A Vision of Certain Hope

These lines, adapted from a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965, are a reminder of the certain hope that is shared by all who seek LGBT justice.

“And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate our adversaries, but to win their friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of straight or gay or transgender humankind. That will be a day of all humankind.

“I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’ Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive wisdom from her sacred throne?’ Somebody’s asking, “When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified and truth bear it?’

“I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long because truth crushed to earth will rise again.

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow.

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Now, as then, I believe we shall overcome.

Dobson's Dotage

A man who never had theological training promulgates his theology as the theology for all Christians. A man who advocates practices rejected as ineffective and even harmful by every major counseling organization (plus many medical groups), says his “therapeutic” ideas need to be followed by every Christian parent. A man, who is not a scientist, manipulates scientific data so much that even those he quotes are angered by his blatant misrepresentations and deliberate lies. A man who has never had a course in constitutional law now believes he knows more about the constitution than a constitutional law professor. Fruitcake?

Dobson’s dotage is not pretty.

A Special Sunday

For the first time in a few years I preached yesterday. I was the guest preacher at an area church. I read the little book The Rainbow Zebra for the children’s story. Seven kids nestled up close so they could see the colorful pictures while I read to them as the adults listened and smiled. My sermon was from Galatians 3:28 on tearing down the walls that divide. This church was celebrating diversity Sunday with songs, hymns, and readings honoring the worth and dignity of all people. There was about a half hour for questions after the service. Most of the questions were about transgender issues (many of the people have been following my story in the local newspaper), but some questions were also about the sermon. Some shared their own stories. One genetic woman talked about being harassed in a bathroom because she looked too masculine. Another couple talked about being uninvited to a family wedding because of their sexual orientation. Another talked about a co-worker who transitioned from female to male and the loving and caring response of her co-workers.

After the service a number of people (including the pastor) said that my message was precisely what the church needed (another “God thing”). Others said I should be preaching more often or serving a church somewhere. It felt good to get this affirmation of the gifts God has given me. We spent some time in conversation (and some more questions) with those who stayed for the “Rainbow Brunch”. As Joanne and I drove home, I couldn’t help but feel that God was pleased with this church on this Sunday.

Lansing State Journal

The following guest editorial was published in the Lansing State Journal in an abbreviated form in late March.

The season of the year that includes Black History Month and Women's Month seems an appropriate time to reflect on our progress towards equality in America. In the recent movie The Great Debaters, Samantha, one of the college students from an all-black Texas school, boldly argues, " . . . the time for equality is always, is always right now!"The movie is set in 1935. It took nearly 30 years for congress to enact The Civil Rights Act. Michigan's civil rights act was passed 13 years later. It seems Michigan was slow to get it. So how are we doing now? Over time, the federal government and many states added various groupsof people to their civil rights acts such that discrimination based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status is forbidden in most states.Michigan, though, still excludes one of the most discriminated groups in our state from protection. Many estimates would place this collective group at about ten percent of our population. These unprotected citizens of Michigan are those whose sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression is "different". Accepting the "different" was precisely the catalyst for adding religion, race, color, sex, and handicaps to civil rights protection. It is still what civil rights - and our country - are all about.Jefferson's reminder of the self-evident truth that all "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is still true and yet some persist in seeking to deny these rights to others; others who are different. Coretta Scott King understood this pursuit of civil rights better than most. She boldly proclaimed, "I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation." The time for equality is always now. Amending Michigan's Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1977 to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression is quite simply the right thing to do. In addition to fundamental fairness and equal opportunity, protecting the civil rights of this currently unprotected population is pragmatically good for Michigan. Academician and researcher Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) has made it clear that the current generation of college and university graduates place the honoring of diversity as a very high priority for their lives. The brain drain (and concurrent job drain) from Michigan is at least partly the result of Michigan being an unfriendly state for this diversity. Many businesses, including most of the Fortune 500, have already added diversity protections in their workplaces because they know it is not only the right thing to do, it is also simply good business sense to do so. Yet these workplace pockets of protection in Michigan are not enough. As one who lost her job because of the lack of job protections for simply being different, I know the time for statewide equality is now. The time is now to amend the civil rights laws of Michigan to protect these who are excluded and too often the victims of hate, exclusion, and even violence. The time for equality is always now.

