconflicted gender identity but for
some people they don’t line up that way
which might create a conflicted gender
identity or some variation on gender
identity that we haven’t known in the
past to be normative well I was blown
away by what she said I couldn’t stop
thinking about it
and I wanted to tell everyone around me
I was I was out evangelizing on this and
I woke up the next Wednesday morning
with a compunction just a compelling
idea that I could not shake out of my
head that I needed to write what I was
learning about call it a work of the
Holy Spirit if you will call it whatever
you want I could not not do this as a
columnist for the National News Service
Baptist News
dot-com I had a platform it wasn’t my
week to write but I sat down that
Wednesday morning and wrote anyway and
in about 45 minutes these words flowed
from my head through my fingers into the
laptop and created a column that was
titled seven things I’m learning about
transgender persons having no idea what
those words would unleash well it was
published two days later on Friday May
13th and it went live on that web site
at 5:00 a.m. Eastern time when I awoke
at 6:30 east central time that morning I
knew something unusual was going on
because I picked up my cell phone to
look at it and I had Facebook messages
and emails and voicemails from people
about that column that I didn’t even
know who’d been published yet and that
was the portent of the way the day was
to go the column has now been read by
more than a million people and has gone
truly viral my wife and I spend a good
part of that day at the kitchen table
watching social media with the shares
and the likes in the comments and they
were moving so fast we couldn’t even
keep up with it it was like watching an
electric meter spin on a hot summer day
in Texas well over the next two weeks I
spent every free moment I had responding
to more than 450 people who wrote to me
or called me I talked on the phone I
exchanged messages in all sorts of ways
I learned the stories of transgender
persons their family members their
friends and others I heard 95% of the
comments were positive yes there were a
few cranky people there were a few who
wrote to tell me that I was the tool of
Satan or that I clearly did not
understand medical science as it was
but the vast majority were incredibly
supportive and most moving of all to me
were transgender persons he wrote to say
I read that you don’t know any
transgender persons I’d like to be your
transgender friend and so out of that we
moved from online communication to
face-to-face communication
I began meeting for breakfast and lunch
and dinner and coffee with new friends
who are transgender and I heard their
stories they were shocked that a Baptist
pastor would sit down and listen to them
and I I was shamed to hear their stories
of repression and persecution and
rejection and to understand how
difficult it is even to use a public
restroom in peace
almost every transgender person that
I’ve met has told me that from their
earliest awareness from the time they
were four or five or six years old they
knew something was different about them
they knew that the anatomy they
presented on the outside did not match
who they were on the inside but they
didn’t know what to do with it they had
no vocabulary for it they had no role
models for this they had no one to talk
to and often they just stuffed it back
in and tried to keep on going sometimes
they turned to strict religious
observance to try to get rid of this and
none of that works most of the time when
they finally came to the realization of
what they actually had known all along
they found a sense of peace they said
but they almost always lost family
coworkers and always friends who
abandoned them there are a number of
stories I could share with you that have
been written to me I’ve chosen just a
few today the first is from a trans
woman in California she said as you said
most of us do not want to be in the
spotlight you will hear folks talk about
gay pride and gay power but never
transgender pride or power we just want
to be productive members of society and
live the life God designed for us
transitioning to our correct gender is
the only way to find peace with
our selves some of us spend a lifetime
in unfathomable suffering because of
self-loathing for being different
because of family abuse and rejection
and lack of resources transgender people
have a 40 percent suicide rate as
compared to the national average of
around 3 to 8 percent the next is from a
trans woman who wrote to tell me about
her history of attempting to find peace
and the Catholic Church in the Mormon
Church in the Navy and then to tell me
about her 12 suicide attempts you don’t
know what reading your opinion piece did
within me lately I’ve been reading
article after article of the attacks
against LGBT people especially those of
us who are transgender I read almost
every day of another murdered trans
woman then today I read your post and in
shines this ray of hope for my screen it
shows me that there are true Christians
out there
your words brought tears to my eyes with
the hopes that maybe just maybe God is
still with me he’s here but I can’t yet
enter a church with him one of the most
