This is a strange, liminal time in the liturgical year, when signs of endings are, as the hymn puts it, all around us, even as we look forward to the harbinger of hope and new birth soon to be announced in Advent. 

For those of us in the trans community, this is a liminal time in another way—a time when we actively remember and face the ongoing reality of our vulnerability to violence and death, particularly for trans women of color. And it is a time when we seek to galvanize ourselves and our allies, to take our horror, grief, and outrage and harness it for change. To that end, this Saturday, November 20th, marks the 11th annual, International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR).

Brief History

As it so happens, TDOR started with a local murder here in Boston. On November 28, 1998 Rita Hester was found dead, having been stabbed multiple times by an assailant who has never been identified. In the days following her murder, a vigil was held down the street from my former parish, St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s in Allston, MA, where Rita lived. Across the country, San Francisco activist Gwen Smith then started the Remembering Our Dead website, which began keeping track of trans people around the world who had died due to transphobic violence (that work is now carried on by Ethan St. Pierre at this site). Gwen also organized a vigil in San Francisco in 1999 that inspired similar events around the world. The most common date for holding TDOR, November 20th, marks the death of another Boston trans woman, Chanelle Pickett, who had been murdered on that date in 1995. TDORs now happen around the globe, and in some cases expand to include educational events. Here in Massachusetts, this is Trans Awareness Week, with multiple activities happening across the state.  

What Your Congregation Can Do This Week

* go to a TDOR in your community. Listen, support, be present as an ally

* host a TDOR in your community—more and more churches are opening their doors in this way, though the events themselves are not usually religious services. Indeed, it is important to be sensitive to the fact that many members of the trans community feel deeply alienated from religious traditions and communities. Simply opening your door, making space for the trans community to come together and organize its own event, is incredibly powerful. More and more Episcopal parishes and cathedrals are hosting these events-- here in Boston, for instance, TDOR will be hosted by the Crossing and the Cathedral Church of St. Paul this Saturday at 6pm). In Sacramento, California, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (@ 27th & Capitol) will be hosting the city's TDOR with a candlelight vigil at 6:30 p.m. 

* Host another event in trans week (or at another time of the year), like an open mic night, or a film viewing, again, making sure that it is organized by the local trans community.

* Consider making a special space in your service this Sunday to honor the trans community. Perhaps in your Prayers of the People, for instance, you might name those who have died this past year and/or compose a special collect; perhaps you might mention this event in a sermon—be creative, open and compassionate (and if you’re willing to then share what you did and how it went, it would be great to include such vignettes in future blog posts).

* However and whenever you are able, please pray for the trans community. Pray for our strength and stamina in this newly challenging political climate, as we continue to fight for basic nondiscrimination and anti-violence legislation, as we strive for equal access to health care, as we make our way in all sorts of vocations, families, and faith communities.  

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge 

Bishops M. Thomas Shaw and Roy ("Bud") Cederholm of the Diocese of Massachusetts this week sent letters to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo pressing them to pass the state's Transgender Civil Rights bill. "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes" (House Bill #1728 and Senate Bill #1687) is slated to either make it out of the Judiciary Committee or die there for a third straight year this Friday, May 7th. 

The bishops' letter follows unprecedented coverage of the bill by Boston area newspapers (including a supportive op ed by the Globe), after Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker announced that he would veto the legislation if it crossed his desk. His team handed out fliers referring to the legislation as "the bathroom bill," taking up the rhetoric of the virulently anti-LGBT group Mass Resistance (and groups battling similar legislation in other states) which tries to stoke fears that such legislation will make women and children vulnerable in bathrooms and locker rooms. 

The bishops' letter (posted with permission) follows:
April 30, 2010

The Hon. Deval L. Patrick
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02108


Dear Governor Patrick,

We write to express our strong support for an act to add gender expression and identity to our Commonwealth’s antidiscrimination and hate crimes laws, and to ask you to work to ensure its passage.
As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families. Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends and community leaders. Again and again, we hear how they have struggled against incredible odds and pressures to be true to their identity as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.

It pains us that even as transgender people claim their identities and step into newness of life, they face discrimination and violence that undermines their human dignity. A November 2009 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 97 percent of respondents had been harassed or mistreated on the job, and 26 percent had been fired for being transgender. You will recall that in November 1998, an Allston transgender woman, Rita Hester, was murdered and her killer never found. This local tragedy led to an annual Nov. 20 international Transgender Day of Remembrance, for transgender people who have died, especially those who have been killed or taken their own lives. It is fitting that our state should model amendment of life and hope for a future that is better than this sad past.
Adding gender identity and expression to the state’s nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws is no isolated concern of a special interest group. The disproportionate suffering of transgender people should grieve the hearts of all who love justice and liberty. Both the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church are on record in support of full equality for transgender people (resolutions attached).

