General Convention 2012: Off and Running
The TransEpiscopal team has hit the ground running here at The Episcopal Church’s 77th General Convention in steamy Indianapolis.  Most of us arrived on Monday, and yesterday was a day of joy and discovery, as many people who knew each other only online finally got to meet in person.  For the first time we have our own booth in the Convention exhibit hall, and over the last two days we have been meeting people from across the church in that space.  As in 2009, I am so struck by the sense of interconnection, and especially the unexpected ways that people from all across the church are connected specifically to trans people.

Yesterday I met a priest from a Midwestern diocese who had watched the documentary Out of the Box last Saturday evening.  She was moved to make a connection in her sermon between the gospel passage last Sunday and the idea of being and acting “out of the box.”  She talked about how our church would be looking at resolutions adding “gender identity and expression” to the church’s nondiscrimination canons here at General Convention.  Two parishioners then thanked her for her words and shared that each of them were parents of transgender people.  This was the second instance of a priest I know preaching about transgender equality this past Sunday.

The other one was a friend in Massachusetts where our state nondiscrimination law just went into effect on Sunday.  I was moved to see coverage of this law in a headline at the top of the Boston Globe metro section as I flew to Indianapolis Monday morning.  The sense of celebration and of momentum coming into General Convention has been powerful.

There are three resolutions that TransEpiscopal is supporting along with our coalition partners in IntegrityUSA, the Consultation, and the Chicago Consultation:

D002 “Affirming Access to the Discernment Process for Ministry”

This resolution would add “gender identity and expression” to Canon 3.1.2, the church’s nondiscrimination canon for access to the ordination process.  This addition would make explicit that ordained ministry is open to transgender people. 

D019 “Amend Canon I.17.5 - Extending the Rights of Laity”

This resolution would add “gender identity and expression” to Canon 1.17.5, the church’s nondiscrimination canon for access of lay people to all levels of the life of the church.

D022 “Church wide Response to Bullying”

This resolution calls for a church wide response to the epidemic of bullying, including those targeted because of their gender identity or gender expression.

D002 and D019 were assigned to the Ministry Committee, and hearings on them will take place tomorrow at 2pm.  TransEpiscopal members and allies are preparing now to testify.  Once the hearings take place, the committee has to decide whether to send them along to one of the two Houses in The Episcopal Church’s bicameral system.  So stay tuned for more on that front, as well as the fate of D022, the resolution on bullying.

Meanwhile, today has been packed with hearings on various other numerous resolutions, including marriage equality, the impact of DOMA on couples with an immigrant member, and many, many more.  
  
This afternoon, I was joined by Rev. Dr. Christina Beardsley (of Changing Attutude) at the Consultation’s Speaker’s Corner in the exhibit hall. We gave an overview of the trans-related resolutions before us, and the broader context for movement on trans equality in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.  We emphasized that the last General Convention passed four transgender supportive resolutions, falling short only on C061, now called D002.  Tina also spoke about the longstanding presence of transgender clergy in the Church of England, as well as the collaborative work that has been taking place between various "LGB and T"(as she puts it) and allied groups.

Between the end of the Speaker’s Corner and Integrity’s double feature of Out of the Box and Love Free Or Die, we learned that resolutions D002 and D019 were going to receive a joint hearing tomorrow at 2pm in the Ministry Committee.  

With that knowledge, we came into the room packed for the double feature.  Out of the Box had begun when I scooted into a free row to grab a seat.  After sitting down I looked up and realized I was directly behind my bishop Tom Shaw who plays a prominent part in Love Free or Die.  He turned around and grinned at my comment in Out of the Box about my decision to transition feeling like Christmas morning.  I laughed out loud at the scene of him in the water fight.  Seeing each of us up on the big screen was a little surreal.  As Bishop Gene Robinson went on to say in the panel afterward, as difficult a time it is in the life of the church, it is also such an amazing, wondrous time.  What a privilege to be part of this holy work of transformation.

So now at the end of this second full day in Indianapolis, we prepare for our hearing tomorrow.  Please keep us all in your prayers, that minds would be clear and hearts be open.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

From Historic Trans ENDA Testimony to the "Stalling" of a 2006 Antibullying Guide in MA  

Today has been a historic day for transgender people in the U.S. Kylar Broadus, founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, became the first openly transgender person to testify before the U.S. Senate. The subject of his testimony was the Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act – ENDA — that has been stalled in Congress for several years now. At our last General Convention in 2009, The Episcopal Church passed resolutions D012 and C048, putting us on record in support of an ENDA inclusive of gender identity and expression as well as of sexual orientation. 