Seven Passages

On Saturday, Joanne and I attended a powerful play. The play was written and directed by a Calvin College professor. It had a script that was taken entirely from Scripture and interviews with over 100 western Michigan area Christians. These believers told stories of hate, discrimination, and violence directed at them with all-too-few- rays of compassion and love. Most often, the attackers of these Christians were professed Christians themselves. There was a passion to these stories – and a clear love of Christ – that created a sense of sadness in me for the Body of Christ. The author has done a great service for The Christian Church.

Our watching world has to be amused or mystified or both at the divisive infighting of Christians from a faith that says it believes in love and grace. Is it any wonder that many want nothing to do with this “good news”? The audience felt the pain, hurt, and sometimes anger of some of the most loving and caring followers of Jesus. I pray that someday soon these Christians will find the peace with others that they already have with their Savior.

The play is called Seven Passages based on the 0.03% of the Bible used to condemn these Christians. The interviewed Christians were gays or lesbians.

The Longest Night

Journal Musings
December 24, 2007

Yesterday we went to a Longest Night service at our church. This service is held annually near the Winter Solstice (longest night). It is designed to bring comfort and solace to those that suffered a loss during the year and are grieving; a very real need for many during the holidays. I was invited because of my father’s death at the end of October. We met in the late afternoon as a very intimate group of quiet mourners.

On the way to the service, Joanne and I encountered a funeral procession turning onto the road in front of us; an extremely rare occurrence but especially so on a cold, wintry, late Sunday afternoon. We followed the mournful procession for 3 or 4 miles. The slow pace gave me plenty of time to think. As I thought about my grieving, I realized that my grief for the loss of my father was just a part of what I was dealing with this year. Grief, like many things, is cumulative in its impact on us. We don’t grieve in isolated partitions but rather with one grief burden to which new grief gets added. The bundle we carry just grows until we are able to deal with it collectively or in bits and pieces..

This past year, I dealt with the grief of loss in many ways: a lost job; a loss of friends; being asked to leave both a church and a small study group; some broken family ties; loss of my former personal and professional identity (no regrets but a gain that does come with a loss); and deaths. The biggest addition to my grief bundle was the death of transgender people who either were brutally murdered or, in despair, took their own life. The hardest for me was the 16-year old boy at whose vigil I spoke. Ian’s tragic passing lingers with me.

In the providence of God, the funeral procession became part of the healing process. There is something about naming our sorrows that helps us begin to deal with them. Experts say that the first stage that we go though in the grief process is denial. Naming our grief enables our steps in finding comfort, because we then know where our need for comfort rests.

The service used Scripture readings, reflections, and hymns to speak to our grief. Our meditation together was framed around the lighting of the Advent candles, but with the candles given a new meaning for those gathered in grief. The candles represented loneliness, regrets, anger, peace and then the Christ candle reminding us of his presence even in the midst – perhaps especially in the midst – of our sorrow. As we sat, I thought of the words from an old gospel song: “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.” The song is Precious Lord Take my Hand. He has.

As we sat, there were a lot of tears; wellsprings of sorrow that would become seeds of healing. Yes, our collective grief was and is very real but the Longest Night service really isn’t just about the night. Even the darkest, coldest, and longest nights end with a sunrise. Isn’t that what the first Christmas morn was about?

Merry Christmas with much love,
Julie

God's Diversity Christmas

God loves celebrating diversity. It began with creation and continues through today. Even Christmas is a celebration of diversity.

The Christmas story is not just about a baby being born – even a very special baby – but it also includes God reaching out to diverse people. Jesus didn’t come as a king, he came in humility as a baby to a poor family. God reaches out to the poor. God did include kings (or wise men) in the story in reaching across diverse cultural and ethnic borders to bring good news to a people that weren’t expecting it. Of course, there were also the shepherds being scared nearly to death by God’s pleasure in surprising us and reaching out to the lowly. Being a shepherd was very close to the bottom of the economic and social ranks of the time. They weren’t trusted (their testimony wasn’t even allowed in the courts!), they didn’t smell good, and nobody wanted to be near them . . . but God.

My blog is titled “Celebrating Diversity”, in part, because I believe that – celebrating diversity - is what God does. God delights in the diversity of humankind; He celebrates the richness of his creation. I believe that includes diversity in sexual orientation, gender, sex, ethnicity, culture . . . even religion (the wise men weren’t Jewish!). When that Divine baby grew and began his public ministry, he demonstrated God’s diversity again and again in reaching out to those the religious of his day wanted nothing to do with. Today many people of faith are catching on and joining God’s celebration of diversity. My heart aches for those that are missing God’s celebration and – in the process – His blessing. They will have to wait until heaven to celebrate what some of us are celebrating now.