So many of the arguments against the full inclusion of transgender people in our society are driven by unfounded fear. Transgender people are simply seeking the removal of barriers that prevent them from flourishing as full members of and contributors to society. One need not fully comprehend what it is like to walk in their shoes to provide them with the protections every citizen—every person—is due. Please act to ensure their rights.

Faithfully,

The Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE 
Bishop
The Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm
Bishop Suffragan

Enc.


Resolution D012: Support of Transgender Civil Rights

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one's gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim's gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further

Resolved, That the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to appropriate congressional leadership to the Chair of the National Governors Association, the President of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and to the President of the U. S. Conference of Mayors.

Voted by the 223rd Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Nov. 7-8, 2008, Hyannis:  
Resolution in support of transgender civil rights and inclusion in the ministries of all the baptized


Resolved, that the 223rd Convention of the Diocese of Massachusetts supports the enactment of laws at the local, state and federal level that a) prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or the expression of one’s gender identity, and b) treat physical violence inflicted on the basis of a victim’s gender identity or expression as a hate crime; and be it further

Resolved, that the Secretary of Convention convey this resolution to the Massachusetts State Legislature, and the Massachusetts representatives in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives; and be it further

Resolved, that this Convention submit to the General Convention the following resolution: Resolved that the words “gender identity and expression” be inserted into Title III, Canon 1, Sec. 2 directly following the words “sexual orientation” and before the words “disabilities or age.”

As we near the end of Epiphany, season of illumination, the signs of God's presence among us begin to overwhelm. Two images from yesterday's readings for the fifth Sunday in Epiphany offer a strange combination-- one of abundance and the other of desolation-- that echo two major, recent events in the U.S. trans community. 

In the gospel of Luke we had the improbable plenitude of fish pulled up by Peter and his companions upon the prompt of Jesus. So many were these fish that they threatened to sink the boats into which they had flopped. "Go away from me!" cried an unnerved Peter, knee deep in slimy muck, "I am a sinful man."  

And in the Hebrew Bible reading, we had the fearsome scene of Isaiah's prophetic call, in which seraphim touch his lips with a live coal and God commands him to speak difficult truths to a people far from ready to hear them. The passage ends with successive images of desolation.  

For trans people in the U.S., the last two weeks have brought an overwhelming combination -- to consider only two major news stories-- of grief and victory: a week of desolation in which the Houston trans community grappled with the murder of one of its own, followed by a precedent-setting decision by the US Tax Court in favor of a Massachusetts trans woman.  

In July of 2007, a Boston area woman named Rhiannon O'Donnabhain decided to sue the IRS. At issue was the agency's denial of her tax write-off of expenses related to her transition from male to female. As the original Boston Globe article reported, she could have repaid "the approximately $5,000 she received in her tax refund, but decided to challenge the IRS because she believes the ruling against her was rooted in politics and prejudice."  

O'Donnabhain declared, "'This goes way beyond money. If I were to give the money back, it would be saying it's OK for you to do this to me. It is not OK for them to do this to me or anyone like me."

You tell 'em, I remember thinking as I read the story. I never tried to write off expenses related to my own transition-- I remember thinking about it, and even discussing the possibility in a peer support group, but I didn't try. I sure could have benefited from it on my then graduate student budget (almost every insurance company explicitly denies coverage for any medical care related to transition).

Then last week we got the very good news that the US Tax Court ruled 11-5 in O'Donnabhain's favor in this first-of-its-kind decision. Not only is it a ruling that respects O'Donnabhain; it's also a decision that could begin to open the door for insurers to consider procedures related to bodily transition as medical, not cosmetic. See the National Center for Transgender Equality's report on the case here. 

As Jennifer Levi, Massachusetts-based attorney for the Transgender Project at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), commented in last week's Boston Globe story: 

“I think what the court is saying is that surgery and hormone therapy for transgender people to alleviate the stress associated with gender identity disorder is legitimate medical care."

GLAD senior staff attorney Karen Loewy added in a press conference, “It’s incredibly big to have a statewide court setting a national precedent. This is the first time a court that has jurisdiction nationally has reached this conclusion.”

As Chuck Colbert reported, "the tax court ruled that GID [Gender Identity Disorder, which is listed in the DSM] is a 'disease' within the meaning of the tax code. The court said the IRS’s claim that all the treatments were 'cosmetic' was 'at best a superficial characterization of the circumstances that is thoroughly rebutted by medical evidence.' The court said that the IRS must consider sex reassignment surgery in the same manner, for example, as an appendectomy or even heart surgery."

