Transphobia: Jesus Weeps

Transphobia: Jesus Weeps

Weeping Jesus statue close up

Photo by James McGinnis

Watching a video of Ted Cruz flaunting his ignorance and making a crude joke about Donald Trump dressing up as Hillary Clinton and still not being able to use the girl’s bathroom made me sick. It brought tears to my eyes as his audience laughed. Last week he released a transphobic add portraying transgender women as predators, men pretending to be women.

Article after article. Statement after statement. Law after law. Transgender people are singled out as a danger in public restrooms without any evidence. Is the timing—during a presidential election year—a coincidence?  I doubt it.

Some bright spots appear in this darkness. Entertainers and businesses are pulling out of states that pass discriminatory “bathroom bills.” On it’s website, Target takes the lead and declares that in keeping with it’s core value of inclusivity, transgender employees and guests are welcomed to use “the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” Episcopal and Methodist bishops of North Carolina are demanding the repeal of HB2. Some business leaders and government officials are speaking out against these laws.

That this fear-mongering bigotry is often expressed under the guise of religious freedom makes it all the more tragic. Jesus weeps. So do I.

President Obama and Pope Francis: Words to Ponder

President Obama and Pope Francis: Words to Ponder

A picture of a smiling President Obama welcoming Pope Francis, also smiling, to the Whitehouse

PHOTO: THe Atlantic

I drove one of my daughters downtown to catch the Mega Bus. It pulled out just in time for me to begin listening to President Obama welcome the Pope to the United States. Eloquent and moving, his words, spoken as a man of faith, addressed the Pope saying “You shake our conscience from slumber; you call on us to rejoice in Good News, and give us confidence that we can come together, in humility and service, and pursue a world that is more loving, more just, and more free. Here at home and around the world, may our generation heed your call to “never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!”

The Pope’s address, delivered in English, challenged us to address issues of poverty, inclusion of those on the margins, and global warming. Referring to the urgency of dealing with climate change, he quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, saying “…that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.”

Pope Francis doesn’t avoid difficult topics. I’m looking forward to hearing his address to Congress tomorrow morning. And, just as much, to his sharing lunch with the homeless rather than with the congressional elite.  I love this pope!

Text of both speeches

Encountering the Other

Encountering the Other

modern painting circle of five people in an embrace

Painting by Richard Duarte Brown

Originally published in the Catholic Times, 9. 1315

A few days ago, while driving to work, I heard a story on NPR about the thousands of immigrants arriving on the small Greek island of Lesbos, refugees fleeing war and oppression in Syria, looking for a place to live. They risked a dangerous journey leaving everything behind and set off toward an unknown future. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and relatives, all willing to trust their lives to people and places they do not know.

Listening to reporters interviewing newly arrived refugees, I marveled at the joy in their voices. Thrilled to have survived the journey and to be standing on solid ground in a place free of war and the atrocities that accompany it, they spoke with such hope, such faith in God, or if not in God, in fellow human beings.

I wanted to rejoice with them, but concern tempered my delight as I wondered what the road ahead would bring for them: Mounds of paperwork and bureaucracy from governments hesitant to welcome so many people needing work and aid. Hostility and resistance from those who will feel threatened by their presence, by their “otherness.” Soon, frustration will replace the euphoria of the refugees’ first taste of freedom from constant fear and suffering.

Tragedy already darkens Syrian refugees’ arrival. The United Nations refugee agency reports that over 2,500 people have died this year trying to make the dangerous ocean crossing.

Driving home from work that same day, I heard an inspiring story of Icelanders who had formed a Facebook group, “Syria is Calling,” and is pressuring their government to take in more than the 50 refugees it had offered to accept—a lot more, 5,000. While the large number of people the group is proposing to welcome is impressive, it was the outpouring of individuals’ willingness to help that stirred my heart.

People offered to open up extra bedrooms in their homes and provide food, money, and house wares to help new arrivals settle in. This personal response is more demanding than putting a check in the mail, which is my plan. It means living with people who have different beliefs and values. In some cases, like sharing one’s home with strangers or welcoming them into your city, such action means daily encountering the “other” with openness and reverence for their personhood. It means, in the midst of serious complexities, maintaining the belief that we are more alike than different.

This post from “Syria is Calling” eloquently proclaims this truth: “Refugees are our future spouses, best friends, our next soul mate, the drummer in our children’s band, our next colleague, Miss Iceland 2022, the carpenter who finally fixes our bathroom, the chef in the cafeteria, the fireman, the hacker and the television host. People who we’ll never be able to say to: ‘Your life is worth less than mine.’”

These words challenge all of us around the globe to examine our own attitude toward the “other,” not only the Syrian refugees, but the marginalized people who live in our own cities and neighborhoods.

