On August 7, 1970 Harold B. Lee spoke the first words expressly about trans people known to have been spoken by an LDS GA/apostle/prophet. I previously presumed Clyde J. Williams’ 1996 book ‘The Teachings of Harold B. Lee’ which I own a copy of and have spoken about before contained the full and accurate quote. I recently discovered it does not, after I personally investigated the source he references and listened to the entire talk. There is much more about us that was said. Also, Williams took a slight liberty in paraphrasing (inserting the phrase ‘some dreamer’). The original source is Harold B. Lee’s Banquet Address at the Fifth Annual Priesthood Genealogical Research Seminar. Since the 50-year restriction period expired last August, the audio recording is now digitally available on request from the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library. (A3421 B: Genealogical Banquet Address (Elder Harold B. Lee), 7 Aug. 1970).
To my dear trans friends… don’t read further unless you are in a strong place emotionally, psychologically, and otherwise. It does not have kind language about us and appears designed to try to create fear and outrage. I will provide my response afterwards, but I cried at the harsh language and fear it tries to create and spread as well as the methods used to try do so. The full relevant excerpt from Harold B Lee’s talk here follows, word for word:
“Now among us today there’s some ugly things. I just had, I had a letter from a return missionary that was very troubled, about a, a something that’s creeping in that’s as devilish and hellish as anything among us today. It’s called transsexuality. I looked in the abridged[sic] dictionary which I thought contained all the words that have ever been said but it doesn’t appear there. And so I, I read on to see what was in his letter and he said something like this. His parents had gone to a movie called ‘Christian[sic] Christine Jorgenson Story’. Now I shouldn’t have told you that but for some of you with rights to see this [light audience laughter and audience voices briefly audible] which is about a transsexual. And they commented to their son about the telling about it that a woman was trapped inside a man’s body so this person had an operation performed in Copenhagen and sexually had him changed to a her, saying that his estrogen level was 95% and that he was really a woman in a man’s body and not a homosexual. Then they commented that the new, that they’re, they’re now performing thousands of operations here in the United States at Johns Hopkins University on newborn babies to save them from bondage. And this boy said I don’t believe it and so he wrote to ask. The simple answer just as simple if we believe what the Lord said, in Genesis, in Moses, ‘For the Lord said let us make man in our own image and in the likeness of our person. And I God created them, created man in mine own image. In the image of mine only begotten created I them. Male and female created I them.’ Do you need anything else to, to prove the falsity of any such hellish doctrine as this so-called transsexuality doctrine of some? The Lord created male and female and He didn’t have a woman’s body trapped in a man’s or a woman’s soul trapped in a man’s body or vice versa.”
My comments and response: Framing the discussion with terms like not just ‘hellish’ (twice), but also ‘devilish’ and ‘ugly’ is heartbreaking to me as a trans person for the level of panic and fear and Satan associated stigma and unkindness it would inspire for generations to come. Heartbreaking to me even more so that he spoke it without ever even having met, or known a single one of us, our stories, our realities that we go through, and more. Judged in absentia, with no chance to even testify on our own behalf.
In this quote we find the first evidence in the church of choosing pronouns to misgender a trans person, twice demonstrated by example as modeled to a member audience expected to go back to numerous wards and stakes throughout the church. We also see what appears to be deliberate attempted deadnaming. I say attempted because evidently Lee had not bothered to read or study enough, or else conveniently forgot that “Christian” was not even Christine’s deadname… yet Lee seems willing to attempt even ignorantly and misguidedly deadnaming her anyway.
It’s also interesting to me (in contrast to much of later policy that would speak only to surgery for four decades until last February when it began attacking hormone use) that the quote actually speaks to hormones and hormone levels as well, all the way back in 1970. FYI The movie does mention this (as 96%) though even the movie references are questionable vs scientific understanding both then and now. The movie also talks about her going on hormones.
Then of course there is the first case of the false presumption Lee spreads into the church falsely suggesting that sexual orientation and gender could only be one and the same and that a trans woman is merely a homosexual. (Just as my BYU therapist tried unsuccessfully to convince me three decades later that supposedly I was just a homosexual man attracted to men. Spoiler: I’m not attracted to men and never have been).
It breaks my heart at the play to teaching and inspiring fear among the membership when Lee tries to fearmonger about trans people by saying that ‘they’re now performing thousands of operations here in the United States at Johns Hopkins University on newborn babies to save them from bondage.’ Babies? Yes, he claimed it was babies. Trying to scare people by talking about transsexuals and then immediately suggesting it as if cisgender babies were somehow being forced to become transsexuals. I sat there waiting for him to explain, to clarify. He didn’t. The way Lee pitched that makes it sound as if they are going to take cisgender babies en masse and perform SRS on them at birth as if like with Christine Jorgenson? That makes zero sense in a trans context and is flat out a scaremongering, fearmongering, blatant misleading statement designed to evoke shock, fear, and outrage from Lee’s audience.
I even went back and re-watched the Christine Jorgenson story. It does mention thousands of people now (1970) being helped at Johns Hopkins. It never not even once talks about babies though. Between that and misguidedly erring even at deadnaming, I question whether Lee watched let alone knew what he was even talking about from the movie. At best it makes me wonder especially with the Johns Hopkins reference if Lee is confusing trans medicine of the time with treatment of intersex babies. Or if Lee somehow just invents the confused notion about babies. Either way, trying to suggest this the way he did is at best recklessly ignorant and confused while trying to instill fear and outrage, or at worst downright deceptive. It is tragic to me that he just let that fear based statement stand with no context, explanation, or more…. as if it it was merely thrown out to try to stir up panic and fear and make something seem far more exaggerated than the reality, and as if to paint a picture seeming far more devilishly planned then the reality of doctors trying to help people. Lee’s fearmongering would spread to parents of trans (and perhaps) intersex children and many others. This breaks my heart.
It saddens me to see Harold B. Lee not even seem to have considered anything more than looking in a dictionary (while not even clear that he even correctly realized the difference between abridged or unabridged). Lee spreading fear without even talking to doctors or studying it, nor claiming to have gone to ‘talk with Jesus Christ’ or even pondering and seeking revelation about it or even at all having taken it to the Lord for revelation or understanding. Instead Lee just presumes that his personal narrow and logically flawed presumptive interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve should be attempted to be force-fit onto something it has zero relevance to. And then he jumps to fear based conclusions about catastrophe scenarios with babies to strike fear into the hearts of his family loving, baby loving audience? I can’t even being to express how that breaks my heart. Less than two years later, this selfsame man would be the one to marry and seal my own mother and father in the Salt Lake temple. A mother and father who the church would go on to play a key role in teaching to fear supporting or even believing people like me, to where I knew that I had to hide from even them.
Lee was a senior apostle at the time, next in line to be prophet less than two years later. That he did not know what a transsexual was and had to even look it up, strongly suggests that this was likely not something that had previously been studied or spoken of among the brethren even going as far back as to 1941 when lee became an apostle. It strongly suggests that this is likely to be the first time any of them actually even had thought at all about or approached the subject. It is probably first time any of them used their position to speak about it to members of the church.
In contrast, quite amazingly, Dr. Gregory Prince (in the trans chapter of his book ‘Gay Rights and the Mormon Church: Intended Actions Unintended Consequences’) documents a 1970s marriage and sealing that he even witnessed in the Washington DC temple of a transsexual woman to a cisgender man. A marriage and sealing that the church’s top leaders even knew about and evidently didn’t stop or revoke. A case where Elder Hugh W. Pinnock was directly involved and this was raised to the Q15. In contrast to Lee’s words spoken publicly and spread to many with reach across the whole church, the marriage and sealing were kept quiet and not even spoken of until Greg Prince himself was willing to go on record and point it out. Harold B. Lee passed away in December of 1973. I can only guess that the trans temple marriage happened after his passing or influence could stop it. Early LDS history on trans people seems to be hit and miss, but was very wild west back then still. Church Handbook Policy would emerge only around the late 1970s and early 1980s. By then, it seems that the anti-trans seeds that Harold B Lee plants in his 1970 talks had taken root and would win the day so far even largely today though with a kinder tone superimposed over the similar anti-trans beliefs.