Not all procedures one might undergo would necessarily count as medical, for tax deduction purposes, but the fact that some clearly do is a big deal for those trans folks who medically transition.  

I add that caveat about transition because it's important to remember that a) not all trans folks actually do medically transition, and that b) those who do change their bodies do so in a variety of ways, contra the assumptions underlying the oft-asked query, 'have you had the surgery?'. Plus, c) in addition to differences of embodiment, there are also a variety of ways that people narrate their experience. While plenty of folks resonate with statements such as O’Donnabhain's of feeling "trapped in the wrong body", many of us don't experience ourselves in those terms.  

That said, this is a major victory that brings us a step closer to being treated with the dignity we expect and deserve. 

And, frankly, the trans community really needed some good news last week. Because two weeks ago we began mourning the death of yet another trans person found murdered, this time in Houston, Myra Chanel Ical. Ical's death marks the seventh time a gender variant person has been murdered in Houston over the past ten years, as Chris Seabury reported for Edge Boston. Ical died, as the Executive Director of the the Transgender Foundation of America, Cristan Williams, put it in an interview with KHOU, "struggling for her life." “It’s personal," Wiliams continued, "I feel it on a personal level."

Ical was found at 2 in the afternoon in an empty lot. Local leaders feel strongly that given her proximity to a busy intersection, someone must have seen something. And given that the murder took place in Houston's Montrose neighborhood, an LGBT stronghold, witnesses (if there are any) could well be LGBT themselves. But relations between the LGBT community and the Houston police are not strong, Williams commented: "The LGBT community feels very isolated because of the Houston Police Department’s (HPD) often violent past towards LGBT Houstonians." She is calling for the appointment of an LGBT police liaison. 

Ical's memorial service was held two weeks ago today. Featuring a moment of silence followed by a moment of noisemaking, the service aimed both to honor Ical's memory and to "encourage people to make noise about the violence that is inflicted on our community," as Kelli Busey reported on planetransgender.

The local news coverage of the memorial is below.

It is crucial to make some noise, not only in memory of those we have lost but also out of sheer determination to forge our way forward. Thank God for the community in Houston, for the ways in which they are clearly claiming their power. Thank God for the courage of Rhianon O'Donnabhain who was willing to make noise and say "this is not OK."  

The catch of the trans community at this time and place is indeed overwhelming, a decidedly mixed bag. As we progress, we find ourselves still very much in the wilderness.

As we move toward my very favorite Sunday in the liturgical year, Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, I am mindful of the combination of glory and grief that are mysteriously incorporated in the image of the Transfiguration. The New Zealand Prayerbook's revision of the 1928 BCP collect for the Transfiguration says it particularly well:

God of life and glory, 
your Son was revealed in splendour 
before he suffered death upon the cross; 
grant that we, beholding his majesty, 
may be strengthened to follow him 
and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; 
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, 
one God now and for ever. 
Amen.  

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
-Rom 8:38-39

A lobby day for transgender equality yesterday capped off what has been, to put it mildly, an extraordinarily intense week here in Massachusetts.  

I attended the lobby day in support the H1728/S1687 “An Act Relative To Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes” bill with my partner and our three-month-old son, and delivered a brief invocation at the end of the speeches in my capacity as Co-Chair of the locally based Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality.  

The mood in the historic Nurses Hall at the State House was tense, energetic, and laced with anger in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s Tuesday defeat of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley. Brown’s win removes Senate Democrats’ sixty-vote supermajority and imperils the passage of national health care reform legislation.  

Coakley had been widely backed by the state’s transgender community, as Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition Executive Director Gunner Scott forcefully expressed in a Bay Windows opinion letter* last September: “as State Attorney General, Martha Coakley came out early for transgender civil rights as the first statewide elected official to publicly support ‘An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.’” Coakley also “sought civil rights injunctions in numerous cases involving hate crimes against LGBT victims” including one “against two men who attacked a transgender teenager in a Dorchester pizza shop.”

Meanwhile, as Chuck Colbert reported in Bay Windows* yesterday, the Massachusetts LGBT community was angered this election by “anti gay-baiting robo calls” that began plaguing Massachusetts phone lines three days before voters hit the polls. Originating “in a 202 area code from the Washington, D.C. [area], a recorded male voice asks residents if they view marriage defined as ‘only between one man and one woman.’ If they indicated ‘Yes’ they were urged to vote for Brown, ‘the only candidate with a proven track record’ of supporting traditional marriage. The call also labeled Coakley as a ‘radical’ same-sex marriage supporter who opposed letting the people vote on the issue and who used taxpayer dollars to support a same-sex marriage ‘agenda.’”

