Scapegoats

Tags

1st Peter 2, asexual, atonement, atypical, bathroom bills, bigotry, blue eyes, brain injury, Brazil, casting lots, cisgender, dark skin, deviant, difference, discrimination, Easter, fear, goat, God, Good Shepherd, homosexual, human rights organizations, Jesus, King David, Leviticus, LGBT, Lord's mercy, Memorial Day, military veterans, minorities, murders, Muslim, panromantic, Passover lamb, perverse, post traumatic stress disorder, prejudice, Psychology Today, PTSD, rationalize, redheads, sacrifice, scapegoat, sex crimes, sexual predators, sexuality, shed blood, sin, sin offering, statistics, suicide, TDOR, trans men, trans women, Transgender, Transgender Day of Remembrance, Yom Kippur

Would you ever want to be a scapegoat?  I would.  At least I would want to be if I am dealing with God.  With God, the scapegoats were allowed to live.  The “scape” part of the word “scapegoat” is an archaic verb that means to depart or escape.  In other words, the scapegoat is the goat that escapes.

If you have guessed that at least one other goat is implied by the concept of a scapegoat you are correct.  In fact, it is only one other goat.  What happens to the scapegoat and the other goat?  We find out from the portion of Leviticus where God instructs the children of Israel about the rituals to be carried out on The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house.  And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.  And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.  And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD’S lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. – Leviticus 16:6-10

Just to make it perfectly clear to those who might not be familiar with the terminology, when the goat and the bullock are offered for a sin offering, those animals were killed.  This is made quite clear in Leviticus 4:4 (for the bullock) and Leviticus 4:24 (for the goat).  The offering was not merely symbolic.

With the Biblical scapegoat and sin offering process, we see the Lord’s mercy.  All the people are guilty of sin.  No one is perfect and sinless.  But first the Lord substitutes the shed blood of animals for the sins of people.  Then he spares some animals, even though the blood of animals could never totally make atonement for the sins of the human race.

And certainly, I would want the lot to fall upon me to be spared, not slaughtered.  When the Lord casts a lot, He casts a perfect lot.

But people, as they sometimes do, have twisted the meaning of scapegoat into the ones who take upon themselves all the blame for a certain situation, even if they happen to be innocent.  No wonder King David, when he had committed a grievous sin against the Lord and was offered a choice among three punishments, he replied to the prophet who was God’s messenger bringing the choices to David: I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of the LORD; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. – 1^st Chronicles 21:13 (portion)

Trans woman victim of violence

In the past few years, transgender people have found ourselves to be scapegoats more and more.  A tiny minority (estimated at 0.6% of the population), we are being blamed for the ills of society, charged with imposing ourselves and our agenda on the rest of the country, and impugned as being a group that uses our alleged gender identity as an excuse to violate girls and women, either by voyeurism or outright physical attack.  The latter charges fly in the face of the facts, as brought up by police chiefs and statistics around the country, that transgender people are not committing these crimes, even when access to bathrooms and other women-only spaces have been opened up to trans women.

Over a random period of a few months a while back when I was developing this post, I began to record mentions of sex crimes against women and children that were picked up in the news feeds that I receive.  I decided on at least a dozen examples (I ended up collecting a few more).  When I decided to start collecting this information, I had no idea what relevant news stories would be forthcoming and had no control over them.  These were the stories I collected.