I suspect every trans person who has ever felt they were on trial against someone much like their own Sanhedrin understands well how Jesus would have felt when they said “What need we any further witness?” while they stubbornly and pridefully presumed their scripture could only ever mean it blasphemously impossible for Jesus to be who he said he was. It’s the tragic and painfully sad feeling I feel when Harold B. Lee and others like him say things like “Do you need anything else to, to prove the falsity of any such hellish doctrine as this so-called transsexuality doctrine of some?”. The silence that followed his remarks, a silence I still see among so many church members and leaders to just fully and unquestioningly and immediately and thoroughly just believe such dark things about people like me… still breaks my heart.
The bold answer Lee and others do not want to hear is Yes, I would need more because the claim is unfounded; because shoehorning with logical fallacy and non sequitur to try to use the scriptures presume those tried in absentia are impossible like that and to spread fear about them… is deeply flawed and no basis for condemnation. I need people who are more intellectually honest and less reckless do not fear or spread fear about our existence as their basis and leave it as a legacy, and are not recklessly presumptive with flawed logic trying to force-fit apples to oranges scripture that lacks comparative relevance. I need people who instead of fear and spreading fear, have courage to not arrogantly presume or act so recklessly so they are not afraid of truth that challenges presumptions. As a trans person, I need more than highly presumptuous exclusionary narrow interpretation of a scripture from a man who seems to be acting out of fear, has not studied this out, shows no evidence and speaks with no evidence of having asked a god about it, and demonizes with words like hellish, devilish, without ever once having even met or known any one of us and what we go through and our reality. I need people with courage to back off from recklessly attacking trans people in order to satisfy their shaky unfounded presumptions about us. I need more than interpretations laden with highly questionable logical fallacies (like the shaky approach of argumentum ad ignorantium) and non sequitur presumptions as a basis. And, I need someone who does not drop unclarified statements like fear-bombs about surgeries on babies to strike fear of trans people into the hearts of members, parents, families, and an entire culture without having even done research or anything more than attempting extremely presumptuous logic on a text, and speaking in dehumanizing terms about people like me, without ever having known any of us.
Compared to this language in contrast to the recent February Policy on trans people, the church has made only small progress (sadly paired with regress as well) in understanding and not fearing us existing in this life or the next, or fearing having kids and supporting kids who are trans, or fearing getting us real medical help, or not demonizing us or dehumanizing us (but at least with a loving tone while doing so) as much now after 50 years. Now it supposedly as of February is even claiming to have no position on what causes trans people (rather than directly claiming it is the devil, and twice by Lee claiming it as hellish), although the church leaders are still disciplining and restricting us and listing us under moral issues as if we were. I see the lips speak, but I see and experience the actions far more clearly. The church has come, dragged by science, to understand that gender and sexuality are not the same. The church is barely even now kind of maybe admitting or suggesting that we don’t just make this up, rather that this is something real and medical but to have faith that we will never really exist or deserve to as us… though it still makes claims about under the topic of Satan on it’s website when you search for transgender or gender. The church has recently only suggested in policy that we don’t need to be misgendered in name, but even there it is only suggested that we ‘may’, not must or should be called by our name. I’m still waiting to see if a General Authority (Oaks level, since Lee was also that level) is willing to model that practice by example, considering evidently an apostle of their rank previously modeled misgendering towards us to many members. I’m not holding my breath that any of them will address us with respectful pronouns, or not awkwardly always avoid calling me ‘sister _‘ while addressing all other sisters and brothers by brother and sister. It also makes me wonder why the only recent policy that punishes social transition, merely presenting in gender in dress, and hormones…. when hormones and more was in awareness even 50 year ago, and in the 1970s. How long will the legacy of fear, and fear based presumptions about us continue? How long will the church want us to be impossible to even be considered that we could exist or deserve to exist as who we say we are after this life? How long will hope for us to not be real so it can discard us and have who it wishes it could have instead of us so it could have and love that instead of us? When will they stop being afraid to actually dare love us or who we are, and want us as who we are, and love us enough to be horrified at someone trying to erase or want who a person is overwritten just to please others, as if our body is sacred but who we are is not?
As for comparing to Adam an Eve? It is a non sequitur. Just because Adam was not trans and people assume that Eve (made female out of a male rib) was not thought of as trans, it is flawed logic to presume that no trans person could ever exist just because a tiny sample size of two under apples to oranges different conditions is consulted as a way off base reference. That’s like saying, In the beginning there were at most two colors of hair, therefore it is impossible that there are more than 2 hair colors. It is theists who taught the phrase Absence of Evidence is not evidence of absence (about god), an approach theists should be well versed in claiming and not trying suddenly to use a double standard especially when faced with a case where in a far larger samples size of millions of people with conditions that are nothing like the Adam and Eve example… trans people DO exist as the counterexample.
Beyond being a logical fallacy based on argumentum ad ignorantium, it is also a non sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the evidence that has nothing to with the case being discussed. Why? well for starters, because unlike Adam and Eve, I was not born in the beginning or like them with those methods or circumstances. That makes a massive difference when using them as a flawed comparison. I was born in what even the church itself even calls the ‘latter days’. Methods of creation, conditions of the bodies created, and much more are well known to be vastly different for everyone except Adam even to the point that if anything Adam and Eve are the exceptions to the rule, not the rule. Let’s explore just how significant that point is and why.
(1) In the beginning everyone that existed was only named either Adam or Eve. This would never happen again on this planet. In the ‘latter days’ people are named many other names.
(2) In the beginning there was a sample size of two. This would never happen again to anyone on this planet. In the ‘latter days’ there is a sample size of over 7 billion with vast variations.
(3) In the beginning, one male physical body was created by a god taking dust and forming it into a body and breathing life into it. This would never happen again to anyone on this planet. In the latter day’s male physical bodies are created from sperm and eggs from other human bodies.
(4) In the beginning, one female body was created when god as the approving/performing surgeon removed a rib with male DNA and in the first ever divinely approved transgender medical procedure god created the first woman out of male rib DNA. This would never happen again to anyone on this planet. In the ‘latter days’, women are born from sperm and egg from other human bodies.
(5) In the latter days, intersex, trans, and many other kinds of physical bodies are also created from the sperm and egg of other human bodies.
(6) In the beginning, Adam and Eve were physically created as adults. This would never happen again to anyone on this planet. In the ‘latter days’, everyone alive today was created as newborn infants.
(7) In the beginning we are told that Adam and Eve were created with an immortal physical body. This would never happen again to anyone on this planet. In the ‘latter days’ everyone is born with a mortal physical body that was never ever immortal to begin with.
(8 & 9) In the beginning, there were not even enough humans (two) to have all the hair colors, eye colors, and other physical attributes people are commonly born with today. In the ‘latter days’, much more variety is born.
(10) In the beginning we are told Adam and Eve were born with perfect bodies made by the perfect Jesus. In the latter days people are born with bodies that are not just imperfect for not being immortal, but are also imperfect for missing limbs, born deaf, born blind, or having whole medical textbooks of variances and differences.
