Tag: Transgender

Posted on

Critics attack Des Moines diocese’s gender-identity policies

— Critics are attacking the Diocese of Des Moines’ new gender-identity policies, calling them hateful and discriminatory

Bishop William M. Joensen

Critics are attacking the Diocese of Des Moines’ new gender-identity policies, calling them hateful and discriminatory.

The policies will go into effect on Jan. 16, the Des Moines Register reported Saturday. The policies have not yet been released to the public. The Des Moines Register’s report was based on details of the policies first reported by KCCI-TV, which obtained documents outlining the regulations.

The new rules ban the use of preferred pronouns during ministry, require people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their birth sex and wear clothes that match their birth sex. Students will be allowed to participate only in sports and activities that are “consistent” with their biological sex.

The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa condemned the policies as “dangerous” and said they promote bigotry toward transgender Iowans.

Courtney Reyes, executive director of the LGBTQ+ organization One Iowa, said the diocese shouldn’t portray itself as compassionate.

“You cannot pretend to be compassionate while mis-gendering people and denying them access to any and all spaces under your control,” Reyes said.

Democratic state Sen. Claire Celsi wrote on Facebook: “This is not what Jesus would do.”

“To actually come out, and say, ‘We’re going to stamp this out, we’re going to pretend like it doesn’t exist,’ and issue this kind of edict is, I think, reprehensible,” she told the Register.

Anne Marie Cox, the diocese’s communications director, said the polices came out of a lengthy process to address questions from Catholic school and church leaders.

John Robbins, communications director for the Archdiocese of Dubuque, said the archdiocese doesn’t tell other Iowa dioceses what to do. The archdiocese has previously stated that it “cannot go along with the idea that people can choose and change their gender” but is “open to other perspectives, to see if might find truth there, or to seek common ground, or to promote acceptance, even if we don’t agree.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

The J&B ad in which a grandfather learns to put on makeup to receive his trans granddaughter for Christmas

A hand that takes the lipstick in an oversight of its owner. The first make-up tests in front of the mirror, a trembling hand and a smear of lipstick on her mouth. Thus begins the announcement of a J&B advertising campaign that marks the beginning of the Christmas commercials. But neither the beginning, nor the end, resembles those we have seen before.

The protagonist is a grandfather who learns to put on makeup. He stares at the store owner who keeps an eye on him while she charges him for an eyeshadow set. He notices, but doesn’t care, when he is caught studying the makeup on a model’s face at the bus stop. At home, he cherishes the moments when he can learn to paint himself —and remove his make-up— in the bathroom, without his wife finding out.

The effect of seeing grandfather with clippings from magazines and catalogs to secretly learn to put on makeup has the initial sad tone of Christmas stories. The song ‘She’, by Elvis Costello, which gives the story its title, plays in the background. And like so many stories, it has a twist, but this one had not been told to us before in a Christmas campaign. We do not reveal it so that you can enjoy the end.

Lucas Paulino, founder and executive creative director of the agency responsible for the ad, El Ruso de Rocky, explains that his Christmas story takes over from last summer’s campaign, “Hay ganas de Orgullo de pueblo”, with which the brand supported the rights of the LGTBQ+ collective in rural areas. “We wanted to bring pride not to Madrid, but where it is needed, to the towns of Spain.” The creative manager affirms that once they knew the repercussion of the campaign, “we were clear that we had to continue”.

That “people’s pride” helped make visible “sexile”, the journey of LGTBQ+ people from towns to cities, driven by discrimination and lack of acceptance, and attracted by the possibility of living in freedom and being themselves. . With the Christmas story, J&B wants to contribute its grain of sand against “Christmas homosexuality”, the pain and isolation of those who feel that on these dates they cannot come to the family table to celebrate with their loved ones.

“We don’t want anyone to be left out of the celebration,” says Úrsula Mejia-Melgar, Marketing Director of Diageo (the company that owns J&B) for Southern Europe. After this summer’s campaign, the director assures that the brand discovered the importance of “celebrating the growth” of those who learn to understand people from the group in their family environment. “There is no more beautiful way to tell this reality than a Christmas story”, says Mejia-Melgar.