• 40 year old white male middle school principal in upstate NY accused of having sex with a minor under the age of 17.
• 32 year old black male Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn who had been given the task of prosecuting sex crimes accused of sexually assaulting a woman in her car.
• 49 year old white male Village Trustee, venture capitalist and professor accused of possessing and promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child (uploading a child porn video to a website).
• 48 year old white male former major league baseball player, serving a 7-15 year prison sentence for six counts of criminal sexual conduct, is negotiating a settlement with four women who had been students at the high school where he worked related to him inappropriately touching them while they were working out in the weight room of the school.
• 76 year old white male rabbi and yeshiva principal in Connecticut accused by an alleged victim of repeated rape, molestation and sexual assault while the victim was a student and a minor.
• 28 year old black male who previously served seven years for a combination robbery, physical assault and sexual assault and then violated his parole two years after release was caught on camera and arrested for a similar combination of crimes against an adult woman in connection with a string of robberies in New York City.
• 52 year old white male music teacher and founder of a music school in New York City was arrested for allegedly trying to have sex with girls as young as 8 years old and actually having sex with 15 year old girls on multiple occasions.
• 30 year old white male coach of a high school girls’ sports team in Michigan was convicted and sentenced after confessing to filming underage girl team members undressing, and also possessing child pornography.
• 73 year old white male coach in upstate New York was arrested for sexually abusing one of his athletes, a female under the age of 15.
• 29 year old white male computer programmer and member of the mayoral staff of a major U.S. city arrested for promoting a sexual performance by a child under age 16 and for possession of child pornography on his laptop: about 3,000 images and 89 videos of nude girls between the approximate ages of 6 months to 16 years old having sexual conduct with adult males.
• 29 year old black male masseuse at a legitimate massage parlor located within a major U.S. airport accused of raping a 25 year old female receiving a massage during a flight layover.
• 50 year old black male counselor at an upstate New York medical facility was sentenced to a long prison term for sexually abusing patients suffering from traumatic brain injuries.
• 43 year old white male in Northern New Jersey sentenced to 33 years in prison for sexually assaulting three girls, ages 12, 14 and 15 years old who were daughters of his close family friends.
• 28 year old white male practicing attorney in the NYC Metropolitan Area arrested for taking upskirt photos of two 19 year old females at a sporting event.
• A white female (in her late 30’s at the time) elementary school teacher in upstate New York was accused by her alleged victim (now an adult; gender not specified) of rape when the accuser was under the age of 13.
• 25 year old white male police officer in upstate New York was charged with raping a minor under the age of 17.

There were no transgender perpetrators.  All but one was a cisgender male.  None of them disguised themselves as women to carry out their attacks.  Many were involved with schools or worked for the government in some other capacity.  Are there calls for banning people in these categories from public restrooms on the grounds of prevention?  Of course not.  More to the point, the loudest voices crying out in support of so-called transgender bathroom bills say nothing about preventative measures against the most likely group to commit sex crimes: those convicted in the past of multiple sex crimes.

Another argument used against transgender people is the suicide argument.  Because of high suicide rates, the argument is made that transgender people must be mentally ill.  But is transgender the cause or is it the stress of the negative reaction of family, friends and institutions?  For comparison, let’s look at another group that suffers from high suicide rates.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2014, an average of 20 veterans committed suicide each day, shining a light on only the most visible group of vets suffering from mental illness. Of those 20, only six were users of VA services. Veterans who are dishonorably discharged or who make too much money wouldn’t be eligible for counseling.  The graphic included in this post shows that the frequency of suicides has increased since 2014.

A Government Accountability Office study published recently showed that 60 percent of troops who have been discharged for misconduct in recent years suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder or some other type of brain injury.

Has the anti-transgender crowd called for a disbanding of the U.S. military because of the negative effect military service has on young men and women who serve?  No.  Have they called upon the military to change its recruiting methods to filter out those who are prone to suicide?  No.  Have they charged that those who volunteer for military service are prima facie suffering from mental illness because of the high suicide rate?  Once again the answer is no.

In these examples, we see the nature of scapegoating.  One group is picked upon to receive a disproportionate share of blame or negativity.

To be fair, while there is a significant amount of both scapegoating and violence against transgender people in the United States, the evidence we see every November when we observe the Transgender Day of Remembrance is that it is much worse in many other countries.  Brazil, a country divided on the issue similar to the U.S., nonetheless sees in the neighborhood of five times as many murders of transgender people.  In many countries, Muslim ones in particular, it is against the law to be transgender.