So Merry Christmas. Enjoy the wildly diverse songs, gifts, and people that make for a wonderful celebration. Join me in celebrating diversity; it's part of what Christmas is all about.
Warm Christmas Blessings,
Julie

Ian's Passing

Last Friday night I spoke as part of a candlelight vigil for a 16-year old transgender boy who took his life. Such moments are never easy, but this one was especially hard for me for two reasons.

The first reason was that on the previous Tuesday I had buried my father. I felt the cumulative weight of these deaths. I will miss my father but, in many ways, his passing seemed right. It freed him from a very painful battle with cancer and released him to heaven. We celebrated his life with fond remembrances of many happy occasions.

Ian – the transgender boy – had a death that seemed premature; like many suicides. He was a gentle, creative, friend of many and had a very supportive family. He had been “out” as Ian for a little over two years. While chronologically quite different, both my dad and Ian were released from pain.

Ian’s pain was not from being transgender; he and his family celebrated how God made him. His pain came from a world that was not ready for him. Many today would still rather cause pain than open their hearts up to people who are different. Sadly many do so from presumed religious perspectives; “presumed” because the hate and shame they seek to voice runs counter to the very teachings of their faith. Ian felt no shame for who he was, but died, in part, from the shame that others thrust upon him.

The second reason that Ian’s vigil was hard is that, like many transgender people, I once stood at the brink of that dark, life-ending precipice. What kept me from passing over was a combination of many people praying for me, my love for Joanne and my boys (and their families), and a new-found resolve that hit me hard at that very moment of destiny. The resolve was to not let hate, ignorance, and discrimination claim another life. The resolve saved me, but did not protect Ian.

The world desperately needs more resolved to not let hate – from whatever source (especially the presumed religious) – keep destroying lives. As we sang “We Shall Overcome” at the vigil, tears rolled down my eyes. I was reminded that the battle against hate has a long history and that more soldiers are needed.

I hope you will be one.

Food for thought

Here’s some food for thought:

A friend recently sent me the results of research done by the insurance industry on the incidence of transgender people in the United States. Their research concludes that there are approximately 20 million transgender people in this country and that about 400,000 of those are, like me, transsexuals (the severe end of the transgender spectrum of “gender identity disorder”).

This correlates very well with the research done by Lynn Conway from the University of Michigan finding that the incidence of transsexualism is about one in every 250 people in the United States. It supports the conclusions of Dr. Roughgarden (Harvard PhD and professor at Stanford) that transsexuals are unusual (statistical outliers) but well within the statistical definition of “normal”

So why are legal protections and societal acceptance so hard to come by? Think “women”, “blacks”, “disabled” and you will realize that the majority in power never easily accepts differences. Whether it is because they don’t want to admit that “they” are “us” too (my family, your family, our family), or because they fear a dilution of power, or just because they don’t want to acknowledge the rich diversity in God’s creation really doesn’t matter. It still hurts both society and people like me.

Sadly the one organization that should be leading the way in embracing all people (“God so loved the world”) often is the last to come to acceptance as illustrated in the church’s historic reluctance to accept blacks and see women as equal to men. Praying and working for change, Julie.

Heros Needed

I don’t feel like a hero. To my shame, I was a reluctant activist. I would write congressmen and senators and give to civil rights organizations, but it was all behind the scenes. The actions taken against me by the university where I worked gave me the kick in the pants (or skirt) I needed. Now I expect to be as active and vocal as I can as long as I can.

This week I had two incidents that shook me a little. At Transgender Michigan’s Pride in the Park I had three different people come up to me and tell me that I was a hero to them. Then yesterday, someone wrote to me, “Thanks again, Julie - The world has long needed a strength like you.” I don’t feel like a hero. What makes others think that? I have reached two tentative conclusions. First, every movement needs leaders who – like it or not – are perceived as heroes. Second, we need - desperately need - more heroes.

What made me a “hero”? It was a little over a year ago when I sat in a rocking chair in our living room with a handgun in my lap. I had composed an email to be sent that began with the words, “By the time you read this, I will be dead.” Then God broke through. I had a lot of friends praying for me during those very dark and difficult days. I believe their prayers saved my life. As I sat wrestling in my mind, I realized I loved my wife and kids (and grandson) too much to end my life. And in that moment I decided to not let hate and discrimination claim another victim. I chose to live and I chose to do all that I can to keep hate and discrimination ruining or ending as many other lives as I could.

