We Are Not Homogenous

People like to lump things together like they are all the same; the trans community is not one monolithic community we are all different, the same is true for religions. There are many religions that do not condemn us, so get it.

How my Christian faith led me to love my daughter's transgender classmate
Dallas Morning News
By Yvette LaCroix
May 22, 2017

I'm a politically conservative Christian. Six years ago, God blessed my husband and me with a beautiful daughter. Like all parents, we want to do everything we can to keep her safe.

A few years ago, I found myself caught up in an article on Facebook about legislation to block transgender people from using bathrooms of their identified gender. The article cited safety concerns, arguing that pedophiles would sneak into bathrooms, dressed as the opposite sex, to hurt our children. I bought this hook, line and sinker. After all, I wanted to keep my daughter safe.

Now, my daughter is in school, and one of our favorite families has a sweet girl (who was physically born a boy). Our daughter is not concerned that this little girl used to be a little boy; she's a girl, and they both like to play dress-up. This family has strong Catholic roots; they do not fit the caricature of experimental parents forcing a new gender identity on their kid. Rather, just like my husband and me, they want to keep their child safe.

So she looked into her faith, asked questions and found the answers…

1. Why does a family allow a child to be transgender?Parents aren't forcing transition on their kids; they're helping save their kids' lives. Transgender children have a significantly higher rate of mental health issues and suicide attempts than nontransgender children, according to a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health, because of the stigma and bullying they face. Kids who are allowed to transition, however, have mental health similar to their nontransgender peers.

Parents meet with doctors and counselors and go through extensive sessions before their child begins to transition, according to guidelines from the University of California at San Francisco. Young transgender children like my daughter's friend do not have surgery to change their physical anatomy.

Other questions that she found answers to were,

2. Is my child really in danger of transgender people in the bathroom?3. Why can't transgender children just use a special bathroom?

For this question she found…

Special bathrooms remind me of the not-so-distant past when we labeled restrooms "White" and "Colored." Separate but equal is not equal.

When a transgender child is forced to use a separate bathroom, it allows others to discover that they are transgender. If we want to keep all of our children safe, then we need to allow transgender children the privacy of simply being a boy or girl and not that transgender boy or transgender girl.

She also commented on,
4. Should my concern for my child's safety override the safety concerns for a transgender child?
5. What if I just don't believe in this transgender thing?
She ends with,

Once I started applying my Methodist reasoning, I had to face the fact that I had been living in fear and not in faith, reacting to something I didn't understand. God has blessed me with friendship with a family that is facing the challenges of protecting a child simply because she is transgender. As a fellow Christian, how can I do less than join them in protecting her and all of our children?

I take away three things from this article, first that there are religions that don’t crucify and demonize us, second that change comes about one family at time, and third and possible the most important of the three is that it is hard to hate someone when you know them.