Exactly how many countries have laws making it illegal to be transgender?  We don’t know for certain.  Or at least there is no definitive list online.  There are many lists of the countries where it is illegal to engage in homosexual activity or distribute homosexual “propaganda”.  The people who maintain these lists assume that it would be against the law to be transgender in these same countries.  But there is no specific documentation of that, nor is there any acknowledgement that a country that does not prohibit same sex activities might still have laws making transgender identity or expression illegal.  It’s a bit ironic that human rights organizations don’t bother to give special recognition to the status of transgender individuals around the world, no?

Bathroom bills would require him and all trans men to use the woman’s restroom in a public place

Many times I have been in a group discussion where it is stated that people fear those who are different than them.  Certainly transgender people compared to the vast cisgender majority are different than most people.  And yet not all differences are feared.  Redheads comprise between 1-2% of the population, yet they don’t seem to be feared.  About 8% of the population has blue eyes, but they aren’t feared, either.  Skin color seems to be more fear provoking than hair color or eye color.  One might opine that we fear the dark, but do people with the darkest hair shades face more discrimination than people with lighter shades?  Why the preoccupation with skin color is a question for which I do not have an answer.

When it comes to anything related to sexuality that departs from the norm, the reason is more obvious: the fear is that something deviant and therefore perverse will be done.  But obvious reasons do not automatically mean justified reasons.  It has already been pointed out that the evidence doesn’t back the fear when it comes to transgender people in public bathrooms.  And of course those who support bathroom bills to keep trans women out of women’s public bathrooms forget that those same bills would require trans men to use the women’s public bathroom.

Asexual Panromantic flag

So if prejudice is based on what people will or even might do, then shouldn’t we expect that there would not be prejudice against people who are asexual?  Certainly if there is any group who identifies with a minimum of sexual motivation, it is this group.  And yet studies find that there is a high degree of prejudice against the asexual community, as this Psychology Today article discusses.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201209/prejudice-against-group-x-asexuals

Discrimination may or may not be rational.  A person with a discriminating palate is justified in choosing a five star restaurant over a fast food restaurant and a $100 bottle of wine over a bottle of wine with a twist-off cap.

Discrimination based on prejudice is never rational.  Yet prejudicial people have to find reasons to rationalize and justify their prejudices.  People generally don’t want to appear to be bigoted.  People generally don’t want to appear to be irrational.

Statistics are often the bedfellow of prejudice.  And any time a person cites 79% or 63% or 51% (and sometimes even 10% or less) as a reason to discriminate against an individual, it is prejudice.  Until one gets to know that individual, it is unknown which side of the issue or which type of behavior that individual will represent.

And when the percentage approaches zero, as it does with transgender people and violence by us, and yet there is still prejudice against us, how much clearer can it be that we are being scapegoated?

Although this post is being published on Memorial Day weekend, there is an Easter message in this.  But it is fitting for Memorial Day as well.  The act of communion commemorates the broken body and shed blood of Jesus as He bore our sins as part of the Easter story.  We celebrate … yes celebrate such violence against Him … in remembrance of Him and what He did for us.  And as only someone who is 100% God and 100% human could do, in one process He bore our sins on the cross as the scapegoat, was the Passover sacrificial lamb offering who shed His blood and gave His life for us, and He forever became the Good Shepherd leading His flock.

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. – 1^st Peter 2:21-25

God bless,

Lois

Advertisements

A Dream Deferred … or Worse

Tags

1965, Bethlehem, birth of Jesus, Blacks, Canada, Charlie Brown, Christ, Christians, Christmas, city of David, deferred, denied, discrimination, Dodger Stadium, Dodgers, dreams, Duke Snider, Frontline, Gender Dysphoria, ghetto, God, Growing Up Trans, hatred, Holy Spirit, hope, hopelessness, Isaiah 9, Jackie Robinson, Jews, John Roseboro, Langston Hughes, Light in darkness, Linus, Los Angeles, Luke 2:8-14, Maury Wills, Messianic prophesy, Ontario, parents, Paul McHugh, PBS, Proverbs 13:12, research, social science, study, suicide, supportive, TDOR, throne of David, trans masculine, Transgender, Transition, violence, Watts riots, Willie Crawford, World Championship, youth

This is my 100^th post.  Thank you for your encouragement.

