Places like Ventura-N are sanctuaries. They are places where queer people can let down their guard, find automatic acceptance, and build community. This act of violence is the shattering of that safety.

When vulnerable people are killed out of hate, I sometimes wonder, where is God? Jesus called the persecuted blessed, so why doesn’t God show up a little more for them?

Where is God?

God is in last night’s vigil attended by over a thousand people.

God is in lawn chairs and candles and signs and pride flags.

God is in prayers of tears and even moments of laughter.

God is in an abundance of clergy in collars and stoles.

God is in a bishop and district superintendent showing up.

God is in the shared hearts of a diverse faith community.

One person committed a violent act of hate, thousands stood up for life.

God is in the thousands.

Yesterday, on a trans justice thread, someone posted an article about another democratic political candidate turning his back on the transgender community. In response, justice veteran Felicia DeRosa responded with wisdom worth sharing:

Yep, it seems like we have become too much of a hot topic, and therefore, everyone is just going with the status quo and towing the conservative line to protect their own careers. How nice. 😡

I hate to say it, but I saw this happening in 2016. I just hate that that's how it actually has turned out.

I know that we will be able to overcome this and be able to take up space in much the same way as the rest of the LGBQAI+ Community does, but it's going to be a dirty fight and it's going to take a bit to get there.

The key is that we cannot play by the rules anymore because Everyone is ignoring the rules, so they no longer apply. 😮‍💨

I've said this before and I'll say it again: we need to be smarter, more articulate, and more aggressive than the opposition.

Note... I'm not talking violence. That would just play into their rhetoric...

On the daily, I strongly suggest we do what we can to hold on to our light. Remind ourselves why we fight. Remind ourselves why we went through all the trouble of transition in the first place. Revel in our joy when/where we find it and keep showing up for community. And do your self care! It's the only way we're going to get through this.

We are the bravest people out there for claiming our lives for ourselves and doing the work to be authentic and honest. It scares other people, and it pisses them off because they feel like they can't And that makes them uncomfortable.

That is not our problem. ✊🏽

He described a clear contrast, stating that if Democrats take control “transgender will never end.”

It would be easy to dismiss Trump’s comments. He regularly speaks in delusional rhetoric, exaggerations, and lies. However, it is also important to believe what people tell you about themselves.

On his first day in office, Trump signed a sweeping executive order taking away federal recognition of gender diverse people. Actions and laws since then have taken away access to healthcare, funding, and legal recognitions.

Transgender people have always existed and will always exist. But by the presidents own words, the question is, will the United States be a safe place for people like me?

But in her life, she was not always celebrated. She received more than her share of criticism. People saw her big hair, heavy makeup, and big boobs and made all the usual assumptions. Coupled with a Tennessee accent, she was often viewed with a combination of judgment and disdain. Like the character she played in the movie “9 to 5” she was sexualized and underestimated at the same time.

A similar thing happened with an unnamed character from John 4, the woman at the well. She is one of the first people who Jesus reveals himself to and one of the first evangelists who goes and says to her community, “come and see.”

But like Dolly, she was criticized, sexualized, and ostracized. She had five husbands and was living with a man not her husband. Our automatic cultural assumption is to consider her a slut. When this scripture gets preached, it is usually as an example of the depth of God’s love, to even include a woman like her.

But the scripture does not say a word about her morality. In the ancient near East, women had no agency or rights. A man could ask for a divorce leaving a woman abandoned and destitute. It is more likely that she was unable to have a child and was cast away. She did not go through men, men went through her.

This is reinforced by how Jesus treated her. Jesus does not tell her to clean up her act or change her ways, he humbles himself beyond cultural custom and asks her for a cup of water.

This is a challenge for all of us when we make judgments about people by how they look without seeing the person, without knowing their history, without seeing their humanity.

When we judge someone by their appearance, we are not only being unfair to them, we are denying ourselves of their gifts. We eat food picked by the immigrant who lives in fear of ICE. We dance to the music of the Black woman who is categorized as angry. We distance the trans youth as a dangerous contagion. When, in fact, these are the very people offering us the gift of the living water of diversity.

After 400 years of creating fear based on prejudice, the Trump Regime is repeating the worst of American history. This week, the Department of Health and Human services issued a report titled, “Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?”