That Christmas story coincides, according to Diageo’s directive, with the principles of a brand that believes in “inclusion and diversity” and whose intention, he says, is “to promote moments of coexistence where everyone fits at the table.” But like any ad campaign planned months in advance, none anticipated the ad’s release to coincide with the political debate over transgender rights.

“We do not have a political agenda,” defends Mejia-Melgar, who prefers to speak of courage. “With any different announcement, that addresses topics that are not usually talked about, it is bravery.” Paulino adds that, even if they could have known that the announcement would coincide with this context, “we would have done the same.” The ad, he explains, was conceived “from respect and affection.” Like grandfather’s makeup practices for his granddaughter.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

LGBTQ people of faith

— From LDS to Catholics to Jews to Muslims — find ways to belong where doctrine rejects them

“I embrace my faith,” says former leader of Affirmation, a support group for queer Latter-day Saints, “but I don’t fully embrace the institution.”

By Kathryn Post

When queer students at Yeshiva University sued the school for discrimination in spring 2021, critics were quick to question why LGBTQ students would opt for an Orthodox Jewish university in the first place.

But for many LGBTQ Orthodox Jews, as with believers of other faiths, their religious identities are as nonnegotiable as their queer identities.

“A lot of people ask, why would somebody who is queer stay Orthodox? It’s like saying, there’s conflict in your family — why don’t you just leave?” Rachael Fried, a Yeshiva alum and executive director of JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), a nonprofit that supports Orthodox Jewish queer youths, told Religion News Service.

In churches, synagogues and mosques, as in families, religious teaching and texts are often cited in rejecting LGBTQ members, and many queer believers feel they have no choice but to leave. Many end up rejecting religion as a whole; others find meaning in accepting faith communities. But some LGBTQ religious people are reconciling parts of themselves that their faith’s doctrines frame as incompatible, continuing to serve and worship even where they are officially considered in violation of divine law or are barred from leadership.

A Catholic

For Madeline Marlett, it was the Jesuits who first showed her that being a Catholic, queer transgender woman was possible.

Growing up in Texas, in a devoutly Catholic household of 10, Marlett told RNS, she would pray every night that she would wake up the next morning in a different body. Years later, as a student at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit school in Worcester, Mass., the body dysphoria hadn’t subsided.

“I was hoping that this trans thing would disappear, but through Holy Cross, the Jesuits showed me a different flavor of Catholicism. It was more about ‘God is love,’ less about ‘these are the rules,’” said Marlett, now 25 and living in Boston.

In a class called “Understanding Jesus,” Marlett said she first encountered the idea of a radical Christ who ministered to outcasts. “That became my barometer as I was unpacking what I believed. Is this rule loving? That’s what helped me rebuild my sense of religion to include myself and the people next to me.”

After graduating, she joined Dignity USA, a Catholic LGBTQ advocacy organization, changed her legal name and began presenting as Madeline.

Jodi O’Brien, a sociology professor at Seattle University, said many LGBTQ Christians have had the ‘aha’ moment Marlett did when she encountered stories of Jesus ministering to those on the margins.

“They rewrote themselves in the script of Christianity,” said O’Brien. “Instead of being the sinners, or the cast off, they were the ones who most embodied the love of Christ.”

A Latter-day Saint

For some, pursuing an accepting version of their faith means leaving institutional religion behind. For Randall Thacker, a Latter-day Saint and former president of Affirmation, a global organization that supports LGBTQ members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, separating God from the church was key.

“I would say I embrace my faith, but I don’t fully embrace the institution,” he told RNS. “That’s pretty hard in this kind of faith, where everything revolves around (the church).” Over the years, Thacker has learned to treasure doctrines he loves while ditching harmful teachings, a move that allows him to claim a faith that “feels like it’s in my DNA.”

A Muslim

Jordan Jamil Ahmed, 31, takes a similar approach. “Organized religion, not just in Islam, is often a way to express political power over people. Whereas, for me, the idea of faith is more innate or intuitive.”

Ahmed is a Shiite Muslim who grew up in a multiracial, multiethnic household in central Ohio. After years of wrestling with their queer and Muslim identities, Ahmed joined the Queer Muslims of Boston in 2020 and eventually connected with Union Square Halaqa, a group of marginalized Muslims who gather to study Islam.

