Existing while trans

illness-to-wellness:

One of my favorite people in the world wrote this status on facebook this morning. I beg you to read it in full, especially if you are a Christian.

“As I write this it is 12:21am and I cannot sleep. Despite having to be at work before 7am, despite an amazing Tony Awards broadcast (where, for the record, all of the acting awards were given to people of color, take THAT, Oscars), I am tossing and turning unable to get the events of Orlando out of my mind. I am thinking about how the most deadly mass shooting in the history of this country which experiences way too many mass shootings was against us. Was against people like me. That the shooter would probably have felt accomplished if I had been in that nightclub and had died. I am thinking that the thing that helps me hold onto life more than anything is my skin color and how fucked up the world is that that is true, and if this feels so awful for me how gutted must my LGBTQ+ friends who do not have the life-jacket of whiteness feel?

I have had the same conversation over and over again in the past thirteen or so hours. It starts with either me or someone else who identifies as LGBTQ+ reaching out and saying, “I love you.” And then the other responding in kind. And then a couple more sentences of conversation framing how terrible this is and how screwed up our days have been. But we don’t say much. There’s not much to say. But something makes us reach out and affirm the fact that, “hey, you are loved.”

Love is the basis of my theology. Love, not fear. Love, not hate. Love, not barriers. That we are all loved, deeply and truly, by God who created us and knows us intimately. That there is nothing we can do to earn or lose the love of God. And because of that, in our relationship with God there is growth that can only happen in freedom. In relationships based on fear, we hide from the other and from ourselves. If we are so afraid of doing something that will cause us to lose love, we hide our mistakes, our wrongdoings, our sin, hoping the other won’t find out. In relationships where we know that love is secure, we can be honest about where we have messed up, own our sins, and work to live as people transformed by that love, to do better next time. It is not cheap grace. It is not constantly getting “get out of jail free” cards. It is a love so deep and encompassing that it calls forth our very best. Our response to share that love in tangible ways in our lives and in our world.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the LGBTQ+ community who has not, at some point, been made to feel that their identity makes them unworthy of love. That they were broken, that they were committing the worst of sins by simply acknowledging this part of them, that the world would be a better, purer place if they weren’t here. I think of the extremely high suicide rate within the LGBTQ+ community, particularly LGBTQ+ youth. Kids who are told they are better off dead. Kids who are young but already so tired and don’t think anything will get better, and who can blame them? After all, if 20 white children being killed weren’t enough to pass gun control laws, 50 queer people of color won’t do it, so there’s no way, really, to protect ourselves from the people who hate us. I am worried for these kids, especially. I am grateful to be in a place where I know LGBTQ+ youth will hear words of love and affirmation from the pulpit. It breaks my heart that many probably have never heard that before. Even naming this as a tragedy can be a witness because there are people, likely in your churches if you’re a person at a church, who have been told that it would be a triumph, not a tragedy, if they were to die. I think about the “It Gets Better” project aimed at keeping our youth alive by telling them that things do get better as they get older and more independent and I equal parts think that’s so important and don’t know if we’re actually selling them a lie.

It gets better.
It gets worse.
It goes back and forth.

I don’t go to nightclubs that much, but when I do, they’re gay clubs. When I do, it’s normally for a drag show. I love drag shows. I have literally never seen New Hope in the daylight because I ONLY go there on Monday nights because it’s the closest drag show to Princeton. And I love them because they are sexily subversive. They celebrate what straight/cis culture works to stomp out of people. They claim space we were told we could not have. They are unapologetic. I love them, and I feel so comfortable there.

The last drag show I went to was one Sunday night the past semester in Philly (at Tabu, for those following along). It was a wild night for all of us there for this project for [our seminary] class, but the most moving moment for me was what happened when the hosting queen found out that a sixty year old woman was there celebrating her birthday. She was, presumably, straight, but had a gay son. She loved him deeply and supported him in every way and even go to drag shows with him. And the hosting queen started speaking to the crowd gathered, celebrating this woman who supported her gay son. Leading the crowd in cheering for her, then thanking all parents who support their LGBTQ+ children. Then saying to those gathered that the most important thing we could do was find people who supported us, because not everyone does and we know that too well, but find those people because those people bring us life and we deserve them because we are beautiful people who deserve to be loved. And the crowd talked back, shouting out “yes!” and “that’s right!” and I swear in that moment, I was in church. We were all in church, hearing the Gospel that we were created sacred and loved and naming the truth that this life is hard but we can get through it. Telling us to look for the love that will allow us to live life in freedom.

And most LGBTQ+ people don’t find that in a church. There’s often an underlying message of love, sure, but we have been told so much by churches and Christians and the media that it’s easy to say, “oh, well that love thing includes everything BUT THIS. THIS still condemns me. This still makes me lose that love.”

So to survive, we find that message somewhere else. Often in nightclubs, bars, drag shows. And I think that’s part of why we are so shaken–because it feels like it happened in a sacred place. It happened in the place we’re supposed to go to feel safe and loved and free. It happened in one of our churches.

And I keep thinking about the fact that LGB youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide and that nearly fifty percent of trans youth have serious suicidal thoughts, and I’m thinking about the youth who will see this attack and it will connect to that homophobic/transphobic comment they heard or it will connect to these conversations about how awful it is that the “church is splitting” because of “gay people” or it will connect to how they’ve never heard of any person of their sexual orientation or gender identity succeeding in life or it will connect to the fact that they feel shut out of every example of love shown to them by the media and the church, or it will connect to this feeling that they can never come out without losing the love of their family, their friends, their church, and God but cannot hold this in anymore. And who will think, “Well, if I’m just going to get killed anyway…”

I have said before the LGBTQ+ issues in churches are matters of life and death. I wish I were exaggerating. They are issues of life and death because of suicidal youth whose lives hang in the balance every day. They are issues of life and death because if we create environments that do not show that LGBTQ+ people are worthy of love, people might start to think that we are worthy of death. As clearly has been happening. If you think this shooter was an isolated incident, as I said earlier, you are not paying attention. He was just more effective than most.

People ask me what I can do, and I’ve made nice lists of things in the past, but I think the place to start is what we’ve been doing for each other all day:

Tell people that they are loved.
Do not put a “but” or and “even” on that statement.
Tell them that all that they are is loved.
If you’re a God person, assure them that God loves them.
Name that this is a tragedy. Say it in public. Say it in places you might feel backlash. Don’t stop when it’s no longer convenient.
Offer what you can do and mean it to show them that love.

PLEASE. Please. Please.

Show people they are loved. It is actually life and death.“