With the Supreme Court just yesterday approving by a 5-4 margin that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited amounts on federal elections, the floodgates of such robo-calls and other methods of bombardment would appear to be opening at the national level. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued that to prevent such spending is to censure free speech. “When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,’’ he wrote. 

Add to this mix the continuing cloud of grief and anxiety hovering over the many intersecting communities devastated by last week’s 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Numerous people in New England had connections to the events in Haiti, including members of the large Boston Area Haitian community, the Sisters of Saint Margaret, and medical teams from Boston based Partners in Health.  

And add to that list the trans community which learned last weekend of the death of Flo McGarell, a visual artist and trans man from Newbury, Vermont, who lived in the city of Jacmal for the past six years, serving as director of the FOSAJ, a non-profit art center. The New England Cable News** did what struck me as a very respectful interview with McGarrell’s grieving parents and, perhaps without meaning to, gestured toward the complexity of McGarrell’s gender identity and expression. In an in-depth interview with the art 21 blog about his wildly creative art, Flo described himself as “a total gender mash up” which was “a constant and humorous topic of discussion” in Jacmal. When asked about what guided his artistic vision, Flo answered:

“Don’t hide, don’t lie.
Do that which scares me.
Resist the urge to settle.
Be as many things as possible in this lifetime.”

His loved ones are organizing memorials and tributes at this site.  

With such losses along with the sour economy on the minds of lobby day attendees yesterday, a fundamental question emerged: how can we help return a sense of confidence to lawmakers who may be afraid to fight for any legislation considered “controversial” right now? How can we break through this late-January crust of fear?

Fear may be eroding Massachusetts’s transgender nondiscrimination legislation, just as it is at work in the stalled Employment Nondiscrimination Act in Washington. D.C. How is it that over 105 state lawmakers (out of a total of 200) have signed on as co-sponsors of the MA bill, that a poll conducted last November by Lake Research Partners showed that 76% of Massachusetts residents and 80% of Massachusetts women support it, that Governor Deval Patrick has signaled his enthusiastic support, and still this bill has not gotten out of committee? We cannot let the events of this week, devastating as they are, deter us from this crucial task.  

As I think and pray about all of these swirling currents, as I watch the dynamics of fear playing out all around me, I can’t help but think of McGarrell’s conscious ethic of fearlessness. And that sentiment, in this week’s context, draws my mind to the Apostle Paul writing to communities in Rome about the eager longing with which creation waits to be set free from its bondage. We may groan inwardly now, he says, and we may feel alone in our labor, but the Spirit indeed intercedes for us, and urges us onward, never, ever separate from the love of God, as we collaborate in building God’s glorious dream. 

As the three of us emerged from the State House, we were dazzled by a brilliant, cold blue sky and streams of sunlight. 


****************************************************************************

Here is the invocation, which uses language tailored for a group of numerous religious (and nonreligious) traditions:

Nurses’s Hall, State House 
Boston, Massachusetts 
January 21, 2010

An Invocation for Transgender Lobby Day

May the Holy One of all our traditions bless, protect and empower us, illumining us with insight, calm and unfathomable fortitude.

May we be reminded of the remarkable strength that lies within us, urging us onward even in face of the steepest odds. 

May our hearts be filled with gratitude and awe for the sacred community gathered here today: trans people, partners, allies, families of all configurations, people of all races and ethnicities, sexual orientations, national origins, religious and spiritual traditions, professions and vocations.  

May the Divine Spirit flowing among us stir up our prophetic anger at the evils of apathy and expediency as much as of bigotry and ignorance.  

And may we go forth with boldness, empowered to bear witness to the truth of our lives and the birthright of our human dignity. 

All this we ask in the name of the All-Holy One who urges us into life and love, and sets us free. Amen.

​-The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

* The publication Bay Windows no longer exists, but Gunner Scott's letter has been archived on a Transgender News public google group and Church Colbert's article, "Dems lose critical 60th Senate seat in Mass" is archived at Keen News Service.  

** The New England Cable News has removed this post from its website  

November in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachsusetts has been quite the month on the LGBT front with big ticket items during our Diocesan Convention, to Transweek and Transgender Day of Remembrance, to this weekend’s announcement about the role of clergy in same sex marriage.

At our Diocesan Convention during the first weekend of November, a resolution was overwhelmingly passed expressing our hope that Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III would give clergy permission to legally solemnize same sex marriages. +Tom has long been a supporter of LGBT people in general – and speaking as a trans priest whom he ordained, I mean it when I include the T – and equal marriage in particular, stepping out in support of equal civil marriage during this state’s protracted battle over it.  