“The halaqa is the first space where I’ve really come into my understanding of queerness and Muslimness together,” Ahmed said. The expansiveness of the divine, Ahmed believes, can’t be limited to the male-female binary. This widened view of spirituality has also allowed them to experience God, said Ahmed, who uses they/them pronouns, in everything from prayer to tarot cards to dancing at gay clubs.

But Ahmed’s spiritual fluidity, as much as their gender, has meant exile from some Muslim settings. “I’ve definitely built my community outside of traditional institutions. There aren’t really mosques where I feel comfortable.”

Tyler Lefevor, a counselor and psychologist, has found that queer believers can face exclusion in and outside of religious contexts. In a study published by the American Psychological Association this year, Lefevor and his co-author found that more than half the LGBTQ Latter-day Saints responding to a survey said they lacked belongingness in their faith community, the LGBTQ+ community or both.

The struggle to belong is what leads LGBTQ believers to create explicitly queer religious spaces like Affirmation, JQY or Dignity USA, Lefevor said. “A lot of these communities provide some of the theological tools queer religious folks need to stay within these conservative congregations. They are a group of people who get what it’s like to constantly explain yourself to people on both sides.”

The groups often go beyond theology. During the standoff at Yeshiva, JQY stepped in to fund the Pride Alliance, the student club at Yeshiva, after the university refused. It also hosts a weekly drop-in center in Times Square, where LGBTQ youth get free pizza, check in with social workers and have game nights.

Sergio Guzmán, who belongs to the San Fernando Valley chapter of Dignity USA, was emboldened by his participation to adopt what he calls a “Hell no, I’m not gonna go” stance toward the Catholic faith he loves.

After years of drifting in and out of church, Henry Abuto, a celibate gay Christian, found his way to the Side B community — a loose network of Christians who embrace queer identity but believe God designed sex for marriage between a man and a woman. Abuto, who attends a nondenominational church in Fort Worth, Texas, chose celibacy eight years ago as the best way for him to be true to himself and his faith. Like many on Side B, he’s since been called both a sinner for being gay and a self-hater for choosing celibacy.

In 2018, Abuto stumbled upon Revoice, an annual Side B conference. Suddenly, he was surrounded by people whose journeys mirrored his own. “Without that community, my walk would not be flourishing nearly as well as it is,” said Abuto, who is now a Revoice staffer.

Not all people reconcile their faith and queerness. A 2013 study from Pew Research Center found that nearly half (48%) of LGBTQ people are not religiously affiliated — more than double the share among the general public (20%). A third of religious LGBTQ people reported a conflict between their sexual orientation or gender identity and their beliefs.

Eric Rodriguez, an associate professor of psychology at City University of New York who has studied LGBTQ identity issues for decades, said faithful LGBTQ people can reject their religious identity, attempt to eradicate or suppress their queer identity, compartmentalize both identities or integrate them.

“The folks who did the best were either those who identified as being integrated, or those who identified as being secular,” he said. “That’s regardless of whether you are talking about somebody with a Christian background, Jewish background or Islamic background.”

The issue of belonging is complicated by the wide range of attitudes toward LGBTQ inclusion, even when a faith is non-affirming on paper. In the Catholic catechism, homosexual acts are called “intrinsically disordered,” but in 2019 the Pew Research Center found that 61% of Catholics said they support same-sex marriage. In 2017, Pew reported that 52% of U.S. Muslims said homosexuality should be accepted by society.

“It’s the guys in the gowns and funny hats that have the issue,” as Guzmán put it.

Jeff Chu, author of “Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America,” said that affirming and nonaffirming labels are overly simplistic. Chu married his husband in the Reformed Church in America and is an ordained elder there, but his ordination process, which for most people takes three years, has dragged on for six due to the denomination’s broader debate over LGBTQ inclusion.

“To just say ‘nonaffirming denomination’ does a disservice to the reality on the ground, which is the truth that we are individuals, couples and congregations who are wrestling through a lot of complicated political and social terrain.”

A Christian Reformed Church member

Natalie Drew, a trans woman, never expected to land in a Christian Reformed Church congregation. The CRC, a close cousin to the RCA, codified its opposition to homosexual sex at the denominational level this summer. But Drew doesn’t choose churches based on whether they’re affirming.