To the extreme literalists who try to force-fit the biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve to try to exclude instead of include trans people… there are serious problems with that narrow-minded attempt at flawed logic of trying to use Adam and Eve to try to rule other people out. After all, I meet all kinds of people who were not born in adult bodies, not named Adam and Eve, not women made out of a ribs or men made out of dust, not in immortal physical bodies, and not walking around completely naked, with more than 2 hair colors and more than 2 eye colors, not speaking Adamic (let alone born speaking a language at all), and who have never in their life physically walked with and seen and talked to god face to face like Adam and Eve are said to have. Flawed attempts at logic to try to exclude others, by appealing to the strict exactitude in a comparison that has no right at all to be considered apples to apples does not rule out trans people, but it does show the lengths people will try to go to rationalize excluding others and even try to blame a god for it.
If anything in numerous ways, Adam and Eve were if anything the exception and not the rule for what is the experience for humanity. Citing them as the comparison when they are created by methods none of us were in conditions none of us are, as if Adam and Eve are the standard for what the rest of us experience as our reality is not a remotely viable comparison and seems more for convenience to try to force-fit in order to condemn, than for any actual apples to apples relevance. And then comparing them by saying something wasn’t in their story for them so it could never exist for anyone else is just not an intellectually honest approach either and is a known flaw in logic when used that way.
Let’s consider even more though. In the beginning, on the 6th day.
In the Genesis account many religions attribute the creation of man directly to God the Father, but based on 1 John 1-14 the LDS consider Jehovah/Jesus to be the ‘Word of God” (“the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”) and that “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” and that Jesus created Adam and Eve merely under the direction of God the Father.
In the creation account in Moses in the Pearl of Great Price we read of God the Father saying “I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so. And I, God, said: Let them have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them.” Note that so far in all of these cases we have two males creating in God the Father’s or their “own” image and yet a woman was also created even though none of those speaking were in the image of a female. Not a single female noted there giving birth, or with her genitals involved. Nobody, nobody’s genitals needed for physical creations. When one considers further Moses 3:5 that “all things were created spiritually before physically” if one presumes the methods and patterns of millions or innumerous physical creations without genitals and by two males, is it really that hard to consider spiritual exalted gods with millions or innumerous offspring that do not need male-female genital pairings to create them or even male-female in any other way to create their offspring? Not at all. The spirit males in the creation accounts seem to manage just fine, don’t they? Two males even physically created a physical body for one of them without even having a physical body themselves yet. Think hard on that. Note also in the Moses account that God the Father refers to Jesus as his “only” “begotten” even though during the creation Jesus had not yet even been physically begotten yet. The word “only” is even more curious since we are talking about a creation account where God the Father directs Adam and Eve to be created in God the Father’s image, yet by listing Jesus as the “only” begotten does not even count Adam and Eve as among those physically “begotten” of God the Father.
As an important note it is not trivial that God the Father and others were not limited to physical procreation to create physical life. A consideration that many try to discount as a rare and ‘one time only event’. It is not remotely a one-time event though once one considers the LDS view of D&C 76:24 which notes of Jesus that “by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” Worlds. Plural. “worlds without number” (Moses 1:39) “millions of worlds like this” (Orson Pratt referencing Joseph Smith) “worlds so numerous that they cannot be numbered by man” (Bruce R McConkie). Worlds we are told time and again that Jesus is also the Savior of their inhabitants (Take a look to search the talk on lds dot org titled ‘“Is Jesus Christ the Savior of all the worlds God created or just ours?” and just how many references it points to about this). Notice in the D&C 76:24 verse we are told that the inhabitants of those world are “begotten” sons and daughters unto God. Yet, Jesus is the “only” begotten? It seems that it is not safe to play a narrow-minded restrictive mindset with language and concepts, when the scriptures themselves are showing evidence themselves of playing fast and loose with terminology and broad meanings.
Even more amazingly we have understanding of a Jesus with no physical body potentially creating a physical body for as many as millions or so many more other people we cannot number it… once the other worlds are counted as well. I wonder… Is it probable that forgetting such perspective mortal men forget this and fixate narrowly on physical procreation by genitals as a factor that limits gods? With the birth of Jesus body by Mary who ‘knew’ no man, it strongly suggests that an all-powerful god is not so narrowly confined by genitals as some folks might want to force him into a box in order to narrowly imagine. Physical creation without male female pairings, that happened million and millions of times? Not remotely a one-off. Rare? Yes, but only because those millions and millions of worlds would each have billions and billions of follow on offspring whose bodies were not created the same way as their planetary progenitors.
Unlike all the rest of us here who were physically “begotten” of our physical parents, Adam and Eve were not even literally physically “begotten” by physical genitals procreating from a mother and father. Maybe it was like that in the beginning. But unlike Adam and Eve, my body was not created from dust, mine was physically “begotten” by my mortal parents with genitals. Not a trivial difference, and one that should be noted to avoid comparing apples to oranges and then trying to us mismatched comparison to then insist on a narrow interpretive point of view being applied to those whose conditions are significantly different.
The Abraham creation account is a bit different. Instead of referring to God or Jesus in specific it repeatedly speaks saying “the Gods” did this or “The Gods” did that. Plural. Gods. For example, the passage in Abraham 4: 26-27 “And the Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness;… So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them.” A whole account written using they and them and plural terms for gods. I have not been able to find references to clarify whether LDS doctrine claims that women were included in reference to “the Gods” that were involved in the creation/ I have not found reference indicating they were not either; only that the other accounts don’t mention them directly and do mention specific men directly.
Notice the pronouns shift. Not even ‘He/Him/His’. Rather, ‘They/Them/Their/We/Us/Our’. Not created ‘He’ them. Rather, created ‘They’ them. Once again evidence that suggests not an exclusionary narrow interpretation, but a far broader interpretation. Lee’s appeal to the Genesis account to use narrow interpretation to condemn trans people also seems to forget this in Lee’s effort to narrow this to a singular “I” and ‘He’. In context of pronouns and trans people, the difference in pronouns between creation accounts and ease of changing pronouns, speaks volumes in not presuming one just narrowly knows what pronouns to use or what to presume from the Genesis and Moses accounts. This is not trivial, as such a narrow view would mean a male created them in ‘his’ image yet created MORE than just male. Or that multiple males created them in their image yet created MORE than just males. If one considers ‘the gods’ to only be referring to God the Father and Jesus, or as from temple ceremony creation accounts to be referring to God the Father, Jesus, and Adam, it reminds of the danger of taking a narrow interpretation of the Genesis account, and also reminds that three males created ‘man’ in their own image, yet we ended up with a woman too.
If one is broader still to consider “the gods’ to include all of those noble and great ones or those who were spirits in Abraham 3:7 and to include more then it opens the door to much broader interpretation where unlike the narrow interpretation of Genesis others than man, i.e. women were perhaps involved in the creation? Additionally Is it that hard to picture an entire spectrum of gender among “the gods”? From the most masculine manly men, to the least masculine man, to the intersex, to the nonbinary, to the least feminine woman, to the most feminine woman? ‘The gods’ seems a broad enough term to cover a vast and wondrous variety… much how the rest of the creation accounts are all written to inspire. Is it hard to imagine a god who did not worry that there would end up being bodies with less certainty or conflict in gender or a need to work through that (in either direction) because such diversity could even exist spiritually first too?
For the last account, the temple ceremony creation account, I will not point out anything other than a reminder that it seems treated as more sacred than the other three and it places Adam with Jesus and God The Father (more as presiding) as the three males and no females in the account directly involved in the creation of Adam and Eve. It seems to be an approach to try to reconcile the Genesis and Moses accounts (singular god) with the Abraham accounts (plural gods) and also show God the Father as the creator (presiding) while also showing Jesus involved more directly at the executing end with Adam helping him.