But once gay couples were legally allowed to wed, Episcopal clergy were still limited to blessing said couples. And while I realize just being allowed to do blessings would be a coup in some dioceses, here being limited to blessings felt like a pastoral nightmare. I can’t tell you how many clergy have had repeated conversations with couples about how they could solemnize some marriages but not others. Some clergy have refused to solemnize any marriages in the in-between time of the past five years. And so, while the conversation about whether we should even “be in the marriage business” as legal representatives of the state goes on, that is a conversation that I suspect will take this Church a long time to sort out. It’s a lot more difficult to disentangle than I think people on all sides of the debate realize. In the meantime, to me it has made no sense to refuse to let same sex couples in the solemnization door while we figure out whether we want to restrict our involvement in all marriages to blessings.

Another way I have personally faced this issue is in doing trans marriages. We who are trans also face limitations in our ability to wed. Much depends not only on whether our partnerships are gay, bi, or heterosexual – just like everyone else -- but also on whether our legal documentation (e.g. drivers licenses) accurately reflects our gender. And when I say accurate, I mean whether it reflects our identities, not the meanings that others might write on our bodies. In some states changing appropriate identification is easier than in others (for instance, Ohio is notoriously difficult). So when a couple with a trans member has approached me to do their wedding (and I have now done several), one of the things I have had to ask at some point is what the gender markers on their drivers licenses say. In some cases I have been able to bless only and in others I have been able to bless and solemnize. Each time I have been aware that I am part of the ongoing transformation of marriage in this time and place. Because, as I see it, marriage is not now and has never been static. Its meaning and form has long been changing. What was the miracle that Jesus undertook at Cana? The transformation of water into wine. Our relationships are to be sacred vessels in which we walk together through the changes and chances of this life.

But I have to say—and I say this as someone who obviously cares a lot about the marriage debates -- all the energy we pour into marriage can get pretty irritating to the trans community. Because even though we are impacted by the rules regarding marriage as well, marriage is not the most important thing to the trans community (insofar as we can say there is a single trans community—there are indeed numerous communities). Protecting our most basic human rights are. Keeping members of our community safe from violence – as our sisters of color most often experience – and free from often blatant discrimination on the job, in schools, housing, credit, and medical care, is what we are most concerned about. And so we are pleased that the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act is finally now law, but we wait eagerly for the passage of a fully inclusive Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the passage of local and state laws that safeguard us in our various communities.

November is a month that the trans community around the globe is increasingly claiming as its own. The main impetus for this is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) which takes place every year on November 20th. Fourteen years ago, an African American Bostonian named Chanelle Pickett was murdered here in Boston on that date. I remember it well because I was a first year MDiv student interning at the Victim Recovery Program at the Fenway Community Health Center at the time, and it was also my birthday. Three years later, on November 28th, 1998 another African American woman named Rita Hester died in Brighton, MA, three blocks from the congregation I now serve, St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s. This murder sparked a vigil on Brighton Avenue across from the place she was last seen. One year later, the trans community in San Francisco marked that anniversary with the first ever Transgender Day of Remembrance. And so the TDOR tradition, which is now international, was born.  

Last year for the first time, Boston’s TDOR was held at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s in a secular event that packed the small church. This year, once again, we were asked to host this event (read about it here in the Allston/Brighton TAB; photos by Marilyn Humphries are here). It was a particular honor to be able to share with the gathered community that at its General Convention this past summer The Episcopal Church went on record in support of our full civil rights. And in another important demonstration of support and encouragement, the Crossing, the emergent church style congregation at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, held a special service in honor of TDOR on Thursday evening, November 19th, also hosting Transcriptions, the local trans/queer themed open mic. More and more Episcopal congregations are opening their arms to trans people.

And then yesterday lay and ordained leaders in Diomass received a beautifully clear letter from our bishop declaring that as of Advent I clergy in this diocese are indeed authorized to solemnize the marriages of same sex couples (read about it in the Boston Globe or Bay Windows). No more do gender markers on licenses matter. As I talked about it on the phone with a friend and fellow trans priest, I said, “what a relief!” He replied, “I know—now I wanna run out and find a gay couple to marry!” 

And so life here in Massachusetts continues to move forward with blessings amid all our complexities. But to me the greatest gift of all this November is my son who was born in mid-October. Today, literally as I wrote this piece, he smiled at me for the first time. God is so good.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

This piece was originally written for the Walking with Integrity blog.

I spent this afternoon in the House of Deputies, along with Donna Cartwright and Rev. Karen McQueen of the Diocese of LA, drinking coffee and eating chocolate, trying to stay awake, waiting for D012 to come up. This is the resolution sponsored by Byron Rushing of MA, Sarah Lawton of CA and Dante Tavolaro of RI which would put the Episcopal Church on record in supports transgender civil rights. 