“I don’t want to belong simply because they have an official policy. I want to feel like I belong because the people there treat me as if I’m truly their family,” Drew said. “It could have happened in a lot of places. It just happened to happen at CRC church.”

In light of the denomination’s opposition, Drew’s church, like many others, is reconsidering its future in the CRC. Drew said she’s not part of those conversations and doesn’t care to be. She loves the church’s commitment to ancient creeds and social justice work, and what ultimately matters is that she, her wife and her kids are welcome.

“For LGBTQIA people out there, who are struggling right now, there are churches out there,” she told RNS. “You don’t have to give up your faith to be who you are.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Catholic bishops face a choice: Pastors or politicians?

In this Friday, May 1, 2020 file photo, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez gives a blessing after leading a brief liturgy at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. The nation’s Catholic bishops begin their fall annual meeting Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, where they plan to elect new leaders — a vote that may signal whether they want to be more closely aligned with Pope Francis’ agenda or maintain a more formal distance.

by John Kenneth White

The last two years have been tumultuous ones for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. On Inauguration Day 2021, its president, Archbishop Jose Gomez, sent a churlish message to Joe Biden, condemning him for pledging “to pursue certain politics that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage and gender.”

From there, the conference engaged in a prolonged discussion as to whether Biden and other prominent Catholic politicians, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), should be denied communion — a ban that was imposed by Pelosi’s San Francisco archbishop, Salvatore J. Cordileone. After months of debate, the bishops punted on the issue and are currently spending $14 million to promote a National Eucharistic Revival.

With Gomez’s departure this month, the bishops were faced with selecting a new conference president. Over the past year, the Vatican has made it abundantly clear it is displeased with the American bishops and wants them more in alignment with Rome. In October, President Biden visited Pope Francis, and the pontiff went out of his way to call Biden “a good Catholic.”

A few months earlier, Speaker Pelosi and her husband, Paul, had an emotional meeting with the pope where she received a papal blessing and took communion at a Vatican mass. Prior to the bishops casting their votes for a new leader, the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, pointedly reminded them that they were “cum Petro and sub Petro,” translating, “with Peter and under Peter.” He listed what Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Ky., described as the pope’s “greatest hits,” with an emphasis on the environment, immigration and promoting a greater sense of brotherhood and sisterhood — priorities that Stowe laments the bishops have ignored.

Thirty minutes after Pierre’s remarks, Timothy Broglio was elected as conference president. Broglio is no stranger to the culture wars. As archbishop of the Military Services, he supported a U.S. Air Force chaplain whose homily blamed “effeminate” gay priests for clergy sexual abuse. Broglio has repeatedly claimed that the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals are “directly related to homosexuality” — a position rejected by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report, which found that “no single psychological, developmental, or behavioral characteristic differentiated priests who abused minors from those who did not.”

For two years, the worldwide Catholic Church has been engaged in a “synodal process,” a common term used for listening sessions. Repeatedly, the laity have expressed their desire that the church welcome migrants, ethnic minorities, the poor and divorced and remarried couples into its increasingly empty pews.

In its report to the Vatican, the bishops wrote, “Concerns about how to respond to the needs of these diverse groups surfaced in every synthesis.” But it was questions concerning LGBTQ Catholics that were especially troubling to the laity, with “practically all” consultations stating that the lack of welcome contributed to the hemorrhaging of young people from the faith. For his part, Pope Francis has gone to extraordinary lengths to convey his sense of fraternity with gay Catholics. This month, Francis welcomed Fr. James Martin, well-known in the U.S. for his outreach ministry to gay Catholics, to an extraordinary private meeting to discuss his ministry and offer support, previously telling Fr. Martin to “continue this way.”

Addressing the conference, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, it’s newly elected vice president, said, “We cannot credibly speak in a polarized society as long as our own house is divided.” But like so many other institutions, the Catholic Church has fallen victim to today’s cultural chasms. For some Catholics, the solution lies in a smaller, more homogenous, and culturally conservative church, set apart from a secular world that it so easily condemns, and producing leaders who are willing to wage war with the cultural politics of the moment.