So I began to tell me story and Joanne often was able to share her story as well. In God’s providence the story was told and people listened. For over a month I averaged 2-3 media interviews a weekday; including everything from student newspapers and local media to Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. I was getting 80-100 emails a day from people encouraged by the story to be vocal, active, or supportive. All I did was tell my story and seek to live as authentic a life as I could. I guess that made me a hero. I don’t feel like a hero, but if that is what I am, more are needed. Want to be a hero? Tell your story and/or encourage others to tell theirs. You will be a hero . . . at least to me.

Newsweek

Today’s Newsweek (dated May 21st) has as its cover story a very good article on transgender people and issues in America. It is also available on their web site. I was interviewed as part of the story and there is a nice picture of Joanne and me in the magazine. In general they came pretty close to understanding and articulating things well; even though they did get some facts about me (name – I am Julie – and surgery) wrong.

Newsweek’s conversation with me was primarily about religious issues related to being transgender. I explained to them that the blatant discrimination against transgender people (and often the whole LGBT rainbow) was without Biblical warrant and counter to the clear teaching of Jesus summarizing all of the law and prophets with calls to love relationships and actions toward God and all people. MY web site has an article on Old Testament law and New Testament grace and I will gladly email other writings to any who ask for them.

For me, being Julie has brought authenticity to my relationship with God and a depth to worship beyond anything I have ever known. Should it surprise us that when we come before God without pretense that this should happen? God made me (or allowed me to become) the person I am. I am Julie and I love the Lord with all my heart and am walking faithfully with Him.

Joanne and I have been faithfully waiting upon God’s leading every step of our journey these last few years. Sometimes we have felt like Abraham in “going” but being not quite sure where we were headed. But we have walked by faith every step of the way and have seen God before us and felt His presence with us again and again. Those that confuse human teaching and cultural conditioning with God’s Word have trouble with this. Those that know our hearts have walked with us.

God has made a world filled with the joy of differences. Animals, flowers, and even bugs display a God of immense creative diversity creating many marvelous expressions of His pleasure throughout the universe. LGBT people are part of that wonderful diversity of God’s world. We honor Him when we celebrate the diversity He has given to us.

Exciting Days

Today at 11 AM a housing briefing will be held to inform legislators of the urgent need for passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1592). At 3 PM Senators Kennedy (D) and Smith (R) will introduce an identical bill in the house. Both bills include protection for gender identity. The act is supported by more than 200 law enforcement, religious, and civil rights groups.

On Friday, Michigan State – one of five Big Ten schools not there yet – will vote on adding gender identity to its non-discrimination policy. It has been part of their anti-harassment policy since 2003.

These actions demonstrate the momentum this civil rights issue is gaining and stress the growing importance for businesses and non-profit organizations to have clear non-discrimination policies that include gender identity and appropriate gender expression. Chris Daly, of the Transgender Law Center, says that without these policies in place organizations could be increasing their chances of being liable in a discrimination complaint or lawsuit.

Of course the usual suspects may come out in favor of hate crimes by fighting this legislation. One of the favorite arguments is opposition to including what they call “behavioral choices” as a protected category. While I believe science clearly rejects their argument, I guess if they are right we should probably remove religion as a protected category too hmmm?

Contact your congressperson and senators to express your strong support for this legislation. I will be in Washington, D.C. to join with others in expressing the great need for this protection against a world that still nurtures hate against those that are different.

Why celebrate?

Celebrating diversity may seem like an unusual concept but that is a big part of what both my life and my consulting firm (Julie Nemecek Consulting) are all about. I am firmly convinced that the meaningful celebration of diversity in humankind (1) makes for a richer life, (2) is very good business sense, and (3) is God-honoring. That last reason probably requires the most unpacking for you to understand where I am coming from.

I believe that God created me and other people that are “different” (aren't we all?) for His purposes and His glory. Just like part of the enjoyment of roses is that they come in many hues, fragrances, and sizes, so too God has given us a richness in humankind that is to be treasured.

Celebrating diversity doesn’t mean that we have to agree with everyone else (anymore than we have to like every kind of rose), but it does mean that we will treat all people with dignity and respect. It also means learning to celebrate what we can learn from each other because we are different.

In the work world (profit and non-profit), accepting differences makes for better decision-making, a more expansive world view, and a healthier and more appealing work environment. Celebrating diversity simply makes good sense.