At the very same time, three thousand miles away, people gathered at a hearing of the Massachusetts Judiciary Committee regarding a transgender nondiscrimination bill ("An Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes" HB 1728 & SB 1687. The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition's photo gallery of the hearing can be found here). It may surprise you to note that Massachusetts is not one of the thirteen states + D.C. to have discrimination protections for trans people. I testified at the hearing for another version of this bill last year and would have again this year were I not here at GC. I am proud to be able to report that the Very Rev. Jep Streit, Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, testified in favor of this legislation today. To read a comprehensive article about the hearing in Bay Windows, the Boston Area LGBT weekly, click here. Video from the press conference that preceded the Massachusetts hearing is at the bottom of this post. 

After posting here and on facebook, I tweeted about the simultaneity of our work here at GC and in MA: "Love to all at MA trans legislative hearing right now! Take heart: HoD just passed C061 which now goes to bishops." Later, I picked up tweets from at least two people saying they had mentioned GC's trans resolutions during their testimony in MA. One suggested that this witness is sign to the rest of the country, and beyond, that trans issues are neither "obscure" nor "bizarre".  

Now, I know a bunch of folks here are showing some signs of "ubuntu fatigue" (for those who don't know, it's a word that means "I in you and you in me" and is the theme of this Convention), but if this interlinked witness isn't an example of "ubuntu", I don't know what is.

In between that discovery, while I still sat in the House of Deputies, I got a text from Michelle Hansen, who was sitting in on the House of Bishops that two trans-positive resolutions had passed the House of Bishops. To me, this news came out of nowhere-- I knew they had been approved by their committee, as reported in an earlier post, but I did not realize they were headed first to the House of Bishops.  

The first of these resolutions reads:

"Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That this 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church recommends and encourages all bodies of The Episcopal Church to utilize all available resources to revise and adapt forms to be fully inclusive of all people: by including lines not only for one's legal name, but also for one's preferred name as well as one's gender identity and pronoun preference."

EXPLANATION

For the second General Convention in a row, the Episcopal Church is considering legislation pertaining to transgender people. Resolutions include changing Canon III.1.2 and III. 1. 3 to include "gender identity and expression"; supporting transgender civil rights; and supporting a fully inclusive ENDA (Employment Non-discrimination Act). This resolution extends into the life of the Church the respect and recognition of transgender people conveyed by these other resolutions, by calling for a small but significant change in forms. This resolution would add four lines to Church forms: legal name, preferred name, gender identity and pronoun preference. 

The addition of preferred name to legal name would benefit many people. A person's legal name could be William, but he might go by a middle name. For transgender persons, the "preferred name" line can facilitate respectful treatment even if they do not have the financial means to legally change a birth name to one that reflects gender identity. 

The choice to write out one's gender identity (one's inner sense of oneself as a man, a woman, or another gender category), rather than the restriction of the categories "male" or "female" from a multiple choice dropdown menu, would significantly facilitate the ability of transgender people to access and take their place within the life of the Church. 

Similarly, the ability to choose the pronouns by which one is referenced deeply impacts transgender people's experience on a very concrete level, moment by moment. The imposition of pronouns with which one does not identify can be experienced as profoundly dehumanizing. 

Adding these five lines to church forms would represent a small but significant step forward as transgender people increasingly take their place in the life of the Church. In a highly concrete way, these changes would reflect our conviction, as stated in our Baptismal Covenant, that we respect the dignity of every human being. Forms are, in a real sense, doorways that can significantly frame our experience of the Church. For transgender people-and indeed, for all-they should stand open, inviting and valuing full participation."

The second of these resolutions, submitted by Dr. Louie Crew, is D032. It reads:

"Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 76th General Convention commit The Episcopal Church itself not to discriminate in employment of lay employees based on race, color, sex, national origin, age, familial status, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity, or gender expression."

EXPLANATION

"The Church is generally exempt from federal employment discrimination laws, and those of most states and localities, but except for discrimination based on religion which may be appropriate for some positions, The Episcopal Church supports the principles of non-discrimination. It should take credit for that position public. Many but not all of the above categories are set forth in resolutions of previous General Conventions but this would put them all in one convenient location."

Michelle heard what little discussion there was on these resolutions, and may want to comment more. The only reservation, again raised by Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, was about the term "gender expression." Bishop Marc Andrus had distributed copies of the NGLTF definitions to the House of Bishops which defined that term, but Bishop Wolf did not appear satisfied and voted against it. She had raised a similar question in the hearing at which I testified last week.  