For others, the choice is to be pastoral, listening without condemning and meeting people “where they are.” Pope Francis clearly prefers the latter approach, writing that when “victory consists in eliminating one’s opponents, how is it possible to raise our sights to recognize our neighbors or to help those who have fallen along the way?”

Bishop Stowe laments that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is becoming “more and more irrelevant” to the average Catholic, while other organizations are filling the void — including Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Over the past two decades, one thing is clear: The bishops make for lousy politicians. But they could be pretty good pastors. It’s their choice.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

The meaning behind Pope Francis’ meeting with transgender people

By: Newsy

Father James Martin has taken his message of prayer and inclusivity everywhere, from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to the halls of the Vatican. In May, he wrote to Pope Francis with a few questions.

“I just wanted to give him a time to briefly talk to LGBTQ Catholics,” Martin said.

Francis has extended apologies to the abused and a welcome to the historically rejected. According to the Vatican News, he recently met with transgender people near Rome, Italy.

So Martin’s questions aren’t so random.

“I asked him, ‘What would you most like them to know about the church?'” Martin said. “He said, ‘Read Acts of the Apostles,’ which was really interesting because there’s a church that’s kind of mixing it up. Then also, ‘What would you say to an LGBTQ Catholic who felt rejected by the church?’ And he said very interestingly to remember that it’s not the church that rejects you, the church loves you, but it might be individual people in the church.”

It isn’t the first time Francis has corresponded directly with Martin on LGBTQ relations or the first time he has spoken up about their place within the Catholic church.

In 2016, Francis agreed the church should apologize to not only gay people but other marginalized groups, like the poor. He’s also called for parents to accept their LGBTQ children.

Francis’ gestures are one thing; changing church doctrine, which teaches that the act of homosexuality is sinful, is another.

“What would have happened really, in a sense, is for theologians working together, along with church officials, to come to some newer understanding of how they can accommodate for older church teaching on these issues, to show that the church evolves rather than dramatically changing,” said Michele Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. “Because the church is not going to say, ‘Oh, we were wrong.’ It’s very rare.”

“If he were to do that, which I don’t think Pope Francis will, but if he were to do that, he would not want to do it without support from the Curia and the College of Cardinals,” said Cristina Traina, professor of Catholic theology at Fordham University. “He would not want to do it without tracing a pathway theologically.”

Instead, Francis has gone another direction: one met with both criticism and praise, uplifting LGBTQ Catholics while simultaneously reiterating church doctrine.

NEWSY’S AMBER STRONG: Is he sort of riding the line between saying that this is doctrine and doctrines not going to change? But, we also still need to love and affirm people as well.

FATHER JAMES MARTIN: I think that’s a good question, and I think he is kind of trying to straddle that line. But I think one thing to remember is that what seems very bland and tepid in the United States — overseas is a big deal. In the U.S., we might say, ‘Oh, big deal. Of course, you should welcome your kids.’ If you’re in Eastern Europe or sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America or India, that’s a big deal. So, we have to remember that he’s speaking to the whole church.”

According to Pew Research, 76% of U.S. Catholics say society should be accepting of homosexuality. That’s below the rate of Catholic support in countries like Spain and the Netherlands but far higher than places like Lebanon and Nigeria.

Some theologians argue that Francis’ support could have a trickle-down impact on individual Catholics and parishes.

“These things can do a lot to encourage Catholics to embrace LGBTQ people with love and compassion and mercy and not to see them as the Antichrist, the anathema, the enemy of salvation,” Traina said.

In 2021, a group of Catholic leaders, including a cardinal and archbishop, signed a statement calling for widespread support of at-risk LGBTQ youth. According to an NCR analysis of recent listening sessions among U.S. Catholics, there was a growing call for LGBTQ inclusion and more opportunities for women.

“To me, there’s no such thing as an empty gesture because, yes, many times people want to see more clear-cut evidence of change and of their acceptance within the church, but sometimes it’s in small steps,” Dillon said.

In 2021, Martin, a Vatican appointee under Francis, launched Outreach: a website that provides resources to LGBTQ Catholics and leaders. It’s an effort Pope Francis has encouraged.

“He hasn’t changed any church teaching,” Martin said. “I’m not advocating for any church teaching, but he’s advocated a more pastoral response, listening to them, welcoming them, treating them with respect.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!