Editors Note:
The following posts are intended as informational and not a declaration of support or condemnation of the news, articles, or events listed. It is important to understand the world we liive in in order to make sound personal and biblical choices. These few articles are gleened from the website to help educate. Always take any information offered with “a grain of salt” understanding that stories, or news items, are always presented from an individual’s world view and received through the filters of our own personal world views. The challenge is to find nuggets of truth by sifting through the editorializing. If you completely agree with a story, ask yourself why? If you find a story offensive, again ask why? One of the blessings of being transgender is to understand the middle ground; to attempt to be a healer of a world that is increasingly polarized.
– Light in the Closet
Telling Your Story: The How, When, Why, Who and What of Telling Your Gender Journey Story – Speaker Kathy Randall
Session at Keystone Conference – March 23, Harrisburg PA
March 23, 2023
Stories are powerful things. They can challenge and inspire us. They also help us to connect to each other. By sharing your gender journey story, your challenges, hopes, dreams, and joys you can make important connections. If the story is well thought out and communicated, it can provide compelling context into who you are and an understanding of the “why” behind your gender journey. In this presentation, you will hear video-taped accounts of gender-journey stories from Rabbi Levi Alter and Rev. Monica Joy Cross and what happened as a result of their sharing. Attendees will have an opportunity to frame and share their gender story in a small group. As a minister to the transgender community for over 20 years, I have seen how coming out as trans and attempting to maintain relationships can be difficult to navigate. Although support for those who identify as transgender is gaining advocates, many in business and mainstream faith communities are just ignorant of transgender issues, and therefore unsupportive. Telling our stories can help to change that.
The workshop includes: 1. Workshop outline that covers the how, when, why, who and what of sharing your gender story. This tool will help you understand your motives, who you need to share to and the best timing on when to share your gender journey. 2. There will be a worksheet available for partners and advocates which will cover, “How to support a loved-one’s, partner’s or friend’s gender journey.” 3. Identify potential problem areas with business, family, friends and spiritual community relationships as you share your gender journey. 4. Learn how to connect with others by partnering with them and supporting their stories. 5. Understand the difference between what we want to communicate, what we actually communicate, and how it is received. 6. Age-specific information and how to present it when sharing your story.
Trans Doctor Who Helps Teens Transition Says it’s Now Gone Too Far
Lee Brown
April 17, 2022
A transgender psychologist who has helped hundreds of teens transition has warned it has gone too far and now seen as ‘trendy’. (article)
“A fair number of kids are getting into it because it’s trendy,” Dr. Erica Anderson previously told the Washington Post. “I think in our haste to be supportive, we’re missing that element.”
In her latest interview, she told the LA Times, “To flatly say there couldn’t be any social influence in formation of gender identity flies in the face of reality. Teenagers influence each other. That appears to have been exacerbated by the pandemic, with children becoming more isolated and also leaning more on networks on social media…”
“We’re sailing in uncharted seas,” she warned.
Anderson readily shared her story of how an endocrinologist refused to prescribe hormones and left her feeling deeply ashamed when she first sought them at age 45. She finally got them at 58, and had genital surgery at 61, thrilled to finally “become a woman.” But while thrilled that the world is now more accepting, she fears it has swung to an extreme, noting a 13-year-old patient whose pediatrician put him on testosterone, even though he had not met with a psychologist.
Anderson, a member of the American Psychological Association committee that is writing guidelines for transgender health care, believes some children seek treatment in the hope that it helps with wider psychological problems, leaving them depressed when it doesn’t. Those who are confused about their gender identity also need to wait until they are absolutely sure before acting, she said. Despite her pioneering work, Anderson finds herself at odds with a trend to make it easier for anyone to transition.
Commenting on Dr. Anderson’s comment, Dr. AJ Eckert, medical director of the Gender and Life-Affirming Medicine Program at the Anchor Health Initiative in Stamford, Conn., eschewed the need for therapy. “Being trans or gender diverse is not a mental illness, and compulsory psychotherapy is not the standard of care in the gender-affirming medical model. Forcing transgender and gender diverse youth through extensive assessments, while their cis peers are affirmed in their identity without question, conveys to them that they are not ‘normal,’” they said. “Is it trendy to be (identified with) one of the most marginalized and vulnerable groups?”
Editor Note: Although this article is timely and raises some important concerns, Dr. Anderson needs to be more careful in how she frames those concerns. What we are seeing is, for the first time, some limited abuse from those who are using our hard-won access to medical treatment incorrectly. Some abuse of the progressive strides in healthcare and legal advances will always happen. Progress in the issues of abortion, gay rights, women rights, and racial discrimination (to name a few) has never been without some abuse by those who have gone outside of the original intent while appropriating for themselves those advances or opportunities. No rule-of-law, or medical DSM can ever account for all situations.