This is a story that begins about fifty years ago, jumps to the present and finishes with events many centuries ago.

When I was in college, majoring in government, it was a few years after the Watts riots.  As a 12 year old in 1965, all I knew about the riots was that black people had begun to react to the discrimination they experienced with violence: looting and burning commercial buildings, shooting at firemen trying to put out the flames.  And I knew that there were times when the smoke was visible about 8 miles due north at Dodger Stadium.  At times, the smoke moved over the stadium and the smell hung over the ballpark.  When the games were played during the riots, attendance suffered in the midst of a tight pennant race.  Fans were offered rain checks in case they were too afraid to attend the home games that week.

It was an event that took away some of the luster of the Dodgers World Championship season, although when you are 12, you try to focus on the game and team you love.  These players were my heroes.  It didn’t matter what color they were.  After Duke Snider was sold to the Mets and then retired, my favorite player was Maury Wills.  I was prejudiced … in favor of the “little” players.  (Wills is black.)

It affected the team directly as well.  Willie Crawford, still a teenager, was a young black player from the curfew area who had signed for a $100,000 bonus the previous year when he graduated from high school.  He was mistakenly arrested, one of the 4000 people arrested during the week-long rioting.  Catcher John Roseboro spent a night sitting on the front stoop of his house with a gun, when protestors marched past his house.  Although very few residences were targeted, it was a tense and volatile time and no one could be sure what would happen.

Some black players drove to and from the park in their uniforms, hoping it would spare them problems from rioters and police.  Some had routes to the park that took them through the affected area.  Some white team members watched National Guardsmen patrolling in their neighborhood.

Former Dodger Jackie Robinson offered this assessment of the cause of the riots:

“Riots do not happen because … a crowd seeks to restrain an officer from making an arrest.  Riots begin with the hopelessness which lives in the hearts of a people who, from childhood, expect to live in rundown houses, to be raised by one parent, to be denied proper recreation, to attend an inferior school, to experience police brutality, to be turned down when seeking a decent job.”

By the time Robinson passed away in October 1972, social scientists had refined their understanding of the riots.  While the riots started in Watts and its name was attached to them, they spread beyond the 4 square miles of Watts into other black impoverished neighborhoods, about 50 square miles in all.  Researchers expected that the instigation of the riots came from the very worst areas.  They were wrong. The primary fomenters of the riots came from the edge of the black ghetto.  The explanation offered was that those in the very worst areas were so affected with hopelessness, there was no incentive to initiate action.  (This does not mean that they didn’t participate once the riots started.)

The neighborhoods along the edge were somewhat better.  But they were still inside and that last leap out of the ghetto to the more affluent white neighborhoods a short distance away seemed to be always just out of reach.  Looking back at riots two months later, the Los Angeles Times interviewed a 46-year-old black father of six, and quoted him saying, “If I ever made enough money, I would move out of Watts like all the other big shots. So I’m here, so what the hell. Los Angeles isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Wherever you go, you’re black – that’s all there is to it.”

Over forty years since college, I still remember that lesson learned about riots being fueled by a combination of hopelessness and the prize always just out of reach.  It was a lesson that came back to me when I heard the 300 names read at TDOR last month.  Something different caught my eye.  Acknowledging that it is too soon to show a trend, I still searched for an explanation.  It was the lesson of Watts that came back to me.

At the TDOR where I spoke in November, the program committee has adopted a broad definition as to which transgender people and allies to honor and remember as “victims of hate, intolerance, ignorance and prejudice during the past year.”  Therefore, we have been including the names of those who were bullied and harassed into committing suicide.  This year, the number of suicides, the majority of which occurred in the United States, seemed higher this year.  Especially notable was the number of trans masculine teens who committed suicide.  What had previous appeared to be nonexistent was now significant.  I was at once intrigued, saddened and puzzled by this development at a time we appear to be making solid progress in helping trans youth.