In all of the accounts notice the word “likeness”. Created in the likeness of god / the gods. Why is does ‘likeness’ matter? It again gives indication that we are not talking about narrowly defined perfectionist OCD obsessed exactitude. Adam and Eve were created in the ‘likeness’ of God or the Gods. If there were “gods” plural with numerous hair colors, numerous eye colors, numerous heights, numerous spirit body types, vast and numerous diversity… it makes sense that the work “likeness” would be used specifically to help people avoid being narrow minded in presuming exactitude in the creation of Adam and Eve, and as a reminder that among “the gods” there was room for diversity, and that even with an Adam and Eve who were not in perfect exactitude of god the Father… being merely close enough to be considered in his likeness was perfectly fine with God the Father and everyone else involved who valued and understood the diversity that would be among children as numerous as the sands of the sea on worlds without number. Everything in the creation of Adam and Eve and the creation accounts points to not a narrow and restrictive view trying to put god in a box, but rather a vast, wondrously and beautifully diverse variety and diversity among the gods themselves and a respect even from God himself and/or the Gods themselves that “likeness” not narrow minded obsession with limited exactitude was expected.
In each account again we hear the expression “created he THEM” or “created they THEM”. Again this matters. Why? Because it does not say that the creation is an account of every single human who will ever exist on this planet. And that matters tremendously in why it cannot be applied to those who it is not about. It does not say created He everyone physically in the beginning. He didn’t. And in multiple accounts about diversity and expansive understanding of creation it does not say created he/they them and ensured that all would only ever be exactly like them. It shows that it is about Adam and Eve. It is the story of their creation. Not my individual creation. Not your individual creation. We were all created under very different circumstances and methods and approaches that I am outlining in this article about what existed for Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve (and their counterparts on other worlds) are the ones that the creation account speaks to. It does not even begin to explain the ‘birds and the bees’ approach for all the rest of us, born after (not before) the fall via physical procreation of genitals (not dust or ribs) from mortal parents (not from two or three men working together) producing baby bodies (not adult ones) that were mortal (not immortal) and would die and have more than two or even four hair colors, more than two or even four eye colors, and billions of physical differences in attributes with every single attribute of our body including genitals and reproductive.
There are significant difference between how creation of bodies works “in the beginning”, “on the 6th Day”, vs after god resting for a seventh day and with us now in “the latter days”. Yes, it may seem tempting to reach for the easy low hanging fruit apples one has from the Genesis scripture account, and then try to force-fit it to make sense of the most diverse oranges whose creation is not even covered in that story and whose creation is quite visibly by completely different methods, involves completely different participants, and occurs under completely different circumstances. Comparing apples to oranges will still lead to conclusions that make sense for apples, and not oranges. It will never be a truly or fully honest comparison when evaluating oranges with the presumptions of apples.
Even some LDS leaders in the past have gradually realized the creation account is not so narrowly limiting. Consider for example the quote by Spencer W Kimball just four years later in October 1974: “God made man in his own image, male and female made he them. With relatively few accidents of nature, we are born male or female. The Lord knew best. Certainly, men and women who would change their sex status will answer to their Maker.” And indeed you will find that trans people who pursue medical help to heal ourselves are more than ready to answer to our maker. This is not something trivial to us, it is every day of our lives and decisions we research and think about with levels of thought and investment that armchair quarterbacks spending less than 15 minutes and having never researched or talked with doctors are not nearly so personally invested and studied in, and acting out of fear. Trans people who have wrestled with and thought about this more intimately and in their prayers and personal revelation with god and in study and experience than people repeating fear from others to us will ever know.
Now that we’ve made that clear. Did you see the acknowledgement by Spencer W. Kimball that is not a narrow minded view of exclusively being born with male and female? Here it is again: “With relatively few accidents of nature, we are born male or female” Even Kimball had to admit that NO, not everyone is physically born into the strict binary of exclusively male or female. Kimball had to admit it because intersex people are very externally obvious proof. Proof, that the methods, circumstances, participants, and even outcomes today are NOT the limited narrow and quite different example from Adam and Eve’s.
Consider that transgender and intersex both and even combined meet the criteria of being, rare, or in the terms of Kimball “relatively few” compared to the overall population. Less than one percent. Consider that the brain, yes the brain, is the largest sexual organ in our reproductive system. That the brain IS part of the body. The brain is part of our physical body’s biology. While many people focus on the external manifestations of gender and sexual diversity that is seen in genitals for intersex people, consider it is notable that in cases like complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS) the genitals can be deceiving and look perfectly convincing as female genitals (because lack of hormone receptors, meant the XY DNA was overruled) and one can find someone with male DNA, female external genitals, and testicles instead of ovaries found where one cannot externally see. People who end up with external female genitals that appear so female that even doctors cannot tell by external genitals alone. Consider also the David Reimer case of a child with a botched circumcision who was attempted without his knowledge to be raised female but the brain did not agree and he rejected it.
Never forget that brain while not as visible as genitals is the central biological body part involved in gender and sex both. While there are important distinctions between experiences and what transgender and intersex people experience and must go through, from a broader perspective consider that both are outcomes where the physical body is not completely aligned as what people expect on the more polar ends of male or female. With transgender people, the key gender and sexual organ where that matters? The brain.. which, remember, IS part of the physical body, IS part of biology. When brain and body do not align in gender, you have a transgender person. With CAIS, where the internal DNA of those external genitals may be male and internally one finds not ovaries but testicles, yet one sees female genitals formed and in many ways able to function and perform in many ways as it does for females. Is it really that hard to realize that transgender people have brains that are not in the same alignment as what is showing on the external body? No. Even brains that might even have DNA of one gender, yet do not function the way the brain does or that gender? Function matters. Just as wood is found in trees, but we call chairs ‘chairs’ instead of trees and we call tables ‘tables’ instead of trees when the material involved does not function in the role of a tree.
So with that in mind, lets now consider another aspects from the creation accounts that Lee didn’t even bring up. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Let’s talk about not the dust, but the breathing into one’s nostrils the breath of life. The ‘breath of life’. In a literal physical sense, while this may have been the literal case for Adam and Eve, I don’t see Jesus or God the Father physically breathing literal breaths into the nostrils of babies in their mothers wombs surrounded by liquid. I don’t see God the Father or Jesus doing that after the child leaves the womb either. So, another difference between my creation and the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve. Let’s consider something less narrow and exclusively literalist though shall we? A figurative “breath of life”. LDS prophets and apostles have varied over time about whether it was when the baby drew the first breath, or when the baby begins to move around. Even today I cannot find an official position from the church stating exactly what the moment that the “quickening” or spirit enters the body is, though it seems to at least be treated as prior to third trimester and covers stillbirths even. For sake of what I will discuss today the exact moment is not critical. What is critical to consider is the concept of a body being physically formed/made/created but not yet alive if a spirit body or figurative spiritual ‘breath of life’ has not yet been imbued to it. In our discussion this matters because this is the one point in the process where one could argue that no matter how the body is formed (rib, dust, procreation by mortals, test tube, surrogate, etc), the moment in question that might matter more for trans people is when the spirit enters the body.
It seems to be presumed that God the Father is the one who directly makes that happen. i.e. that sure Jesus and Adam created the physical body but God himself breathed life into it (i.e. put the spirit inside it). First, again, let’s notice this seems to be accomplishable…. without using genitals to get the spirit to go inside. Second let’s consider for a moment whether we actually know if god the Father himself is the one who directly does it, or if like in the creation of the physical body he merely oversees it and delegates to other spirits/angels to execute his work. I mention it only because of the biblical passages that seem to suggest that spirits (those of god’s other 1/3 of his children cast down from heaven and following Lucifer) seem to be reported in the bible as being able to go into and take possession of human bodies, to the point where Jesus (and delegates) are reported as casting those spirit bodies (that somehow entered) to go ack out. At very least god, and/or perhaps someone else he delegates to seems to act on his behalf and under his direct places spirits into bodies for birth. Ok so far so good.