The Letter of Saint James, included in this Sunday’s readings, speaks forcefully about the responsibility of Christians to put their faith into action: “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Fear of those who are not like us is no excuse; it is a human failing that must be confronted and transformed by love, a process that can take a lifetime. It is a process that requires encounter.

But suffering and injustice can’t wait for lifetimes. Our faith, our humanity, requires action before we are comfortable. We must respond with love despite our fear, and incrementally, our hearts will change. As Jesus said, love will cast out fear. We are all other to someone. Encounter will transform us: those in position to give and those who receive, privileged with voice and marginalized with none.

© 2015 Mary van Balen

The Long Reach of White Privilege

The Long Reach of White Privilege

silhouettes of people in different colorsA few days ago, Jenny Boylan wrote a great editorial in the New York Times about white privilege. It’s easy to miss it, if you’re white that is. Privilege is like that. When you’ve got it, it’s almost invisible to you while being obvious to those who don’t have it. I am a woman, so I recognize male privilege when I see it. I’m white, too. White privilege can escape my notice. I wouldn’t think of any transgender people, likely the most marginalized people in our society, as being privileged. Jenny Boylan didn’t either…

In her column, she offers her unique perspective on being white, and at on time, presenting as male, being a transgender woman, and  the suffering of trans women of color. Read it here.

President Obama Appoints Transgender Woman to White House Position

President Obama Appoints Transgender Woman to White House Position

rainbow flag flying against blue sky

from Huff Post

This is good news for the transgender community. President Obama had become increasingly supportive of LGBT people and the struggle for equal rights and protections for them. He has appointed Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who was a policy adviser at the National Center for Transgender Equality, as an outreach and recruitment director. Read about it here and in the Washington Post that first reported the story.

Transgender Students in Business Schools

Transgender Students in Business Schools

watercolor-brightAn article in today’s New York Times looks at the experience of being transgender while attending business school in the U.S. A hopeful note in the article by Cory Weinberg is that the number of Fortune 500 business that include gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies has risen to 61% from 25% in 2008.

The quote from a young business-school student says what I imagine many transgender people would echo:

“I just want to go through school as the woman I see myself as,” Dominique said. She does not want to be a business-school trailblazer. “You are there to do business, not to be the trans individual.”

People simply want to be themselves.

A Nun’s Ministry to the Transgender Community

A Nun’s Ministry to the Transgender Community

people-paintingA friend of mine, “Sr. Monica,” has had a long and graced ministry to the transgender community. Her presence with the people she knows speaks of God’s love and care for all of us, including those most of the fringes of society, the “invisible people,” as she called them.

Read her recent HuffPost blog post .

I hope, perhaps naively, that during the current Pope’s tenure, the church will finally recognize and remedy its failure to “be there” for these people who want simply to be who they have been made to be.

 

A Quiet Priest

A Quiet Priest

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

As is her custom, a friend of mine invited some women friends to her home for a Holy Thursday prayer and dinner. This year, four of us gathered around her table, sang, read a reflection, and shared food. During the evening, she told us each was invited because of the ministries we have been living for years. One woman was the first (and surprising to me) the only Black American principal in her diocesan school system. She remembered flaming crosses lit along the street the day she was appointed. She continues to work with young people and is active in the Ladies of Peter Claver association. Another woman has been organizing her parish’s religious education for years. Our hostess particularly noted her work with the teens and how she has been able to encourage and inspire them, not easy task as anyone who works with young people know.

Our friend chose to focus on my ministry of writing columns, articles, and books, which has spanned decades. At the moment, waiting is a big part of my “work,” waiting for an agent to find a home for my latest book. And our hostess is well-known in the area for her work with women, often poor and marginalized. The list of her work would take a post of its own, but her prophetic voice has always spoken clearly for the truth she knows, no matter how her message is received.

After dinner and before dessert, we prayed together and blessed one another, poured water over hands that have worked hard over the years to be priest to God’s people. Of course, all are called to holiness, as Vatican II documents proclaim. All share in the common priesthood of Christ through their baptism. Still, as I sat in the presence of these women, I wondered again about the Catholic Church’s refusal to admit women to the order of priesthood.

I thought about women around the world who know the call from God, they know themselves to be “priest,” and yet they must do their work quietly. Often, their efforts meet resistance. I read that Pope Francis is open to the idea of married men being ordained. He doesn’t seem so open to ordaining women.

As I sat with these women and prayed, I gave thanks for those women who, called to priest God’s people in a special way, do so as best as they are able, faithful to their call, even if the Roman Catholic institution has yet to recognize what is being lived before their eyes.