The next day at another TDOR event, I watched the video “Growing Up Trans” (originally aired 6 months ago on PBS’s Frontline).  While the vast majority of the parents were supportive (albeit with reasonable questions and concerns about the appropriate way to be supportive of their child), one father was resistant to helping his child transition out of sincere concern for his child’s future welfare.  This trans masculine teen was already punching holes in walls at times out of frustration.  It appeared that the documentary would end with the impasse unresolved.

But then, an unfilmed postscript was added.  A voiceover noted that this teen had been suspended from school for starting a fight.  The student he attacked had just begun taking prescription testosterone.  It was at that point that the father agreed to the let his child begin to take cross-gender hormones.

It’s not my purpose to address whether or not the father did the right thing.  I am shining a light on a level of frustration so great that it would cause an attack on one of the very people this teen should have related to the most.

This 85 minute film is still available online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/growing-up-trans/

The pieces were coming together.  One more bit of evidence that came my way soon afterwards would make things crystal clear.  There was a study done in 2012 of 433 trans youth 16-24 years old who live in Ontario, Canada.  The parents of these trans youth were categorized as either very supportive (34%), somewhat supportive (25%), or either not very or not at all supportive (42%).  By many measures of mental health and life conditions, those trans youth who saw their parents as very supportive were statistically significantly better off than those trans youth whose parents were only somewhat supportive, not very supportive or not at all supportive.

For those who prefer text to charts, the well supported trans youth were more than twice as likely to be satisfied with life (72% to 33%), approaching five times more likely to have very good or excellent mental health (70% to 15%), more than twice as likely to have very good or excellent physical health (66% to 31%), about five times as likely to have high self-esteem (64% to 13%), more than three times less likely to have symptoms of depression (23% vs 75%), about half as likely to have considered suicide in the past year (34% vs 70%) and over 14 times less likely to have attempted suicide in the past year (4% vs 57%).

Perhaps the saddest statistic of all for those whose parents offer lukewarm to no support is the finding that well supported trans youth were more than twice as likely to be living in adequate housing (100% vs 45%).  There may be no clearer statistic to show that while a young person’s view of parental support may appear subjective, adequate housing is a very objective measure of how parental support is demonstrated.  Truly supportive parents either allow their trans children to remain at home or they provide continued support for their trans children to make it through the educational system until they can begin their career and find adequate housing of their own.   Parents who provide either lukewarm or no support at all appear to be either kicking their children out of the house or driving them out with abuse (including verbal), bullying and harassment.

For those who prefer charts, I have provided them here.  (There is also some additional information in them.  It appears that those who considered suicide in the past year should also be listed as having a statistically significant difference.)

For those who want to see the full report, here is the link:

http://transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf

The survey results are part of the light that exposes the lies of Dr. Paul McHugh and others who claim that transition is ineffective in dealing with gender dysphoria and transgenderism in general.  It is diametrically opposed to their claims that the lives of those who transition are not improved by doing so.  This shows that the level of support for the transition is as significant as transition itself.

But what about the 2/3 whose parents are not strong in their support?  How do they react when they see transgender peers progressing towards life in their target gender, but their progress appears to be denied?

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. – Proverbs 13:12

Hope deferred is not hope denied, but when a person reaches the point where it appears that one’s desires will never come, heart sickness can and has become fatal.  Impatience is typical of most youth, and it magnifies hopelessness.

Many trans youth will draw hope from the success of their peers that someday it will be their turn.  Any meaningful progress will stir the fires of the optimism of youth.  But when progress is not only stalled but crushed, it is more than a dream deferred.  It becomes a dream denied.  Many years ago, mindful of his first-hand experience in a different marginalized group, Langston Hughes wrote the poem that inspired the title of this blog post, and was in turn inspired in part by Proverbs 13:12.

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

To avoid these results, especially dreams exploding inward, we need to find a way to reach those trans youth whose parents are found wanting in support.  We need to keep their hopes and dreams alive, not crushed or dried up by hate and ignorance, not rotten and diseased by those who would prey on them and steal their dream, not covered over by vacant smiles hiding a time bomb.  If necessary, each one reach one.