Now here’s the interesting part to consider. Let’s consider for a moment God, or a delegate of God acting under his supervision, or even our own selves in a premortal life looking at the physical bodies being formed just before the instant our spirit enters it. Some bodies that will be born with all kinds of physical conditions, variances, even limbs missing, or even born unable to survive more than moments after birth at all. These are hardly the perfect conditions of a body formed that Lee tries to compare to with Adam and Eve. Consider a spirit child looking at a body they will enter that is born blind, or deaf, or missing a limb, or in any number of physical conditions unlike anything even remotely apples to apples with the Adam and Eve story. Consider those who are looking at bodies they know will be born intersex. Consider the spirit person looks at a CAIS body I mentioned earlier. Consider a spirit person looking at a body where due to hormones in utero, DNA, or other factors, the brain is not functioning in a way aligned to the gender aspects of the rest of the body. Consider someone says well, the body looks and will function male, but that brain is going to function female. A body that is NOT fully aligned in gender. And god, the spirit, or whoever else then has to say, well this won’t exactly match you as a spirit but we have that happen with mortal physical bodies all the time, with everything and genitals and brain are no exception.
This then literally comes down to trying to claim that God would overlook the brain and deliberately curse someone male to go down and have a genitals that align with spirit but with a brain that does not align. So they can’t even think or exist as themselves, yet are put on trial for their eternal godhood final exam? Are you kidding me? And God himself, not even Satan, sets them up to fail like that? Or consider a God who deliberately curses someone female to go down and have a brain that is aligned and genitals that do not. No matter what spirit is sent, the body will be misaligned either because of the brain or genitals. And think about sitting there considering would it be better for brain or genitals to align. We are to presume that god will always choose genitals over brain, so we don’t even THINK like ourselves yet are judged as if we do? What a sick cruel thing to do to one’s own child. I’m supposed to believe that god is so insanely obsessed with genitals, to the point he will try to have part of the person’s eternal gender tampered with in their brain and self and consciousness but will treat genitals as more sacred then his own children’s existence and who they are inside? That is not a loving god. It feels to me far more like a sex-obsessed monster.
And then expect his children to act as if they don’t exist or deserve to in this life or the next? Because who they are inside meant nothing to God, and he cared more about their genitals then who they even are inside? What exactly does this god love? His child or the genitals? Because a god who would sell his child out just to match genitals and then send his child to a final exam set up by the hand of God himself to fail at…. sounds unusually cruel.
And then with his children as a result to be told to trust their feelings and thoughts, oh but also to never ever trust their own feelings and thoughts? Oh, but by they way it’s your fault if you screw up and can’t tell, but I tampered with your brain to make sure you would stumble and be more likely to fail? In a choice between brain and genitals, am I really supposed to believe that the part that is me honestly is genitals? That god cared more about that object than he cared about me? And my consciousness, my thoughts, my feelings are things god is willing to tamper with and make lies to me and leave me unable to even trust my own self thoughts, feelings, or anything, and expect me to take a godhood final exam under conditions like that? Because of an obsession with genitals more that who people are inside?
I’m sorry, but this sounds far more like what a sexually insecure squeamish mortal acting under genital urges who is obsessed with genitals would choose instead of a god making a choice based on brains rather than genitals and seeing a person’s value, meaning, inner self, and existence as so much more than genitals. Someone who sees into the mind and heart, not someone who is obsessed with and squeamish about genitals. Yet, I am told that God obsesses over genitals even more than caring about who I am, my thoughts and feelings? This makes no sense to me and never will. And it is horrifically suspect of men trying to think with their squeamish feelings about genitals instead of using their… heart and brains.
Consider some other thoughts as well. A god who is not obsessed with genitals to the point of sacrificing a persons consciousness, thoughts, and heart just to have the genitals please him. Consider a god who respected the very thoughts, feelings, WILL and consciousness of his own children as sacred. So sacred that a… war …had been fought in heaven over it to make sure it would not be erased or compromised to force the will of someone else over their consciousness and will and existence. A god who looks at imperfect physical bodies and can work with it. And is not obsessed or squeamish about anyone’s genitals and actually loves the person inside, more than obsessing over a body part to the point of wanting them erased.
Then maybe even dare consider the possibility of something even more. A god with spirit children as numerous as the sands of the see, with spirit body differences that varied just as much as the physical bodies. A god with people on a spectrum of gender from extreme male to extreme female, to only slightly male or slightly female, with everything in between, overlap and people who were unsure and maybe even were trying to sort through such things even in the preexistence. A god with nonbinary spirit children who he created and loves. A god with spirit children questioning their gender even in the spirit world, who he knew would question it even in the spirit world and he was not afraid because he knew his end plan would help them explore and be able to determine for themselves who they are and would be. A god who looked at missing limbs, blindness, and any other variance and was not worried about healing it, after all the plan could make something mortal back to immortal. What was the triviality of addressing other physical aspects, or even gender in comparison as part of the process? A god loving his spirit children who were feeling dysphoric perhaps even in the spirit world, and who he had realized needed those experiences of misalignment specifically for their own learning so they themselves, not him, could realize for themselves, and from their own selves what their gender should be. A god who could look at it and say, I would have loved and accepted you either way no difference. I loved you enough I knew this mattered to you and wanted you to be able from experience to know and determine for yourself, not just from faith or presumption, what would be best for you and to know personally why and not have to wonder forever “what if”. A god whose ways are higher and more wonderous and vast and incomprehensible, not tied up neatly in a box to try to be force-fitted into the passages of a book selected to condemn others for being different.
Then consider again the god who looks at his children as is angry because it is his will that his children conform to his fanfic and his will and have the genitals are in those bodies, even if they hate it and it feels wrong to them, because this is not about their will or their happiness. This is about his selfish will and his own glory only and his happiness for himself alone at everyone else’s expense, and about everyone else pleasing him and his wants and desires and how he could never love his children if their genitals are not what he sent them to in the messed up misaligned bodies. And you will be made to obey and conform and to please him after this life, and He will make sure that anything that stands in his way of what he wants for your body in order to please himself gets erased or cast away from him forever. And it has to be that way to please his law and his will that He made to please himself, or to placate the law He is powerless over as an all-powerful god with whom all things are possible…except trans people.
Comparing these two god versions, I have seen both kinds of parents of trans people. The ones who could never love their trans kid unless the gender that pleases them; often also trying to blame someone else (usually god) so that they don’t have to take responsibility and above all so they can avoid even considering that they could love their child either way for who their child realizes they are and find happiness as. I’ve seen how they treat their kids, what they miss out on, the pain in the relationship, and how they are willing to sacrifice their children as human sacrifices on the altar to their god, and don’t even want the knife to be stayed that would kill who their child is inside. Who don’t hope the knife will be stayed at the last moment, but rather long for who their child is inside to be killed forever so they as a parent can then decide to then want them.
In stark contrast are the ones who love their kids enough that they can love them no matter what gender they realize they are and work to align to, and want their kids to be able to discover and know for themselves. Who have faith in a god who can love and work with and see and fully value their children either way, just as they do, rather than a cruel selfish god who is OCD about genitals and vindictive to anyone whose will or consciousness is not erased in order to please him, or thrown away and would be so petty as to even eternally doom them into a body made to please him and curse them as if to show either spite or dominance.
Harold B Lee, seems to have made his prejudgment (prejudice) without ever even having met any of us. Without ever even having studied it out any further than a dictionary, without ever even considering what doctors knew then or today. Of course, Lee was also towing the party line back then about blacks and the priesthood, and many other things, which time shows subsequent leaders and the church did not hold to Lee’s view of strictness and order that he focused on in this talk as god’s obsession.
