Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice.
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Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice. | |
By Jana Barracks, For The Globe Gazette
May 1, 2005
Imagine a little girl who at age 3 announces to her parents that she wishes she could be a boy and wondered why God had made her a girl.
By the time the girl entered first grade, she was so depressed about her gender identity that she told her parents it might be easier if she were in heaven.
Worried, the parents took their daughter to a psychotherapist, who told them the child was transgendered.
Different from homosexuality, which is a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex, transgenderism is a catch-all phrase for a variety of individuals, behaviors and groups centered on the full or partial reversal of gender roles. It's generally used to describe people who were assigned a gender based on their anatomy at birth but feel this is a false or incomplete description of themselves.
Like that of a child who felt he had a boy heart inside of a girl body.
This story happened in Colorado a few years ago. What is amazing is that when approached by the child's parents, the elementary school principal was so concerned about the child's welfare that the school arranged a gender identity presentation for the faculty, which led to understanding and support throughout the rest of the school. The case initiated a statewide discussion about identity issues and tolerance in education.
By some estimates, one in 30,000 people is transgendered. Tragically, an estimated 50 percent of transgendered individuals die before age 30, often by suicide because of stress from related issues.
Living as a transgendered person can't be easy. It's a brave human being who stands up to insist they have the right to an authentic life based on heartfelt views about their own sexual identity.
One in 30,000 people isn't many people. But one in 30,000 people persecuted as a result of societal fear is too many.
A sin is breaking into someone's car to steal a stereo. It is not discovering that your heart and your body don't match.
So when I saw in the news recently that fear was once again in a fight against tolerance for transgendered people, I shook my head ("Questions Result After Abrupt Church Meeting," Globe Gazette 4/23/05). And of all places, in church, where folks are asked to learn about and share with others unconditional love.
Dr. Wayne Dyer, author and motivational speaker on issues of mental health and self-empowerment, once described love as the "ability and willingness to allow those you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you."
Ninteenth century theological writer Henry Drummond hailed love as the greatest thing in the world, writing, "You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love."
More of us need to speak out in support of others who are different. It is our humanity that connects us to one another, not our sexuality.
Jana Barracks is a writer who lives in Clear Lake with her husband, children and pets. Contact her by email: Jtb@netins.net.
Copyright © 2005, Globe Gazette
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