On January 21, I participated in an event called
"An Act of Faith: Massachusetts Communities of Faith Speak Out for Transgender Equality." It was organized by Keshet and the Interfaith Coalition for Trans Equality (ICTE), a group that several of us founded in 2007 to actively create spaces supportive of trans people in communities of faith; to recognize the reality that many people of faith support trans people, and that many trans people are are people of faith; and to galvanize and harness the support of faith communities in support of trans civil rights. All of that was on display at our Act of Faith last Wednesday night, and it was powerful to experience. For images of the event by Bay Windows photographer Marilyn Humphries, click here.
We had an array of speakers who shared stories of the intersection of their faith and trans equality: Rabbi Daniel Judson (Director of Professional Development and Placement at Hebrew College Rabbinical School and Member, ICTE), co-chairs and MCs for this event Sean Delmore (Program Coordinator, LGBT@MIT, Candidate for Ordination as a Deacon in the United Methodist Church, and member, ICTE) and Mycroft Masada Holmes (Chair of the Keshet Trans Working Group and Founding Member, ICTE), Gunner Scott (Executive Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition), Matthew O'Malley (Political Director of MassEquality), Judah-Abijah Dorington (Chair of Boston Area Black Pride and Director of LGBTQI Programs at Wellesley College & Executive Director of People to People/Dorrington & Saunders and Associates), Jennifer Levi (Director of the Transgender Rights Project at GLAD), Rev. Tiffany Stewart (Pastor, 
Cambridge Welcoming Ministries, United Methodist Church), Rev. Fr. Toni Amato (Order of Saint John the Divine and Founder of Write Here Write Now), Marla Marcum (Co-Chair, Reconciling Ministries, New England United Methodist Church, Candidate for Ordination as a Deacon in the United Methodist Church, and Member, ICTE), and Massachusetts State Representatives Carl Sciortino (pictured above left) and Denise Provost (pictured to the right). I spoke near the end and introduced the action component of our program. It was especially fun for me to hear Denise's remarks, because she is a member of the parish that sponsored me for ordination, and she told a story about the goofy, supportive way her youngest daughter responded when I transitioned about seven years ago. I can't possibly convey all that people said that evening, but in what follows, I'll share the comments I made. Of course, what others said caused me to change what I'd prepared, but one speaker in particular got me thinking in a new light about an experience I had twelve years ago.
Judah-Abijah Dorrington got up and sang James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the Black National Anthem, and spoke of the multiple struggles against oppression to which it can speak. As I heard her sing it, I suddenly remembered a moment in my life that was punctuated by that particular hymn. And when I got up to speak a few minutes later, I told a story I had not quite narrated in my mind up until that moment.I said that in 1997, when I was in my second year of divinity school and was very new, unsure, and private about wrestling with gender identity, I was also actively discerning when to apply for the ordination process toward priesthood in the Episcopal church, and whether I should apply in Massachusetts (where my partner and I had moved in 1995). But then Phil Nightingale, the senior warden of our parish, died. Phil had an lively, quirky, inspiring spirit, and I very much admired the Ecumenical Task Force on Aids that he and his partner Rusty Miller had co-founded. As Phil's Boston Globe obituary explained, the Task Force brought healing services to churches across the state, beginning in 1985, at a time when churches basically were not dealing with the AIDS epidemic. The process of Phil's death, the vigil we held all night at the parish, and particularly the funeral itself, held at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, had a catalyzing effect upon me. It's still hard to articulate, but what I knew then was that something about that process, and about this diocese and the ministries it supports, grabbed a hold of me and refused to let go. After that funeral, I knew that this was the time and the place to cast my bread on the waters and seek entry into the ordination process.
Almost twelve years later, as I listened to Judah singing, "God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who hast brought us thus far on the way," I suddenly remembered choking out those very words as Phil's casket was rolled down the cathedral aisle, out the door and into its waiting hearse. All of a sudden, I could see how that hymn-- and not simply the existence of it, but the singing of it in that context-- had opened up a space of musical narration in which somehow, with hope, grief and resolve, I could sing in solidarity struggles that I could not yet name, in a community that felt infinitely expansive.
