Recently, I sat with a friend and a group of people from her progressive church during a community discussion when, all of a sudden, someone said something transphobic. It was the kind of comment I’ve heard before in the news or from transphobic politicians. But the difference was that I, perhaps naively, thought I was safe in this setting. The community conversation was about how Donald Trump chose, during his presidential campaign, to put a target on the trans community. I expected church folks to use outdated or slightly offensive language purely out of ignorance when discussing trans identity.
The pastor of my friend’s church regularly hung the transgender pride flag in the sanctuary. They often preached about how transgender youth should be protected and supported. So when this instance of transphobia occurred in this small group setting, I froze and waited for someone to speak up. But no one did. Worse than the comment was the silence. The discussion leader moved the conversation on, and no one called out the transphobia. As an agnostic person who identifies as trans nonbinary, I was at the group meeting purely out of my need for community. But instead of community, I felt isolated at best and at worst, threatened.
Situations like this are not rare. Progressive churches or worship communities often present as accepting places — displaying LGBTQ+ flags or signs on their property or preaching messages that emphasize accepting and affirming LGBTQ+ people. Those are good places to start. But as the U.S. government escalates its discrimination against trans people, it is also necessary that religious communities escalate their support of the trans community. For communities that want to stand in solidarity with trans people, here are five additional action steps that you and your religious community can take.
1. Seek balanced media sources
Occasionally, legacy media will attempt to critique the trans community by positing thoughts and views that invite anti-trans rhetoric or violence.
In 2023, tens of thousands of writers and New York Times subscribers signed an open letter to the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger that expressed concern over alleged editorial bias when reporting on gender-fluid, gender-nonconforming, and transgender people. The letter cited several troubling pieces, such as journalist Emily Bazelon’s article, “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” that questioned trans youth’s ability to determine their own transgender identity without regrets.
Last March, Media Matters for America and GLAAD published a study that showed over the course of a year, 66% of the time The New York Times did not quote a transgender person when writing about antitrans legislation.
For churches and religious communities looking to educate themselves about LGBTQ+ issues, it is important to find sources that combine fact-based reporting with direct testimonies from LGBTQ+ people. The 19th, an independent newsroom dedicated to reporting on issues impacting LGBTQ+ and Black and brown people, is an indispensable resource for information and education.
2. Make bathrooms gender-neutral
When Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress this past November, legislation was introduced to ban transgender women from using the women’s restroom on federal property. And while the Republicans recently approved a rules package for Congress that did not include this proposed ban, such a proposal gives us an idea of what we can expect during a Trump presidency.
One way for your church or religious community to engage in this issue is by making all of your bathrooms gender-neutral. Everyone has a right to use whatever restroom feels right to them. As historian Kristen Kobes Du Mez notes in Jesus and John Wayne, the Right’s opposition to gender neutral bathrooms points to a deeper social anxiety around equal rights for people who are not white, Christian men.
3. Assist trans people with financial needs
A large portion of the queer community experiences financial insecurity. The LGBTQI+ Economic and Financial (LEAF) Survey, published in March 2023, found that half of their participants had less than $5,000 in savings and 20% had none.
Even more devastating are the suicide attempts and self-harm rates among trans people. According to a 2023 study by the Williams Institute, a research center focused on law and public policy in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, 42% of transgender people in the U.S. have attempted suicide, 81% have thought about committing suicide, and 56% have participated in self-harm.
This is a crisis. Your religious community can budget to assist with providing housing, food, and access to all forms of healthcare for trans people. If your community doesn’t know where to start, consider reaching out to an organization like your local gender-affirming clinic or another place that is dedicated to connecting trans people to the resources that they need. Trans people often live in a state of danger and emergency. Trans people, just like everyone else, deserve safety and access to basic human needs.
4. Acknowledge the fact that gender and sex are continuums
One of the first executive actions Trump took was signing an executive order proclaiming that there are only two sexes recognized by the U.S. government. This act is not only an attack on the LGBTQ+ community, it is also an attack on science.
In a 2015 piece in Nature, writer Claire Ainsworth wrote that doctors now know, by the fact that intersex people exist, that genetics alone cannot determine sex. Furthermore, it is possible for a person to be intersex and contain characteristics that exist outside the male-female binary.
In a 2024 article for National Geographic, journalist Miles Griffis explains, “Gender is an amalgamation of several elements: chromosomes (those X’s and Y’s), anatomy (internal sex organs and external genitals), hormones (relative levels of testosterone and estrogen), psychology (self-defined gender identity), and culture (socially defined gender behaviors). And sometimes people who are born with the chromosomes and genitals of one sex realize that they are transgender, meaning they have an internal gender identity that aligns with the opposite sex—or even, occasionally, with neither gender or with no gender at all.”
Any viewpoint that assumes sex and gender are binaries is simplistic and scientifically false.
5. Embrace queering God’s body
In his 2016 New York Times op-ed, “Is God Transgender?” Rabbi Mark Sameth calls attention to examples of gender-fluidity in the Hebrew scriptures. Sameth points out that there are men who nurse children, and Adam is once described using they/them pronouns. There are multiple examples within the Bible that gender is not bound to a Western binary.
Theologian M. Shawn Copeland suggests in Knowing Christ Crucified that Christ’s flesh is “queer flesh.” Here, Copeland is not suggesting that Christ is “gay or homosexual,” but that Christ stands in solidarity with LGBTQ+ people and that Christ’s literal and metaphorical body (the church) stands in opposition to “whatever is considered normal or conventional or legitimate.” Trump may want to normalize the idea of there only being two genders, and he may even be successful in establishing a law that affirms that idea, but that doesn’t mean Christ’s body has to agree.
Whether looking to Rabbi Sameth or Copeland or trans activists and theologians, my hope is that we recognize that God is trans and they care about trans people.
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