In his testimony, video of which can be viewed here, and a transcript of which can be found here, Broadus spoke of his transition (from female to male) as well as his work history. Transition was for him “a matter of living the truth, and sharing the truth with the world, rather than living a lie and pretending to be somebody every day that I was not…. [I decided to] bring my full self to the table and to the world.” 

He explained that as he came into a fuller sense of himself in the late 1980s-early 1990s, his work attire gradually shifted from women’s to men’s business attire, and his haircut significantly shortened. His colleagues treated him well, but within six months of telling management of his decision to transition, he “was ‘constructively discharged’…. While my supervisors could tolerate a somewhat masculine-appearing black woman, they were not prepared to deal with my transition to being a black man.” He concluded stating, “it’s devastating, demoralizing, and dehumanizing to be put in th[e] position” of being denied work because of being trans.

As it also emerged today, the same thing can be said for an anti-bullying guide produced under the Romney administration here in Massachusetts in 2006. The Boston Globe reported this morning: “Former governor Mitt Romney’s administration in 2006 blocked publication of a state antibullying guide for Massachusetts public schools because officials objected to use of the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgender’ in passages about protecting certain students from harassment, according to state records and interviews with current and former state officials.” While at the time aides to the governor publicly attributed the delay to a standard review process, in fact an email from May, 2006 revealed otherwise: “Because this is using the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgendered,’ DPH’s name may not be used in this publication,’’ wrote an official in the Department of Public Health.

In other words, the governor did not want to be associated with a guide for protecting youth who might grow up to be like Kylar Broadus, or any of the participants in Integrity’s new video Voices of Witness: Out of the Box. Gay and lesbian youth might be one thing, but bisexual and transgender youth were something else entirely. 

A year and a half removed from the devastating landslide of LGBT suicides last fall, that covert distancing and delay looks even more unconscionable. This afternoon Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley commented, “For the Romney administration to block a discussion on the impact of bullying on LGBT students was to fail to protect some of our most vulnerable children.’’

As General Convention draws near, one of the major priorities of both TransEpiscopal and IntegrityUSA is for The Episcopal Church to pass a resolution on the problem of LGBT bullying. As Harry Knox recently reported, Integrity will be showing the film "Bullied" on July 8th. Today's Senate testimony and Globe stories underscore the urgency of this work, particularly for bi and trans people, that, as Broadus put it,  all of us might be empowered to "liv[e] the truth and share [that] truth with the world."

​- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

After years of planning, IntegrityUSA, in collaboration with TransEpiscopal, has created the documentary Voices of Witness: Out of the Box.  As Integrity Director of Communications Louise Brooks has described it,

"'Voices of Witness: Out of the Box' is a groundbreaking documentary giving voice to the witness of transgender people of faith courageously telling their stories of hope, healing and wholeness.

"Gender identity and gender expression are issues that can easily be misunderstood and cannot be wrapped up in a neat little box. So the goal of "Out of the Box" was to answer some of the most frequently asked questions. We have been blessed by a truly amazing cloud of witnesses who shared their stories and their lives with us. It has been a privilege to work with them to take this project from a dream to a reality as we offer their voices of witness to the church and to the world." -- Louise Brooks, Executive Producer

As one of the participants in the film I see this as both an intersection and an opening. It is an intersection  of trans people and church-- church as site of ongoing growth and striving, and potential source of empowerment. It is also an opening-- an opening for non-trans folks who have never seriously contemplated trans people before, an opening for trans people who have not been able to imagine church as an empowering communal space, and an opening even of trans narrative itself, a first fruits of a much larger process for all of us of listening to the variety of ways in which we identify and narrate our lives.

A huge thank you to IntegrityUSA, to the entire production team for Out of the Box, and particularly to Louise Brooks, for her incredible work on this beautiful documentary.  Please share widely!

​- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

A post by Louise Brooks, cross-posted from the Walking with Integrity blog

Carolyn Louise Woodall got ordained last Saturday to the Sacred Order of Deacons in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin -- smack dab in the middle of California's conservative Central Valley. There was no fanfare, there were no media and there were no protesters. I was there with a film crew to document the event for Integrity’s VOICES OF WITNESS project entitled "Out Of The Box" -- celebrating the lives and witness of transgender Episcopalians.