That experience marked an extraordinary moment for me, the kind I like to think of with one of the ancient Greek terms for time, "kairos." While "chronos" refers to time as it unfolds sequentially, kairos speaks to a particularly momentous time, the critical juncture, "the moment of danger and opportunity," the kind of moment in which we stand right now.
[with that, I jumped into my prepared remarks:]
As trans people, as partners and family members, as allies, as people of faith, it is nearly impossible to forget that this is a moment of danger. For one thing, it continues to be dangerous to be a trans person in this country at this time, even as our community makes extraordinary gains. There are so many reasons why now is the time for us to act. We need to act now because trans people are dying in this country at an appalling, under-recognized rate. We know this from our own history here in Massachusetts, having lost Debra Forte and Chanelle Pickett in 1995, and Rita Hester in my own parish’s Allston neighborhood in 1998. But in Memphis, TN, over a six month period between July and December of 2008, three transgender, African American women were shot. Two of them, Duanna Johnson and Ebony Whitaker, died. The third, Leeneshia Edwards, who was shot in the face on December 23, has survived.
We need to act now because many of us come up against discrimination, sometimes overt, often subtle, in our searches for housing and jobs, as we apply to schools, for credit, or seek medical care. Particularly in this chaotic economy, trans people, like all people who struggle against oppression, come up against an enhanced sense of vulnerability, not only through particular acts of discrimination but also because hope can be that much harder to cling to in difficult economic times. And so we stand here tonight, gathered for the first time in the history of this state and, perhaps, in the history of this country, as people of faith communities who have come together to take a public stand for human dignity. Here and now, we join our various voices together, saying explicitly that the “all” in “all are created equal” does and must include transgender people. We stand here tonight, profoundly aware of the danger, sick to death of it, and ready, by God, for change. We cannot let one more year go by without enacting fully inclusive non-discrimination legislation at the federal level, and at the state level, here in Massachusetts.
We are here as people of faith because we believe that danger, like fear, can never have the last word. And with what our new President has called the “audacity of hope,” we are here because we know that we have an unprecedented opportunity. Particularly this week, as we celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, a president more supportive of our lives and livelihoods than any previous president, it could not be clearer that this is a moment of profound opportunity. Indeed, our gathering tonight feels to me like an extension of the incredible dream that we are beginning to live into with this new President. And, of course, this dream is the expansive vision articulated so passionately and brilliantly by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrated earlier this week.
In April of 1963, as Dr. King sat in a jail cell, he responded to white, moderate clergy who had come out against his work in Birmingham, arguing that he was being too disruptive, that now was the time to wait, to be patient, not to press forward. This was an argument that Dr. King could not abide. He responded in his open “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail”, with the familiar words “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Then he continued, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly” [Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” in ed. James Melvin Washington, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers), 290]. That is why we are gathered here as people of faith tonight—because while our faiths are many and varied, we know and we honor the sacred reality that we are all connected. Those of us who are transgender may differ from those of us who are not in a number of profound ways, but make no mistake, all of us suffer when any of us does.
But it isn’t enough for us to simply know that. We have to act on it. As Dr. King continued, “We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of [people] willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always right to do right” (296). My hope is that, in this kairos, this moment of danger and opportunity, we will leave this gathering tonight with what Dr. King termed “a sense of cosmic urgency” (297).
But not before we make our commitment real. I ask you to turn now to the leaf cards under your chairs. These leaves are our way of calling one another forward to recognize our interconnectivity, and the profound impact that we, as people of faith, can have in our communities when we work together in recognition of that connection.
The Tree of Life is an image with which a number of faith traditions express our connection to one another and to all life. And so I invite you to read the suggestions onyour card and to consider how you can make a unique and lasting impact on transgender equality in your faith community and beyond. Then, beginning with those of us in the Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality, and our invited speakers, I invite you to fill out your card and to mark that commitment and connection by coming forward to put it on the tree. When you have finished, please return to your seats for the conclusion of our program.*******
The cards on the tree were quite beautiful, and symbolized nicely what the gathering was all about. Event Co-chairs Sean Delmore and Mycroft Masada Holmes then wrapped up the event.
I am incredibly grateful to Keshet, especially senior organizer Orly Jacobovits, without whom the event would never even have gotten off the ground, let alone come to fruition.
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