We leapt from fifty years ago to today.  While keeping our finger in today, we leap back in time many centuries to the prophet Isaiah.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this. – Isaiah 9:2,7-8

There is a group of people who have persevered for over 2700 years to keep that hope alive through many trials, tribulations, hardships, heartaches and tears.  I am one of the members of a different group: a group whose people have hope because we believe that this prophesy was fulfilled two thousand years ago by the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  My relationship with God, the love of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit was the number one reason for the success of my transition, especially during those times when I was pretty much going it alone as far as people from my former life being supportive.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. – Luke 2:8-14

And that’s why people find hope in Christmas, Charlie Brown!

God bless,

Lois

Leelah Alcorn

Tags

Bible, blame, born transsexual, children, Christian counseling, Civil Rights, comfort, counting the cost, curse, discrimination, ears to hear, fair-minded people, family, forgiveness, Gender Identity, God, God doesn't make mistakes, grief, human decency, insult, Internet, judgment, last wish, Leelah Alcorn, martyr, Matthew 18, parents, prayer, punishment, reaching out to God, redemption, right hand of fellowship, sacrifice, selfish, siblings, Social Justice, studying the Bible, stumbling block, suicide, suicide note, Testimony, Therapy, Transgender, Transsexual, truck, truck driver, Tumblr

This is not the positive story with which I planned to start off the New Year on my blog.  But it is a story that needs to be told as often as possible.  Leelah Alcorn, an Ohio teenager, took her life because of the rejection she felt from parents.  Leelah Alcorn identified as female and as transgender.  Before her death, she wrote in a suicide note posted on a social media site that she knew she was female since she was four years old and finally learned the meaning of “transgender” at age 14.

According to a friend and next door neighbor, Leelah did not have problems coming out at school.  The problem was with her family.

An indication of the problem is that Leelah’s mother did not acknowledge her child’s gender, even in death.  She wrote that her “sweet … son” had died from being hit by a truck when going for a walk.

That walk was along Interstate 71 somewhere between 2 and 2:30 AM.  That is not the time or place that people go for a casual walk.  That is where someone goes to get up courage to dart out of the dark in front of a tractor trailer truck.

I preach compassion and understanding.  It is the right thing to do.  I’m sure her parents really thought they were doing what was best for their child.  I can even understand why they embarked on a course of Christian counseling for Leelah.  After all, it is consistent with the teachings they had been given by those they relied on for spiritual guidance.

But at what point do you stop and realize that it isn’t working?  That no progress was being made after at least two years?  (One strange discrepancy in the news stories is that they uniformly report Leelah’s age as 17, but Leelah’s mother posted the age of “her son” as 16.)  Leelah remained depressed and apparently uncommunicative with her parents.  Leelah was even put on medication (a rather drastic step for most faith-based counselors) that did not help.

The spirit of this human being, their child, was being oppressed and crushed day after day.  She was isolated from friends and effective therapy that might have saved her life: the life she wanted; the life she was entitled to as her own.

My heart goes out to Leelah’s two sisters and her brother.  My heart aches for the truck driver who had the ill fate of driving along that stretch of road at that moment in time.  Logic knows that there was no possible way to avoid hitting Leelah.  But logic will not ease the pain of reliving that moment: seeing Leelah, experiencing the moment of impact, and then seeing her destroyed, bloody, lifeless body.  I have not seen the name of the driver released, but God knows the name.  Pray that the truck driver will find peace.

It will be harder to pray for Leelah’s parents.  But I cannot and will not join in the backlash that has formed against them.  The most likely result is that they and the members of their congregation will rally around them and dig in their heels.  Being judgmental (ironically a charge often leveled against Christians), is not an effective way to change hearts.  Nor does it bring Leelah’s final wish, that her death would mean something, any closer to reality.

Leelah’s suicide note has made the rounds on the Internet.  Even so, I will give her one more venue in which to speak for herself, especially since her Tumblr page on which the suicide note was placed was removed from the Internet in response to a demand from Leelah’s parents.  I will intersperse comments clearly marked as mine.

When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.

