Fort Worth Votes For Transgender Protective Ordinance

Marathon meeting results in transgender protections.

November 11,2009 Fort Worth, Texas. City council members voted 6 to 3 to adopt a ordinance to prohibit discrimination in places of public accommodation, employment and housing on the basis of transgender, gender expression and gender identity.

After an intense debate with both sides having been allowed to voice their views mayor Moncrief called for a vote with resulting in 3 no and 6 yes votes.

Gay and Lesbian supporters of transgender rights braved the gathering of placard vocal religio-bots that are commonly found wherever LGBT people gather, but this time we did not allow them to make us angry. We understood the stakes and placed duct tape over our mouths as a reminder what our reason for being there was and the futility of shouting. The forum inside would require us to be clear minded and level headed to succeed.

What was absent from our supporters were GLBT CLERGY?!? GLBT people and the council were left to hear one after another good "Christian" describe how they found our "life style choice" morally offensive and how they did not want that present for there children.

Pastors, do not wonder why your churches are empty, you were not there and the uncontested misconceptions, lies and hate we heard that night is nearly all that most LGBT people know of religion.

After enduring the hate and lies we were all rewarded by having our LGBT civil rights movement progress.

Thank you to the wonderful Gay and Lesbian community of north Texas!

Transgender Christ on a path less taken

I am following in the path of Jesus on his journey on a path less taken. I am both peaceful and desperate to serve, understand and live both in his joyful testament and sorrowful pain. Therefore as he blesses my life when I pray I am also with him in his desperation.

Before I was aware that the holy spirit existed, I was called to a gathering from all corners of the earth of people who profess their love of God and Christ thru the Methodist faith. In that gathering were powerful people who banded together and agreed to once again conditionally accept as laity only, sexual minorities. Much to my surprise, one of the main reasons I felt so compelled to follow those events, the threatened defrocking of transgender ministers, was never even taken up.

I was lead to beleive the misogynistic untruth that only by the grace of those who led that Church, transgender ministers were granted a temporary reprieve and due to a lack of preparation they had not been persecuted. I breathed a sigh of relief in this knowledge that the Ministers I had come to somehow defend with my newly found spirit, would be allowed to return to their beloved flocks.

As time went on I became aware that Christ was looking over me. To my awe and fear I felt a vision of him sometimes pleased and sometimes dismayed, always in front of me, always observing. I prayed that I could always please Jesus and be rewarded by his affirming presence and when I displeased him that I would know this by his vision and I would know to mend my ways.

Then one day I no longer saw Jesus as physical presence, but became aware he is inside of me accompanied by the spirit. The absence of his physicality terrified me. How am I to know I am living in his word? So I began to study the Bible and finding passages where God blessed eunuchs. And the more I read, the more I learned that transgender people were acknowledged and blessed by Christ and his awareness of the difficulties that others would experience in understanding us. I also read that before I was born the holy spirit compelled men to search out and welcome transgender people with Christs radical inclusion.

No longer do I depend on the Cisgender to allow me communion with God. No longer do I accept their exclusionary images as divinely acquired!

Acts 26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." The southern desert road was one that was one that was less traveled because of it's lack of water and harsh weather. Much as many of us believed when first coming to terms with who we are is what the heteronormative people conditioned us to think, we had a indomitable curse In reality we were called to travel this same road less traveled by the spirit.Acts 8:25,39

Jesus teaches welcomes and acknowledges the difficulties ciscegender people would have in understanding us in Mathew 19:11 and 12. Acts 11: But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given 12: For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it."