difficult things to hear in these
communications
has been the number of transgender
persons and their family members who are
people of deep and abiding faith but
have been rejected expelled kicked out
of churches and other communities of
faith simply because they or someone
they love is transgender and the church
does not know what to do with it the
most frequent question I was asked in
all of my communications is this does
God still love me a few weeks ago I
received an email from a trans woman and
her wife who live in the Dallas area
they wrote to say we’ve heard that your
church is a place that is welcoming the
marginalized members of society like us
and that if we showed up you would
welcome us and you wouldn’t escort us
from the sanctuary
is that true is it really safe for us to
come there well I couldn’t move fast
enough to write her back and say yes yes
yes please come and they did they came
the next Sunday and my wife and I met
them and we were able to have lunch with
him after church for about an hour and a
half we listened to their story and I
was astonished to discover that this
trans woman and I had been in seminary
together in the same place at the same
time had not we don’t think we knew each
other but we had felt the same call to
ministry gone to the same place for
training and yet 30 years later our
lives had taken vastly different paths
and we had been brought back together by
these words that had been published a
few days later I received a thank-you
note in the mail a beautiful thank-you
card and it said thank you so much for
receiving us we have looked for four
years for a church that would welcome us
like you did one of the reasons that I
have received a hearing with the
transgender community is because I was
willing to listen I wanted to meet
people who are different than me you may
be wondering if I’ve undergone some sort
of dramatic conversion through all of
this maybe from hatred to love and the
truth is that’s not really it
but I think the conversion I’ve
undergone is more significant because it
is a transformation from indifference to
compassion before May 13th I didn’t know
any transgender persons it’s not that I
hated anyone or didn’t like anyone I
just didn’t know these people I didn’t
know these people who are different than
me but so much like me as well and I
believe this is the condition of most of
America today we are guilty of the sin
of willful ignorance and the sin of
silence let’s face it I am one of the
least likely spokespersons for the
and yet one of the things I’ve learned
through this is that often we don’t get
to choose our causes they choose us and
in this moment I have learned because of
what I have heard and learned it’s time
for me to speak up and to help others
understand it’s the parents it’s letters
from parents that have moved me really
the most though parents just like you
and me who love their kids and want the
best for them and want them to succeed
and want them to be loved by other
people but yet they’ve been dealt a hand
they don’t know how to play and they
feel so alone there’s one mom named
Emily who wrote me in such a way that
she encapsulated so much of what I’ve
heard from others I want to share this
with you she said I’m the mother of two
children and absolutely brilliant an
amazing son who turned 11 today and a
sweet funny and smart eight-year-old
girl who is transgender your blogpost
gives me hope since we have allowed our
daughter to socially transition we’ve
lost almost all our family the three
relationships that remain are extremely
strained my father-in-law doesn’t speak
directly to me my mother-in-law says
that I let Claire’s issues rule my life
neither use her name for a time Claire
was this one they focus on the pain this
causes them they’re hurting they’re sad
they mourn the loss of their grandson
but they’ve never looked at any of the
resources I’ve given them they’ve never
gone to a PFLAG meeting they’ve never
talked others anything
my husband’s ants said this is the
result of the darkness of the world and
Satan’s influence on us she says I’ve
always known that my daughter was
different when she was three she made
her first set of boobies out of slices
she begged comments about growing up
when she gets to be a girl and having
long pretty red hair comments about when
she grows up and gets to be a mommy she
put on her first dress when she was six
years old and I literally saw the
tension drain from her shoulders and I
saw the joy in her face a little over
two months later she looked at me right
in the face and said my my boy life is
over and it’s my girl life now call me
Claire this winter she suffered her
first bout of suicidal ideation my
eight-year-old wanted to die and then
this brave mom taught me this lesson she
said a loving God did not put my
daughter on this earth as an example of
how not to be or how we should not
parent she was put on this earth to show
the wonder of this creation this little
girl who looks just like I did at her
age this little girl who giggles and
it’s infectious this little girl who hid
because she was afraid we would throw
her away but eventually was brave enough
to tell us that she’s a girl and her name is Claire thank you