Transgender Day of Visibility – Walnut Creek Park
By RK Klein -Light in the Closet
March 31, 2022
A group of about 20 showed up at the downtown Walnut Creek park to rally attention for the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on March 31st. There were four speakers who shared personal and entertaining stories. Included was Kathy Randall of Light in the Closet, who gave an inspirational speech on being seen. “We are a much larger force than what is know. For each of you here, there are a dozen or more who could not make it or were apprehensive in turning out today. You are their voice, and so their voice, through you, is heard. We are a large community and we not going anywhere.”
The event was sponsored by the Rainbow Center of Concord, and ICCCC ONA congregations.
Conservatives doing everything they can to lose the 21st century (editorial)
By Leonard Pitts Jr – Miami Herald
March 15, 2022
On matters of social evolution, they’ve compiled a remarkable record: They’ve always been wrong
It’s a history that provides a jaundiced context for the latest right-wing crusade. Meaning the one against LGBTQ kids. Florida’s Legislature passed its obnoxious “Don’t Say Gay” bill last week. Gov. Ron DeSantis, evidently determined to leave no principle untrampled in his hoped-for march to the White House, is expected to sign it.
The bill, which says educators may not “encourage” discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity, is just the latest front in the right’s war on LGBTQ young people, particularly those who are transgender. The ACLU counts dozens of such bills working their way through legislatures in over two dozen states. This includes Texas, whose attorney general has defined gender-affirming health care as child abuse.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think transgender people just dropped onto the planet from space. They didn’t. The former George Jorgensen made news way back in 1952 when he had sex reassignment surgery in Denmark and returned to the U.S. as a woman named Christine. No, the only thing that is new here is transgender people’s refusal to hide, their determination to live full, free and visible lives in the American mainstream.
Which brings them into conflict with conservatism’s reflexive terror of anything that does not fit inside the white picket fence of its imagination. That tendency to look ever backward toward an imagined better past, that timorous inability to face the future — heck, to face the present — and the challenges of change, is what had conservatives at odds with everyone from Louis Armstrong to Martin Luther King to Gloria Steinem. Read more…
Alabama Is Steps Away From Making Gender-Affirming Care a Felony
By John Casey
March 15, 2022
Alabama’s proposed Vulnerable Child Protection Act would make gender-affirming treatment for transgender adolescents up to age 19 a felony. Senate Bill 184 would punish violators with up to 10 years in prison and is set to be debated in the state House this week. Read more: Read more…
Texas Court Halts Abuse Inquiries Into Parents of Transgender Children
By J. David Goodman
March 11, 2022
A judge said the governor’s order to consider medically accepted treatments for transgender youth as abuse had been improperly adopted and violated the State Constitution. Read more: Read more…
‘We’re going to fight’: Trans people express outrage over anti-LGBTQ measures in Texas, Florida
By Bill Keveney USA TODAY
March 12, 2022
Florida legislation that would restrict discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools reminds 21-year-old Sage Dolan-Sandrino of a transgender bathroom policy that caused her misery when she transitioned as a teen. Read more…
Christian conservatives rattled after Supreme Court rules against LGBT discrimination
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
June 15, 2020
In a landmark decision on Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex also applies to sexuality and gender identity. The ruling was met with widespread praise among LGBT rights groups, which have long argued against such employment discrimination. Read more…
Baptist Pastor Fired After Coming Out As Transgender Woman During Sermon
By Shreyashi Chakraborty
June 2020
An Ontario pastor has been relieved from her position for coming out as a transgender woman during a sermon after her church members voted to remove her. In an online congregation held June 14 via Zoom, the former lead pastor at Lorne Park Baptist Church in Mississauga, Junia ‘June’ Joplin, made the declaration saying, “I want you to hear me when I tell you that I’m not just supposed to be a pastor. I’m supposed to be a woman. My friends, my family, my name is Junia. You can call me June. I’m a transgender woman and my pronouns are she and her.” Read more…
Transgender Latina makes history as Evangelical Lutheran pastor
By Quinn Gawronski
Dec. 12, 2019
“Nobody can question my faith, my devotion to Christ, my devotion to the church,” Pastor Nicole Garcia said. “Being trans is secondary.”
Before coming out as transgender, Nicole Garcia prayed daily that God would “fix” her. When her prayers weren’t answered and the feeling in her gut didn’t go away, she gave up on religion.
Now, nearly four decades later, Garcia stands behind the pulpit at Westview Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, and delivers weekly sermons to a congregation of more than 100 faithful as their ordained pastor. Read more…