The bottom line, however, is that the vast majority of the bishops passed the resolution, and quickly at that. Both D090 and D032 now head to the House of Deputies where, if they pass, they become an official position of the Episcopal Church.

So now, as I look toward tomorrow (Wed), the House of Bishops could get C061 (the ministry canon change to include "gender identity and expression"). The House of Deputies will undoubtedly take up D012 (trans civil rights), first thing in the morning, and I don't know when they will get D090 and D032, not to mention C048 through which the Episcopal Church would explicitly support an inclusive ENDA (more on that later). 

I look forward to seeing what happens tomorrow, and pray that the Spirit of Truth and courage will keep on blowing here, and across this country.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

Tomorrow marks the official start of the General Convention, but already legislative committees are holding meetings to sift through the resolutions allotted to them. This year there are an unprecedented five resolutions on transgender inclusion and equality. We had thought there would be four, but we just learned of a fifth.

Three transgender resolutions call on the Episcopal Church to include “gender identity and expression” in its ministry nondiscrimination canon:

1) C001, originating from the Diocese of Newark
2) C061, originating from the Diocese of Massachusetts
3) C046, originating from the Diocese of Michigan 

These resolutions have been allotted to the Committee on World Mission, where they might have been overshadowed by a slew of resolutions addressing “B033”, an infamous resolution passed in 2006. But this evening the committee separated these two resolutions from the B033 pack and they will now be considered in a hearing tomorrow (Wednesday) evening between 7-9pm.

An additional two resolutions call on the Church to support secular civil rights legislation:

4) C048, originating from the Diocese of Michigan
5) D012, lead sponsor Byron Rushing of the Diocese of Massachusetts (cosponsored by Sarah Lawton of the Diocese of California and D. Tavolaro of the Diocese of Rhode Island)

These resolutions are currently under the care of the Committee on National and International Affairs. Today we learned that they will be considered at a hearing Thursday morning from 7-9 a.m. 

That means that there will be two hearings on transgender matters within twelve hours. 

After these hearings, the committees will decide what to do with the resolutions—whether to combine them, send them to other committees, table them, or send them to the floor of the House of Deputies. If the House of Deputies passes them, the legislation goes to the House of Bishops (remember "how a bill becomes a law?" it's like that).

At the last General Convention three years ago, there was one transgender themed resolution. There was a hearing on it, at which TransEpiscopal's Donna Cartwright testified. Ultimately the resolution got tabled, which means it died. 

One person, one resolution.  

But this year: five resolutions (thus far), eight TransEpiscopal members.

Three of us flew in on the 4th of July, and this evening we arrived at our full compliment. Another huge difference this year is the amazing support we of TransEpiscopal have around us, from the volunteers of Integrity (for which three of us are also official volunteers), to Deputies who are actively working with us from within committees and deputations. One deputy in particular has already been amazing: Sarah Lawton of the Diocese of California. Another is D. Tavolaro of Rhode Island, who is, as far as we know, the first openly transgender Deputy in the history of the Episcopal Church. Go D!

Last night, D, The Rev'd Gari Green of Wisconsin, and I co-led a trans 101 type workshop last night for the folks working toward LGBT inclusion here at Convention, and it went really well. 

Meanwhile, Gari and Jim Toy have also been meeting people at the booth that Integrity is sharing with us in the Convention's exhibit hall. 

So here we are, just before everything begins, and already so much has happened. I'm incredibly grateful to be here and while we don’t know what lies ahead, and we know the road may yet get very hard, I just have to say right now: what a difference three years makes.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

NB: this blog post originally, erroneously switched up the committees that heard these resolutions-- that has been fixed in retrospect!

Earlier this week I got an email from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) detailing "Transgender Rights Week in New England," an amazing confluence of events: in Connecticut today there was a Gender Identity and Expression Lobby Day in support of their non-discrimination bill; in Rhode Island this evening there was House Judiciary Committee hearing about their hate crime definition; tomorrow (April 8th) New Hampshire is possibly holding a second vote on its transgender non-discrimination bill. And at the State House in Boston, MTPC held a rally in support of the Massachusetts non-discrimination bill, "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes".  

And as if the stars weren't already apparently aligning, Iowa's supreme court unanimously legalized equal marriage last Friday (April 3), and this morning, Vermont's legislature overrode it's governor's veto, making Vermont the latest state to claim equal marriage.

I arrived with fellow members of the Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality (ICTE) at 10am. What an amazing sight it was to emerge from the main stairs and see so many people gathered-- at least as many as last year, and likely more. MTPC has now put up a number of photos from the event (source of the photos in this piece).  

