Why We Are The Future Of Faith

Lately I've found myself thinking more and more about an issue that I ignored and had assumed I would always ignore:  that of the relationship between transgender people and religious communities.

You see, for a long time I told myself I wanted nothing to do with any religion.  Most of the time, when people asked about my faith, I'd say I didn't have any (unless, of course, I grunted "It's none of your fucking business!").  It's a lot easier to say you don't believe in a supreme being or power, or anything beyond this physical world, than to get into arguments about what it is, isn't or might be, or why I don't subscribe to someone else's belief.

Even so, I couldn't help to notice that more than a few trans people are involved with religious communities.  Some, like Eva-Genevieve Scarborough and Joanne Priznivalli, write about their experiences on their blogs.  Outwardly, I expressed astonishment that any trans person would want to be a participating member of a church, synagogue or other organization, let alone study or train to be a cleric.  I told myself such people were misguided, at best.  Sometimes I wondered whether they suffered from advanced cases of Stockholm Syndrome.  What else could explain their desire to identify with institutions and members that, very often, told them they were vile sinners or that they simply didn't exist?

One thing I could not fail to notice was that they--and some trans people who weren't overtly religious--often described themselves as male or female "in spirit" and their processes of "coming out" and transitioning from living in the gender they were assigned at birth to life in their true selves as "spiritual" experiences.

Yes, those words came up a lot:  "spirit" and "spiritual".  I even used them to to describe my own journey.  And on the night after my surgery, I had a very long, detailed and intense dream that, for me, could not have been evidence of anything else.

Perhaps my perceptions were colored by the fact that most of the support groups I attended, and most of the trans-related activities in which I participated, involved people who were beginning their transitions--or simply exploring the possibility of doing so--in the middle of their lives, or even later.  Not a single one of them spoke of their wishes merely in terms of changing their body parts; they all spoke of making their corporeal forms more reflective of their "true selves" or "spirits."  I have come to believe that if you have reached a certain age before embarking upon the requisite counseling and medical treatments, you really can't see your change in any other way.

(To those of you who are young--say, under 40--I hope I don't seem condescending.  If you really understand your identity and why you want to change your body to reflect it, you are more mature than most other people.  On the other hand, I have seen very young people who see the transition only in terms of hormones and surgeries.  They will say or do whatever they think they must--including sex work--to get them.  The consequences are often tragic.)

Anyway, I realize now that the revulsion I expressed at religious institutions was, in part, a response to my own earlier experiences with them.  I grew up as a Roman Catholic and spent several years in a school affiliated with the church.  I was even an altar boy!   Although the Church was, and is, repressive and I had some rather unpleasant (to say the least) experiences with priests and nuns, I have to admit that I received a better education than I might've otherwise had.  And, truth be told, for all of the bigotry that's part of its doctrine, I was safer there as a sensitive and possibly effeminate boy than I was on, say, sports teams or ROTC (both of which I would later participate in).  And, as Richard Rodriguez points out in A Hunger of Memory, there is less socio-economic class prejudice in the Church than in other parts of society.  Growing up in blue-collar Brooklyn, I was aware of that fact, even if I couldn't articulate it.  

And now, it seems, there are some religious leaders--and their followers--who actually understand that following the precepts of their faith means treating as they would other people.  Love thy neighbor--whether trans or cis--as thyself. Thou shalt not kill--whatever the identity of the person.  

Perhaps even more to the point, some are starting to realize that if their faith communities are to have any future at all--let alone carry out their missions--they must include people of all identities.  Actually, it goes deeper than that, as Joy Ladin points out:  Judiasm, of which she is an adherent, as well as Christians, Muslims and others cannot continue to confine themselves to the gender binary. It's not just a matter of the survival of religious institutions; it's a matter of allowing all people to participate in life as fully realized beings.  That, as I learned during my own transition, means understanding the spiritual dimension--forget that, the spiritual reality--of a person's identity.

What Does It All Mean?

Over the past couple of days, Joanne Priznivalli, on her blog,  has written excellent essays (and here) on the real meaning of New York's same-sex marriage laws.  I was particularly struck by one point Ms. Priznivalli, who is an attorney, made:  that the law doesn't merely allow same-sex marriage; instead, it makes marriage gender-neutral.  


Why is this an important distinction to make?  Well, as I understand it, the law doesn't merely "give" gays the "privilege" of marriage.  Instead, it says that any two people of the legal age and sound mind can join, for whatever purpose.  What the law really is, if I'm reading Priznivalli in the way she intends to be understood, is an acknowledgment that marriage as a legal institution is not merely about reproduction and continuing the species.  Rather, it's about allowing two people to make the sort of commitment that allows them to be each other's guardians (as, for example, when one of them is lying in a hospital bed and unable to make decisions on his or her own behalf) and to pass on property in the ways each of them sees fit.


I am not, and will probably never be, a lawyer.  However, I can say with confidence that, as a result of my reading and study, I know a bit more history than the average person.  And I know enough history to realize that marriage, as we know it, is actually a fairly recent invention among human institutions.  


Because the Church and State were inseparable in most European societies at least until the Enlightenment, the institution of marriage was codified in a way that not only specified who could be married to whom, and who could inherit what, but also ensured the propagation of the human race.  At a time when people married in their early teen years, had ten kids--of whom four or five might survive into adulthood--and died not long after turning thirty,  concerns about the survival of the human race, particularly in the face of such phenomena as the plague, made sense.  Also, because most of Europe's population shared the same faith (as most of the world's societies were mono-religious), the Church had an interest in seeing the population increase.


Today, almost nobody thinks that the human race is in danger of dying out--unless, of course, we do something stupid, like start a real World War.  If anything, most people would agree that we should slow the growth of, or cut down, the population.  So there is no rationale for allowing only the sort of unions that will help to increase the number of people in the world.


Likewise, the fact that women have claimed our natural rights in much of the world invalidates at least some of the premises behind marriage, as it has been structured.  As Priznivalli and others point out, so-called traditional marriages are based, to some degree or another, on misogyny.  And, really, how can anyone rationalize that when conservatives--whether of the religious variety in Pakistan or the economic type in Britain and Germany--have elected women to lead their countries?  I'd love to see how the same folks who support those women will tell their families, congregations, schools and other communities that women should submit to men.   Will Michelle Bachmann--if, Goddess forbid, she is elected--defer to the wishes of her husband when she makes decisions about national security?


Whatever happens, I don't imagine that the nature of sexual relations within those, or any other, marriages will change.  I suspect that very few couples today have sexual relations solely for the purpose of reproducing.  (Maybe that has been the case for most couples throughout history.)  And, as Priznivalli points out, many older couples stop having sex altogether but remain committed to each other.  So, really, the rationale of enshrining a particular kind of sexual relationship in marriage never had any rational or moral basis.  And that is the very reason why, contrary to the fear-mongering of so-called traditionalists,  marriages based on those kinds of relationships will not be undermined by allowing people to marry whomever they want, regardless of gender.