[Lois’s note: On 12/3/13, my blog post titled “God doesn’t make mistakes” deals with this very topic, but points out that this is actually supportive of those of us who were born transgender.  Since we were born this way and it is not a choice, and since God made us the way we are inside as well as outside, then we are only being who we have been created to be by God.  Many of my blog posts deal with this from various Biblical perspectives.  See any post under the category “The Bible on transsexualism”.  I also know that the one time my mom caught me dressed, what she told me was unintentionally hurtful.  But it was easier to take because I had much other tangible evidence that my parents loved me.  Apparently Leelah did not feel that same assurance.]

My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.

[Lois’s note: Leelah says that her mom took her to a therapist, a positive step.  But then she writes “therapists” as in plural.  So my guess is that when therapist number one didn’t make any progress, all that happened was a revolving door of Christian therapists, the parents never willing to admit that the reason for the lack of progress was the closed-minded, biased approach of the therapists.  It truly is insane to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.  Furthermore, the haughty, condescending attitude of these so-called therapists is deplorable.  Although I have no evidence regarding Leelah’s relationship with God or her prayer life other than that she went to church at her parents’ request, the remarks of these people in the name of therapy is something that I and many of my trans Christian friends have been told by Christian pastors, counselors and former friends who think they are setting us straight.  And since all of us are many years older than Leelah, it is even more insulting to us.  We are called selfish when we sacrificed our own lives for decades trying to please others by being something we are not.  We are called wrong even though the Bible verses they use (if any) are so flimsy that they can be answered without breaking a sweat.  And they disregard our testimony, in effect calling us liars, when we tell them how much we have reached out to God in this matter, in prayer, in studying the Bible and in seeking someone we could trust to be discreet, honest, open-minded and insightful in providing counsel.  Ignoring our testimony that knowledge of our gender identity goes back to childhood, they treat us as if we were bored one day and decided this would be a fun and interesting thing to do.  They have no concept of how long we wrestled with this and counted the cost before proceeding.]

The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say, “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please.

This is the way that Leelah concluded her suicide note.  Leelah, dear soul, I and many other people are telling your story to honor your last wish.  You are more than a victim: you are a martyr in the cause of social justice for all transgender people.  If there is any human decency in the world, your plaintive final words will strike a chord that will move the hearts of fair-minded people, just as images of attack dogs, fire hoses, bombed churches and lynchings moved fair-minded people 50 years ago in the cause of civil rights for black people.

As for Leelah’s parents, I continued to think about them as I wrote this post.  And I have come to understand that their punishment has just begun within their own minds, far worse than anything mankind can do to them.  Regardless of what they are saying in denial or to save face or in their own grief, they will have to live with the knowledge that this child who they have brought into the world blames them for driving her to suicide.  They will have to live with the knowledge that Leelah left this earth comforting her brother and two sisters, but with a curse to them.  They will have to live, wondering how their other children feel about them now, or perhaps even knowing that one or more of them also blame them for Leelah’s death.  They will have to live wondering if their children can forgive them for what they did to take their sister away from them.  And while I will not pretend to know if or how God is speaking to their hearts right now, they will still have to live wondering how their parenting of Leelah will be judged on that day when all that we have done will be judged as either precious or worthy of nothing more than to be burned in the fire.

And will they wonder if, in thinking they were saving their child, they actually put a stumbling block (i.e. offended) in the way of Leelah and drove her further away from God?  Will their hearts be pierced whenever they read these words or hear them preached upon?

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. – Matthew 18:4-6,10,14

And if Leelah’ parents were face to face with me right now?  I serve a God of redemption.  I would hold out the right hand of fellowship to them.  If they have ears to hear, I would do my best to unfold the Scriptures to them that I have discovered in my 25 year search for truth on this topic.  And I would do the same for any Bible-believing Christian parent who has a transgender child, regardless of the state of their relationship with that child.  I do not hold myself out as a therapist.  But I have shared the Gospel and taught the Word of God and have decades of study to show myself “approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2^nd Timothy 2:15)

God forgive us,

Lois