It is clear to me which god version Lee was emulating in his talk obsessed about “order”. And the obsession with order didn’t age well for his talk. He talked in this same talk about exemption requests for civil marriages before temple marriages. He then says that sealing after is not a temple marriage, and not as valid as temple marriage in the first place because it is not the Lord’s way or command. Ironically, in the 50 years since… the church seems to have changed its mind and allows civil marriage before temple. In fact even back in 2001 in some countries (like Brazil where I got married in civilly before the temple, as directed by church leaders), the church had zero problem with it. Lee seemed obsessed about something that evidently, God decided He was not obsessed with. And recently relaxed not just for other countries but the whole church. Lee’s talk did not age will. Oh, by the way in this talk he also made sure to tell people that “A liberal in the church is simply one who doesn’t have a testimony. That’s all. If you’re liberal in the church and making decisions on your own it’s because you lack a Rock-Bottom testimony and faith in the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the leadership that presides today”. It would seem the leaders of the church have backed down from Lee’s claim on that as well.
In all of these, where was the courage at the start of leaders to be more honest and admit “I don’t know”, or for leaders to say “I’m not sure, this is just me guessing”. The now evidently presumptive guesses leaders made, have costs measured in harm to human people and families. In the same talk with a section about trans people Lee talked about folks campaigning for change in temple ordinances. Lee responded that they are not to be altered or changed. That all people are to be saved on the same instances of the ordinances. He talked about denying requests to make changes to speed the temple ordinance up or do it more quickly. Evidently in the years after the talk and even more recently to come God seem to have not agreed with him that it could not be changed and accomplish that, because it was changed both in regards to aspects meaningful to sisters and also in the length of it.
In other talks than this one Lee spoke of race being because of obedience or disobedience in the premortal life. The doctrine of premortal valiance meaning some are rewarded and favored more than others here on earth. In more recent years, the church has even dropped that claim. In addition to race being a penalty for premortal non-valiance, Lee also taught that people who took bodies like those that were handicapped (‘physical limitations’) were not valiant in the premortal life. Yeah you heard that right, that handicapped people were LESS valiant, not more valiant, not equals, not varying, not choosing it. It would seem since his time though, that God and leaders didn’t agree with Lee on that either. Lee was know to speak against interracial marriage. Evidently God didn’t side with Lee in the end on that either.
Similarly it breaks my heart to see the origins of transphobia in the church, were so presumptive, unstudied, made pre-judged (prejudice) in absentia with no trans person ever met, by someone who had to look up the word transsexual because he didn’t even know what it was and evidently didn’t even know the difference between abridged and unabridged dictionaries, and applied flawed logic and non sequitur in apples to oranges comparisons and added fearmongering to it as well. It breaks my heart to see it was an appeal to scripture trying to force-fit the creation to be narrow and exclusionary, in a church that has every reason in the world from it’s 4 accounts to know better than to attempt such a narrow view of the creation story to try to rule things out. It breaks my heart to see logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ being used to try to force-fit the creation narrative to exclude trans people. Argument from ignorance like for example claiming “There is no evidence that giant squid exist, and therefore, giant squid do not exist” appeals to an absence of evidence as evidence of absence. And, just as with giant squid which were eventually found and discovered… it often proves itself to be nothing more than a presumption that the claim could not support because of flawed logic. Of all people, theists who commonly understand this in the argument with atheists about the existence of god, should know better than to use a double standard and try to play that tactic to argue for the existence of god even if just by faith and without evidence, yet then turn around and argue for the nonexistence of trans people because one passage about the beginning that only talks about two humans as a sample size is attempted to be foisted to make sweeping generalities about uncommon humans? The origins of transphobia I (which at the root is fear, not hate) in the church were based on scripture in a way that the scripture does not support unless you try to force-fit a logical fallacy and overextend it to a apples to oranges context that the scripture about ‘in the beginning’ with vastly difference methods and circumstances that any trans person born today has faced or been born through.
I sit here and wonder, “How Long”? How long before the church takes a sober look at the shaky foundations and presumptive logical fallacies it relied on to arrive at its initial transphobia? Its efforts to stretch a creation account to be about people who aren’t in it, and were not created the same way, or in the same conditions, and is not apples to apples? How long before they can admit their own eagerness to accept unsupportive and presumptive philosophies of men based on logical fallacy and non sequitur trying to force-fit a passage of scripture in order to condemn its neighbor instead of get to know them, and learn to actually love, include, respect, understand, and support them not just in word, but in actual deed? We’ve seen claims from the originator like lesser premortal valiance with race and handicapped people, and claims about stigma for interracial marriage, and claims about no civil marriage first, and claims about race and priesthood all fall by the wayside, in spite of talks trying to reinforce and demand that it was part of God’s order and his character and will.
It’s been over 50 years since the church’s origins of transphobia at that conference where genealogists from throughout the church came listened, and then returned to an array of wards and stakes throughout the church; before the anti trans policies came a decade later in the handbook with no appeal for trans people in this life and literally listing us with murder in the not only excommunicate but unforgiveable section with no appeal in this life, and punishment even for physicians. That changed later too. Excommunication is no longer in the trans policy, nor impossibility of appeal, nor punishment of physicians. Did God change his mind and favor some people over others? Or are people very very slowly getting the courage to meet us, actually study and learn about us, and stop teaching and spreading fear about us, and daring to maybe try even loving us, or actually love and care about who we are? How long until the church is ready for us? 50 years since without even meeting us we were talked about with terms like ugly, hellish and devilish by someone who didn’t do their homework and never even knew any of us or our lives.
In August of 1970 when the church’s transphobic fears began, my mother and father were barely students on the BYU campus, not even married by Lee yet, and I was not even a glint in their eye and would not be born for years to come yet. Yet, the seeds were already being sewn churchwide that would help them fear me and the beliefs that would hurt me, my relationship with my parents, and leave me with permanent physical reminders for the rest of my life of just how much the church’s policy impacts trans people and others we know and love in our families of origin, relationships, and more.
I wish to be clear, the problem with Lee’s quote beyond the horrific language painting us in an ‘ugly’, ‘hellish’, and ‘devilish’ picture…. is not hate. It is fear. It sewed a belief that would make people fear us as from Satan, and as not real or deserving to eternally even exist. Belief that would lead people to fear the ‘hellish’, ‘devilish’, and even ‘ugly’ (I cried when I heard him say that word too). Belief that would not make people hate us, so much as fear us. Fear having a child like us. Fear of supporting us. Fear of realizing they are one of us. Fear of getting us or themselves medical treatment. Fear that would lead to children hiding from their own parents. Fear that would destroy parent child relationships, sibling relationships, marriages, families, and leave children to pay the price of the fears of others the desperately needed help from. Fear that would set people trans and non-trans up for failure and harm. Fear that would turn homes, parents, churches from being places a child should be the very most safe and welcome into being places a child, youth, and even adults had to hide themselves in and from, and have to leave to find peace or people they can feel genuinely wanted and loved around and trustable and safe with. A fear so powerful that even trans children would ingest and come to fear their own selves, or judge and condemn their own selves because they were taught fear. Beliefs that we are confusion or lust or desire from Satan, that did nothing to help us get medical help, now that the church seems to be trying to back down from demonizing us as as from Satan, and into trying to paint us as mentally ill and therefore to be treated as still not real and easy to be treated as dehumanized because we therefore don’t exist or even deserve to eternally. Demonizing and dehumanizing are classic strategies people use to get others to treat people differently.
And what breaks my heart? All it requires to demonize or dehumanize us? Faith. Not even evidence. To where not only do churches and religious families become places we can’t trust, they become the most dangerous and emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually destructive places that use mechanisms of faith darkly to believe without evidence not just in some god somewhere but rather also to believe, with zero evidence, horrific things about other people like me. And to try to use faith without any evidence to get people to believe horrific things about themselves and others, and to get parents to believe horrific things about their children.