I was honored to speak briefly as one of the co-Chairs of ICTE (the other being Mycroft Holmes) and to introduce two other clergy speakers, Rabbi Stephanie Kolin (photo below) of Temple Israel in Brookline, and Rev. Will Green (photo also below), Pastor of St. Nicholas United Methodist Church in Hull. I'm hoping to be able to reprint their remarks in the coming days. In the meantime, what struck me about Rabbi Stephanie's comments was her strong claim that the work we are all doing is holy work, and that the place in which we were standing was a holy place. Pastor Will passionately underscored how supported we are in our struggle by communities of faith-- much more than we know. 

In our own ways, each of us reflected our convictions that religious traditions and communities of faith *should not* be assumed to be anti-trans, despite the terrible reality that many transgender people have been betrayed by communities of faith. Nevertheless, some of our strongest wellsprings of support can, do, and should come from precisely communities of faith and the rich traditions they sustain.

One particularly firey speaker-- whom I had to follow directly (!)-- was the Honorable Byron Rushing, a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He spoke of how we weren't gathered to gain the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because we already have those rights. Massachusetts has failed to live up to its obligation to guarantee those rights, he said, for which the state has no excuse. We were there to hold the state to account. Amen!

We heard several speakers who shared stories of discrimination and extreme difficulty. One such story was told, haltingly, by Ken Garber, the father of a transgender son, CJ, who died a couple of months ago. I remember Mr. Garber speaking in support of his son at the hearing last Spring, and it was so devastating to hear of CJ's death. I attended this young man's funeral a couple of months ago, and my heart has been with the Garber family ever since. Even incredibly supportive parents cannot finally protect trans young people from the pervasive toll of the cruelties that lie outside a home's door.

As I look back on this incredibly long day, the overall pattern is of border walking, crossing in and out of contexts and communities that often misunderstand one another. As a clergy person at the trans lobby day-- and quite visibly clerical at that-- I felt like an emblem, a living, breathing progress report on how far religious traditions in general and my own in particular have come in their support of transgender people, and the distance they still have to travel. And so it was important to me to state quite clearly the truth for which the Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality stands: that people and communities of many faiths support transgender people, and that transgender people come from and claim many faith traditions. I talked about how proud I am that my own diocese, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts passed a resolution in support of exactly what we were doing at the State House today. The audience interrupted me at that point to clap, which really moved me. I was reminded of moments at Trans Day of Remembrance and Diocesan Convention last November, when the intersections of my particular faith and gender journeys felt not only present but in some sense uplifted.

I then said that for Christians, this week is Holy Week, the most significant, and indeed holy, week of the entire liturgical year. And I said that, for me, being at the State House and doing what I was doing right then was a spiritual practice, a fitting complement to the several other spiritual practices of prayer and worship that I will be doing as this week continues. These practices are of a piece for me, I explained, because of the narrative that propels the events of Holy Week: the movement from bondage to freedom, from fear to hope, from death and despair to transformation and newness of life.  

After the conclusion of the event, a parishioner and I made our way first to the Cathedral Church of St. Paul where a service of "the Blessing of the Holy Oils" was in progress, and then to the university department where I am teaching a one-on-one course ("Junior Tutorial") this semester. When we got to the cathedral, Bishop Tom Shaw was in the midst of his sermon, sitting in the central aisle. As we stepped into the cathedral, directly opposite him, he was in the middle of saying, "gay, lesbian, bisexual..." I felt like something of a transgender jack-in-the-box, with my "trans rights now" sticker still stuck to my lapel from the rally. I imagine Tom was saying something celebratory about the Vermont override, the announcement of which had elicited prolonged cheering during the rally.  

The theme of the service was healing-- the various ministries of healing, lay and ordained, taken up by people throughout the diocese. There was a moment in the service when people in healing ministries were invited to come forward for the anointing of the palms of their hands. I walked forward with my parishioner, who recently started a queer, non-sectarian spirituality group at my church (called "BEND"). I loved seeing people with whom I work in the diocese in this context, in the middle of this intense week. And particularly after being at the rally, it felt good to walk across the Boston Common and into the cathedral. I felt both a sense of difference between how I spent my morning and how I imagine most people in the cathedral spent theirs, and a sense of affirmation that I was indeed walking from one holy space and activity to another.  

From the cathedral, I made my way to a coffee shop, where I finished preparing for my class. Somewhere between the Statehouse and the classroom, I divested myself of both the "trans rights now" sticker and the clerical collar, aware of myself crossing into yet another communal space, this one academic. The course, "Thirty Years of Trans Studies" is a blast to teach, and also very much of a piece with the morning's activities.  

What a day it was. And the holiness of the week continues.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge