A message to the trans community from this Black Christian | Opinion

In the wake of yet another mass shooting, perpetrated by a 28-year-old trans woman at a private Christian school, I have this to say to the trans community:

This Black Christian loves and supports you, believes in your worth, prays you don’t let the ghouls weaponizing a bastardized Christianity against you convince you otherwise.

You are made in God’s image as much as I am.

You are as worthy of love as much as I am.

You are as beautiful, as strong, your presence as necessary in the unfolding of God’s incomprehensibly-gorgeous creation as the rest of us.

I hope you know that.

I pray you know that.

Christians like me haven’t told you that enough.

I should have been screaming that long before ghouls began absurdly declaring you are a threat because of what a 28-year-old trans woman did in a Tennessee school. Never mind that those ghouls would scream they are the real victims had we proclaimed white Christians the real threat every time a white Christian boy or man shot up a school or a mall or movie theater, and even though perpetrators of mass shootings with those characteristics far outpace those who are transgender. The Gun Violence Archive has tracked nearly 800 mass shootings since the beginning of 2022. Maybe two of them were perpetrated by those who identified as transgender or nonbinary, which means that more than 99 percent were committed by others.

Never mind the hypocrisy. They don’t much care about the hypocrisy. Pointing it out has never made them rethink, to deal with the boulder in their own eye rather than the speck in yours. They are doing to you what they have long done to people who wear skin like mine. First, they made it impossible to cure America’s sick gun culture, worshipping the AR-15 the way our ancestors worshipped a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. Then they find a scapegoat to absolve themselves of the responsibility for the carnage that is a predictable and direct result of their idol worship. They’ve done it to us by relying upon ugly-racist stereotypes. They are relying upon ignorance and fear to do it to you.

That’s why a man like Tucker Carlson could in primetime on the top-rated cable talk show on a cable network falsely proclaim you are a threat to “traditional Christians.”

“Christianity and transgender orthodoxy are wholly incompatible theologies. They can never be reconciled,” he thundered to an audience of the like-minded, which includes plenty of self-professed Christians. “They are on a collision course with each other. One side is likely to draw blood before the other side. That’s what we concluded last week. Yesterday morning, tragically, our fears were confirmed.”

Let me be frank: Carlson is a liar, and so are the other ghouls who are blaming the transgender community for what happened in Tennessee, when three children and three adults were murdered during the latest of America’s never-ending stream of mass shootings. I am a traditional Christian, been one since I was knee-high to a duck, baptized, had my kids baptized, married a baptized woman. That’s why I know Carlson is a dirty-ugly liar spreading hate in the name of the faith I love.

If it was possible to overturn his moneychangers, I would. I can’t. It would be a waste of time anyway. Because Carlson sells lies, whether about the 2020 election or the threats we face, because it fattens his pockets. We know this because of discovery material from the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News. Internal emails, texts and other evidence prove that Carlson and his lot know they are lying on air and believe if they don’t, the company’s stock value will plummet and their audience would dwindle. He gets to make several million dollars a year and doesn’t give a damn about who he hurts, not even the most vulnerable among us.

But enough about him. The real problem has been me and other Christians like me. We have neither been clear nor loud enough in proclaiming our love for our transgender brothers and sisters who have had to fight alone for far, far too long. We are, in effect, the white moderates Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about all those years ago. We are the ones standing in the way of the creation of a world in which you are treated as the equal-invaluable human beings you are. The attack on the transgender community has been effective, with laws passed and proposed in numerous states, including North Carolina and South Carolina, because Christians like me have been too timid in the face of the hatred that’s been unleashed.

Here’s why: Because we hide behind our ignorance, say we can’t understand your experiences, don’t know who to listen to in the debates about trans treatments for children or adults, feel obligated to consider that those who’ve shown nothing but contempt for you – while feigning love for you as they are hating you – might be right.

We pretend to not know that it is not unusual for seemingly-extreme measures to be deployed to improve or save people’s lives, including those whose bodies turn on or fail them. We understand that when a cancer spreads rapidly, pumping poisons into the patient’s veins or showering them with radiation might be the only way to save them. If an infection takes hold and can’t be slowed down by antibiotics, if diabetes progresses too far, interventions that would seem cruel and barbaric in other circumstances become necessary.

I know of what I speak. About a decade ago, my body began turning on itself in the form of an autoimmune disease called Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. My white blood cells attacked the myelin cover of my nerves. Over the course of several months, major muscles groups in my arms and legs began to weaken to the point I had to get around on crutches, then in a wheelchair. The initial treatment nearly killed me, caused multiple blood clots that climbed up my body and neared my heart, as well as a 105-degree fever that wouldn’t break. I was in a hospital bed for nearly two weeks, uncertain I’d ever leave all because my body turned on itself for reasons a bevy of doctors at Harvard and Duke – and a gaggle of other medical professionals I sought out before reaching those institutions – still can’t fully explain.

I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to be transgender, especially in a world in which your presence is used by politicians to scare up votes to increase their power, which they then use to make your lives even more difficult once they are in office. It’s no wonder transgender teens are more likely to attempt suicide. But I know enough about human diversity and variability to not deny your reality, to not act as though I know you better than you know yourself. I know enough to know that though you are made in God’s image just as much as I am, that doesn’t mean medical and other forms of intervention won’t sometimes be necessary. That’s why I want you to have what I had, caring family members, friends and medical professionals who want the best for you and will hold your hand through the fog.

I know it took several months – and misstarts and misdiagnoses – before someone could tell me what was happening in my own damn body. I know how head spinning that can be. I can only imagine the weight of the emotional and psychic pain I’d have had to endure had others used my personal struggles to spread hate to make money and gain political power then blame me for a slaughter inside a Christian school. I don’t know how I would have survive.

But I also know you can, that you will, that you must. Because we need you and your presence more than you know. You aren’t a burden. You are a blessing. I regret not sharing undeniable truth with you sooner.