Faith can be a beautiful thing. But when it is instead used to demonize, dehumanize, or try to justify treating someone as nonexistent or inferior… faith turns dark. That’s not faith like faith in a loving god. That’s not faith like faith in a Savior that will save you. It’s faith like I don’t have to treat them how I would want to be treated because they don’t and won’t actually exist and would be inferior if they did, and they are dangerous. It’s faith like, ‘I don’t have to love them as I would love myself, they are misled by Satan or are an illness and therefore I can and should treat them differently’. Its faith like ‘I don’t have to fully love them like myself, I’ll just have thanks that after I remake them in the image I want them to be that finally then I can love them fully’. It’s even sadly faith like is sold in abuse of “Oh this isn’t abuse, I am doing this harm to them because I love them”. It’s the kind of faith that can convince people to sacrifice trans children as offerings to their god, where god does not stay the knife or provide a sheep to rescue at the last minute.
I’m sorry but I see these things, and so many other things with the LGBT where leaders made claims about the LGBT or spread fears and false statements about us that the leaders had to walk back later because the claims were just not true. (Monogamy causing gayness, Masturbation causing gayness, curability, nobody born that way, Gays supposedly being retards in the 1984 pamphlet, children would be worse off with gay parents, that gay people were just lusting and only about sex and never real love of selfless love for partner. The problem becomes not even just the falsehoods, not even just the history, but the realization that the mechanism that allows for the made up presumptions that are false… has not been fixed. That history shows it is not reliable. That they sometimes fix each mistake but are repeatedly unable to fix the process so that more of it won’t keep happening. That their mistakes cost lives, and hurt families, and harm people over decades, centuries, or more. That with each of the falsehoods other people prayed about it and felt sure in their hearts that it was true, and that discernment isn’t even reliable or the epistemic approach. That the conditions for this errant process to repeat even over decades centuries are still fully intact, and the mechanisms to prevent detecting it and to resist and deliberately avoid detecting it, and incentives to not correct it…. all still exist. And worse yet… that if there is a god who sees all of this… it sure looks to me like he doesn’t even care who gets harmed by it. I cannot trust those men, not when it is my life at risk. Not when it I am in the group they have a history of erring with, not detecting, not fixing for decades, and being resistant to error correction.
The leaders making the decisions aren’t even the ones paying the severest costs of the decision! If ever there was a case for (1) personal revelation to matter over what leaders say, or (2) even just saying ‘No, leader, I don’t trust you because you’ve cried wolf too many times and have proven you are unreliable on this’… it is where the decision of unreliable leaders with a horrific track record on the LGBT, shows that it cannot even protect us from itself, cannot detect itself well, and has problems even correcting itself and that we as the LGBT and our parents and families are the ones who pay the price for it.
I have great love for the members of the LDS church. But as I watch leaders still ‘lovingly’ spread fear about those like me by teaching and treating us as not real (or even deserving to be), or confusion from Satan, and as if predators too dangerous to be in a relief society or even use a bathroom… this church is still not ready for us. It fears us, because it is taught to and has institutionalized that fear as a belief. It tries to talk to us in a loving tone now, but it still fear us, and spreads fear by action example and policy in how it treats us. It still wants us eliminated and gone in the eternities so they can have and love something else instead of us. And deep love is not a heart like that that has so little love it wants someone gone forever. The tone of how we are treated is love. But how we are treated, and what people will do to us or won’t is not based on love, it is based on belief that is used to inspire fear. As long as the LDS teach and believe we are sinful choice, sin, confusion from Satan, or an illness, they will treat us as if we ARE evil choice, sin, confusion from Satan, and illness. They will treat us like an illness instead of a person. They will treat us like who they wish they had instead of us. They will treat us as if we don’t even exist or ultimately deserve to after this life. They will do it lovingly in tone, sure. But no matter how much you lovingly treat someone as if who they are is an illness, it is NEVER the same as treating them as if who they are is real. It is not love that is the problem. It is belief-driven fear that limits what people will and wont do. Fear that grows from beliefs. Beliefs that need to challenged and based on how many times the leaders have shown they are inconsistent towards trans and LGB people in their history…. deserve to be challenged because the leaders themselves have shown themselves unreliable. And that is the kind version, that presumes God isn’t playing pull the rug out and changing God’s mind all the time about us, i.e. presumes that God is reliable (same yesterday today and forever).
I would love for the church to be ready for trans people. It isn’t. The leaders think they are. They think they are loving (but nobody loves a disease or nonexistent person, and that or worse is what they think we are). They think they respect us, their policy shows they don’t even respect us as real. That’s a nonstarter. They think they include us, while sending me to the foyer during Relief society and even activities, fearing us going into a bathroom, while teaching a god how has now room for us in his own house on earth (the temple)? By exclusion from salvific ordinances? That’s just not even close to being very honest about inclusivity. Not in the temple, the salvific ordinances, not even in their gendered classes. Certainly not in bathrooms where the leaders own fear fantasies go wild. They think they understand us? No. They think the support us? No. That claim and inclusiveness are probably the most deceptive terms they claim on the church’s site about trans people. And the degree that the church does not live up to the deceptive claims on it’s website about trans people is so bad that even the believing trans and trans allies in the church have to warn nonmember transgender people who attend about their own church, and often I have seen them afraid to invite or bring other trans people without warning them that the church will not live up to those claims, because the leaders have policy in place that treats us as if not real and that truly and really doing what it would take to actually love, include, respect, understand, and support us isn’t happening because the leaders themselves by policy and actions are preventing it, and are even the ones that still get parents to fear having a trans child and trans people to fear coming out or transitioning.
Restrictions are not Inclusion. Inability to support is not support. Treating someone as if not real, and maybe even dangerous is not Respect or Understanding. Hoping someday we don’t even exist as who we say we are in the afterlife is also not loving us, it is loving who one wants us sold out and replaced with to please oneself. The church has scaled its policies up to increase stigma about trans kids getting treatment to dress, take hormone blockers, later have hormones or get other medical help or surgery when of age. Nothing about that is supportive, loving, understanding, respectful, or inclusive. It spreads and teaches fear in trans people who fear coming out, and fear in parents who fear for their trans kid, fear in communities and fear getting help and makes even parents and sibling fear loving, including, respecting, understanding and supporting their own children, and siblings. The tone is not the problem. The policies based on beliefs and those unquestioned dark beliefs that get people to fear us and to treat us as to be feared as an outcome…. are the problem.
Until the church is ready for us, and not just fortunately found pockets of members but the leaders in it are ready for us especially at the top, at best I have to have believe that if there is a loving god he has a plan for us in spite of those leaders, both for those who stay and continue to be treated so poorly and for those who for their own safety, emotional and psychological wellbeing, spiritual growth, families, and more… cannot stay in the church until its leaders stop harming us and can show they are actually a place that is ready for us, and wants us (no asterisk) not just that thinks it is ready because it talks with a ‘nice’ loving tone but can’t deliver on the claims about how it tells the world it treats us. What about a church with leaders brave enough to consider that the ones who have feelings that are understandable to have but not to act on… are the the transphobic ones, not trans people. Trans + Phobia. i.e those who fear, (not hate) trans people. And here is the amazing thing. The feeling itself? Transphobia? It CAN be cured. Because it is taught and learned. It can be easily unlearned too. I would know having internalized transphobia early in my youth as a trans person, and much later also having unlearned it. I spent much of my life feeling and acting as a transphobe before I really allowed myself to truly know and love others like me. Before I dared question. Before I dared truly love them or me and not fear them or me. Before I dared come out of the closet as trans. The feelings of who I am as a trans person never died in spite of well meaning leaders who knew nothing of this and claimed it would. If anything it intensified, rather than fading as I was told to believe. But the feelings of transphobia? Gone. And it was a wonderfully loving and amazing change of heart.