As the service began we had our cameras ready when the Bishop asked "... if any of you know any impediment or crime because of which we should not proceed, come forward now, and make it known." We were ready … but no one came forward. It was the people's will that Carolyn be ordained and it was their will to uphold her in her ministry – and they said so, loud and clear. On the surface this was your typical ordinary ordination … but truth be told it was anything but.

As I sat in the tiny church watching this ordinary/extraordinary ordination unfold, I remembered my last trip to the Diocese of San Joaquin. It was five years ago – just after the then-sitting Bishop Schofield tried to take the diocese out of the Episcopal Church and become the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin: a schismatic response to the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson and the blessing of same sex unions.

Bishop Schofield – arguably one of the most reactionary bishops in the Episcopal Church – would not ordain women to the priesthood and would not give communion to gay persons. People joked that he was more catholic than the Catholics – and when he became a bishop he added the name John to his birth-name David becoming Bishop John-David.

Four of us, LGBT leaders from the Diocese of Los Angeles, traveled the long Central Valley highway lined with citrus trees, table grapes, raisins, almond groves and other visually interesting crops, to meet with the Remain Episcopal team. They were the folks who stayed. And that day this faithful remnant of Episcopalians described to us the goals they had set for San Joaquin: to rebuild the diocese, to ordain women, to welcome and include all the strangers at the gate. And as I sat there in the pew in St. Anne’s, Stockton at the ordination of Carolyn Louise Woodall, I was aware that they have come a long way in those five years. A very long way.

Carolyn Louise Woodall was born out of the box. "I had known I was different since I was four or five years old, I just didn’t figure out the extent of my differences until much later in life. It isn’t as if there weren’t clues, it was just that I had gotten very good at denial. I never even heard the word 'transsexual' until college, and then I had a passing thought that it might apply to me, but quickly buried that thought. As time went on, however, the thought that I might be transsexual kept resurfacing and I continued to bury it as best I could."

But she couldn't bury it forever. "I could learn to live with it, start living as a woman, and move on with life or, I could kill myself. I decided on suicide that night. I sat there convinced of a couple of things. One was that I was an abomination before God. God made me male at birth and I would be unfaithful to God by changing that. Additionally, this was wrong. So was suicide, but that night I prayed that God would consider suicide the lesser sin and forgive me for what I was about to do."

Fate intervened and Carolyn was relieved." I quickly realized that I had been looking for a reason not to go through with it and was very glad I had found one."

Carolyn Woodall always loved the church. She sang in choirs from a young age and felt a call to ministry as early as she can remember. She entered the discernment process as a transgender woman and the Church received her call last Saturday.

She was ordained by one of the great champions of inclusion and giants of justice in the Episcopal Church: Bishop Chet Talton. Bishop Talton – who previously served as Bishop Suffragan in my diocese of Los Angeles so I can brag on him a bit -- has thrown down a gauntlet of welcome in the Diocese of San Joaquin: “Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself, you are welcome here." And they are.

Carolyn's ordination service was hosted by the Reverend Lyn Morlan, Rector of St. Anne's Church in Stockton. Five years ago she wouldn't have been licensed to serve in the Diocese of San Joaquin, let alone called to be the rector of a parish. And tears came to my eyes as I watched a gay couple come forward to the communion rail as I remembered the horror story of a another gay couple being turned away at the altar a few short years ago.

So here’s my message to those who are discouraged and think the church is not moving fast enough: take heart, it is happening. Giants of justice like Bishop Chet Talton are making it happen. Integrity USA is making it happen. Each and every one of you is making it happen. We set audacious goals and we achieve incremental victories every day. Saturday’s ordination of Carolyn Louise Woodall was surely an audacious victory in the Diocese of San Joaquin. And if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

In Texas and Tallahassee; South Florida and South Carolina – and in all the other places where the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments is still a goal and not a reality. It's just a matter of time. We are at the tipping point. And we are in it to win it.

Many thanks to those brave leaders who didn't give up. To the Remain Episcopal folks who rebuilt a diocese. To Bishop Chet Talton for being the right shepherd in the right place at the right time. And especially to Deacon Carolyn Louise Woodall for modeling for us God's mission: to be your true and authentic self so you can have a true and authentic relationship with Him in order to call others into the circle of God’s inclusive love.

Louise Brooks serves on Integrity's Board of Directors and is their Director of Communications.  She is currently the Executive Producer of VOICES OF WITNESS: Out Of The Box....a video that celebrates the lives and witness of transgender Episcopalians. The DVD, complete with a study guide, will be released in May, 2012 as a gift to the church from Integrity.

For Immediate Release:

Anaheim, CA (July 17, 2009): For the first time in its history, the Episcopal Church has taken official actions in support of transgender civil rights and inclusion at its 76th General Convention. 

“It was a true privilege to participate in the legislative process of this Church, to bear witness to transgender lives and experiences, and to urge the Episcopal Church to fully include and to stand in solidarity with us,” commented the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, a member of TransEpiscopal and Integrity USA. “I am thrilled to be able to say that the General Convention voted overwhelmingly to put the Episcopal Church on record in support of such legislation as the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and analogous efforts at municipal and state levels. But I am even more moved to say how many people spontaneously shared with us how their eyes have been opened, their hearts turned, by our presence and stories here. To have someone stop me in a coffee line to say, ‘I had never thought about this issue before, and I’m going to take what I have learned here and share it with my little congregation in the Ozarks’ means more than I can say.”

Today the Convention completed approval of resolutions supporting the enactment of anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation protecting transgender people at local, state and federal levels. The House of Deputies passed these resolutions overwhelmingly on Wednesday, and the House of Bishops then approved these resolutions today in near-unanimous votes. 

These actions took place as the United States Congress debates both the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which respectively address hate crimes and discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, and disability as well as gender identity and expression.

Testifying in hearings at various levels of the Convention were representatives of the organizations TransEpiscopal and Integrity USA, including the Episcopal Church’s first openly transgender Deputy, Dante Tavolaro of Rhode Island.

In addition to today’s actions, earlier this week the Convention approved two other transgender related resolutions. The first adds “gender identity and expression” to its nondiscrimination policy for hiring lay employees, while the second calls for the revision of church paper and electronic forms to allow a wider range of gender identifications. 

“As we celebrate this moment and give thanks for the amazing allies walking with us, particularly Integrity USA and the Consultation, we look forward to progressing further toward full inclusion of transgender people —and, indeed, all people -- in all areas of ministry in The Episcopal Church.”

Contacts: Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge at cepart@yahoo.com 
Rev. Michelle Hansen at hansen_michelle@sbcglobal.net 
And see our blog coverage of Convention at blog.transepiscopal.com

****************************************************************************************
From Integrity USA 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ANAHEIM, CA (July 17, 2009)--The Episcopal Church turned an important corner at this General Convention and Integrity applauds the hard, faithful work of the bishops and deputies who brought us closer to the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments. We came to this convention committed to moving the church beyond B033 and forward on equality for the blessing of same-sex unions--and we are beyond gratified that we have realized both of those goals.

Thirty three years after promising a "full and equal claim" to the gay and lesbian baptized, the Episcopal Church has affirmed equal access to ordination processes for all orders of ministry for all the baptized, has approved a broad local option for the blessings of our relationships, and has called the church to work together toward common liturgical expressions of those blessings.

It is a great day for the church and a greater day for the witness to God’s inclusive love.

"While Integrity’s advocacy work is not yet done," said Integrity President Susan Russell, "the actions here in Anaheim liberate us to get on with our evangelism work--proclaiming the good news of an Episcopal Church that welcomes not only LGBT people looking for a spiritual home but ALL those seeking a faith community that shares their core values of justice, compassion, inclusion, and love."

"We celebrate this historic movement forward and we commit ourselves to this church we love and serve to continue to witness to the good news of Christ Jesus present in our lives, our vocations, and our relationships. We call others to 'come and see' what we have found and seen and experienced in the Episcopal Church."

"Integrity applauds the hard work of all our allies in this struggle and lifts up particularly the witness of our TransEpiscopal colleagues whose courageous work at this convention has been truly extraordinary. We look forward to working with all our allies as we move forward together into God’s future, giving thanks for the good work here in Anaheim that has brought us closer to that church with 'no outcasts' to which former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning called us. 

Contacts: 
Louise Brooks, Director of Communications, tvprod@earthlink.net, (626) 993-4605