Dear leaders and members, when the fear and spread of fear that stems from the beliefs about us and that is embedded into policy of how we are treated is finally addressed by confronting the beliefs that create that fear and actions towards us based on it… when it is finally addressed so you can start treating us as real instead of as if who we are is a disease/illness/inferiority/confusion by Satan/Sin, it will change everything about how you treat us, think of us, talk to us, not merely the tone. You will then be able to love, want, include, respect, understand, and support us… and we won’t question it or feel it for a deception, or shallow, or a superficiality, or a mockery… Maybe you will even be able to keep us with you instead of having us realize we have to leave for our own survival and well being and…. spiritual growth. I hope for the day when that comes, instead of just pretending that it already exists without policy or leadership or even the full memberships (though tiny parts are) even close to living up to it.
Search the history. Understand the shaky origins of the fears/beliefs/fallacies spread and invented about the LGBT and notice how much has changed and had to be backpedaled and how the church still has nothing to reliable prevent, detect, or fight resistance to correct it. Realize why we have every reason in the world to view your leaders as unreliable about us, and every reason in the world for us to be justified in being unwilling to trust them based on their actions and history and claims vs our firsthand knowledge and experience about our own selves. Maybe even consider that nothing about a bible made even those men who write in it exempt from logical fallacies, and prejudices and biases or selling the best guesses as if doctrine when it was really philosophy. If anything the LDS should be more able to realize that nothing about it being old and written by someone dead in a book means that it has to be the absolute unquestionable truth. Until the church is more honestly ready, maybe even have faith that your god has a plan for us even outside the church until your leaders are ready for us and can stop damaging us and our families and more. Use your faith for love, not to try to have dark beliefs about others, or to try to justify treating us as to be feared or lesser, or not even deserving to exist as ourselves after this life. I’ve seen beautiful things from faith in your church, but that is not one of them. Dare to believe in a god who could love us as much as an true LGBT ally, a Mama Dragon or Dragon Dad. Learn to love us to where you would never want us thrown away, just like you would never want your own spouses thrown away and overwritten to please someone else. We’re worth it. Our love for our spouses, our loving hopes and dreams, marriages, families, existences. We are worth it. We always have been, and always will be when the church and it’s leadership is finally ready for us. My hope, is that one day the fearmongering this started with, the dark beliefs about us can end, and people can remove the beliefs that act like stumbling blocks that create fear and hold back actually loving us for who we are. That maybe even one day the church, including its leaders would understand being as horrified at losing us as who we keep showing and telling people we are, as you would be horrified to have your own existence erased and changed into a lawn chair in order to please someone else.
In the beginning, the church’s leaders unsupportably presumed dark things about us and spread fear. That beginning is now fifty years ago. We don’t live in that time. It doesn’t have to be the way the church started in the beginning of it’s painfully tragic relationship with trans people. There is a future that can be different. The present and that future can be written differently than the beginning. You can’t change that past. But it can be learned from. When the leaders and church is ready for us… there can be a new… beginning.
At a certain point in the movie, Red loses Andy and goes through reflection and grieving. Here are his words on his experience:
What happens next is probably the most striking, emotional, and for some, stunningly incomprehensible part of the movie. But it is not at all incomprehensible to a trans person who has had to ponder the grave and serious pain, struggle, and difficulty that the realities of such a metaphorical choice translate to in their own life. Andy’s mind state, fears, actions, struggle, and overwhelming emotions and resolve to see his actions through is immediately recognizable to a trans person who has faced or still considers facing the difficulty of his decision. Do not jump to any preset judgement or conclusions if you have not seen the movie. You will have to watch this part for yourself.
Do not prejudge, if you did not watch the movie. Anyone who watches this movie, even those who presume otherwise at first, will realize that its message is about hope. Indisputably. Hope for all of us. There is so much more to this movie as a metaphor that a trans person can directly relate to. But here I am trying to focus on the parts that may be healing or helpful for a friend who is struggling or to heal or build anew their relationship. It can feel scary. Terrifying even to try. It requires a real commitment and courage and desire to reach out. Some past friends of people transitioning or transitioned as trans will not be able to give it. Some may not be able to at first, but will eventually with time and more realization, courage, and hope. For other past friends of a transitioning or now transitioned trans person, it really requires a realization of your and their own mortality and that of others and how little time we have in this life. For all past friends, it requires meaningful effort to reach out to and engage with that person who is now trans. Real effort. Not half-hearted effort. Not effort to try and make them impossibly and irrationally go back to a life of pain in prison; that won’t happen. But I suspect you, like Red, will find that in their metaphorical pursuit of their “Zihuatanejo” concept, in their choice to get busy living or get busy dying, your trans friend will also try to leave in their departing path whatever way they can to reach out to and connect with any of their past friends who eventually find the courage to face the fears it takes to try to connect in a different way and a different context with them as a trans person in whatever meaningful way is still possible. Why? Because they love you. They always did. They know you may need a little or a lot of time to grieve and consider what you will do. They know as you do or may, that life does not give infinite time. They have saved room in their hearts for you even if it cannot be like it was before, even if you and they have differences, even if some of them will not be able to makes sense like it used to while other things are part of the same person you always knew. They know why they must be where they now are. The grief and loss reaches them too. They miss you. They too grieve losing you. They, just like you, miss their friend. They still love you. They hope too.
Doctors Paul McHugh and Lawrence Mayer recently wrote an article in the New Atlantis Journal about transgender and LGBT issues. I guess it is time to offer some feedback again to try and keep things honest in response to those who quickly share things like their article but have probably not had the time or devoted interest to read a lot about it, or even anything more than a summary of the article, or may only so far have had time to give this one seemingly aggregate and seemingly comprehensive source consideration, rather than many others on each side. Not surprisingly to anyone familiar with McHugh and Mayer or the scientific body of research, their article and suggested conclusions were overwhelmingly anti-transgender and anti-LGBT, and overwhelmingly and I dare say 100 percent in line with Catholic and conservative religious political position. In fact, perfectly so. Not just mostly or strongly, but completely. Suspiciously so. Not surprisingly, I have watched many eager conservative, and Christian, and sadly even Mormon websites and people promoting it passionately as solid and “scientific” “expert” evidence or proof that “Almost Everything the Media Tell You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong”. It gets promoted as “Breaking News” or as a “breakthrough research” or a “major new report” and recent “Scientific evidence” or as a study that once and for all absolutely “debunks” everything about LGBT people hailed by many sites as the smoking gun proof against all things LGBT. It is dramatized even on some of the LDS and other sites where I saw it cited, to appear to be “painstakingly documented”, and referrers make sure to note it had “200 peer reviewed studies” and that we know it is a long report with lots of studies beneath it.
I am not a fan of reality TV, but if there were a reality TV show or even a documentary on the BYU channel that followed an LDS Apostle or Prophet (yes, one of the 12) and how they treat their LGBT family members in easy and hard situations, or how they treat LGBT strangers, or how they treat LGBT friends and associates, or how they treat LGBT people at church I would watch it. And by LGBT I mean both those who are celibate and those who are not. Those LGBT who are LDS and not. Those who are disfellowshipped and those who are not. Those who are married and those who are not. I mean both those who are trans and presenting and those who are not. I mean those post surgery and pre-surgery. One of the saddest things of modern times is how much we get to hear the words of 15 prophets and apostles, and how very very little we get to actually ever see their personal examples of how they treat others (like LGBT people). Those actions I suspect would teach far more than their words ever could. Jesus taught volumes by what others saw him DO among the marginalized in his religious society.
A Determined Voice 