As you might guess, the answer to the question asked in the title of the report is yes.

This report (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08/gender-ideology-report.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) repeatedly uses the term “political violence,” stating “These findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with willingness to justify political violence.” In fact, it is not only transgender people who are described as a violent threat, but anyone who supports us.

America, have you not learned from your shameful history? This country’s original sins were stealing land from one people and brutally enslaving another. All while, the real perpetrators of violence, the wealthy white powerful, point away from their genocides to those they have slaughtered. You murder my Black trans sisters and call them a threat.

Transgender people and our allies are no more of a threat than the aforementioned groups. We are created in God’s image, we are beautiful, we are love.

Yesterday, a co-worker shared with me that he discovered a song on YouTube that presented itself as being from 1971. However, it was actually generated by AI.

Also yesterday, a friend was on a customer service call answered by AI. When my friend complained to AI that she would rather talk to a person, AI claimed to be human.

Also yesterday, a political ad aired showed Maine senatorial candidate Gov Janet Mills supporting transgender kids, including giving a child a “a no-parent-permission-required estrogen kit.” The ad, by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was created with deepfake generative AI. Not only does the ad misrepresent Gov Mills policies and their outcomes, but it depicts her in a realistic looking video that is difficult to tell that it is AI.

AI is not an entity into itself, it is the result of how it has been programmed and the information it has been fed. What happens when AI is taught to lie, misrepresent, and mislead? Who controls the technology and the assumptions that are built into it?

The dangers of AI create particular problems for transgender people. As shown by this commercial, AI has been programmed with prejudice. The ramifications of this are frightening.

AI replicates a world of gender binaries but adds to it with emerging technologies. AI uses facial recognition and social media tracking to identify and categorize people.

When AI is used to generate content, embedded prejudices present themselves as legitimate, making discrimination look objective.

All of this touches on a threat not limited to transgender people: what does it mean to be human?

Do we have the agency to be ourselves, when our identity is outside the dominant culture?

Is my identity determined by an algorithm?

In giving AI authority, will we give up our humanity?

Since AI is being programmed to emulate the worst of human traits (such as lying) how can we trust its work?

From the early days of the pride movement, there has been division in the letters of the LGBTQIA+ rainbow.

Transgender leaders such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were key instigators in the Stonewall Uprising that fueled the gay rights movement. But after the smoke settled and the organizing began, they were boo’ed off stages at pride rallies and seen as too much.

Under the pressure of the Trump regime, there have been recent headlines highlighting continual division. One of today’s headlines is “Log cabin Republicans remove reference to trans people on website.” A few months ago, a New York Times article went viral for its statement, “I’m gay, not queer, it matters.”

Divisions exist based on scarcity of justice resources, fears of backlash, and differences in identity. This has resulted in the creation of the “drop the T movement”.

However, division is also a tool of outside forces. When transgender people are portrayed as extreme and dangerous, identity politics serves as a wedge issue to divide and conquer. As transgender people have become the scapegoat of the moment, any division gets reported in the media.

Now is not the time to retreat in scarcity but to stand up in abundance.

Now is not the time to fall back to protect one’s individual safety but to stand up for each other and recognize our interdependence and intersectionality.

Now is not the time to be divided, but to unite not only amongst the letters of the Pride alphabet, but in all areas of justice and equity until all marginalized people can get their backs off the wall.

This recent and dramatic increase shows that this is not how things have to be. We must not accept this as normal. New Mexico has taught us that.

The state of New Mexico is going to cover gender affirming care for youth who are under Medicaid, following a recent federal rule change removing this coverage.

This is particularly noteworthy coming from New Mexico. New Mexico is not a wealthy state. It has the second highest percentage of Medicaid patients in the country. And yet, trans healthcare is important enough to be seen as a priority.

Way to go New Mexico!

And may we all be inspired to stand up and work to protect trans kids.

In Isaiah 58, worship is not primarily about what happens when we enter the sanctuary. Worship is what happens when we leave it.

We often think of ourselves as attendees of worship. We come to church. We consume worship. We listen to the sermon. We listen to the band. We receive communion. We experience something meaningful. And then we go back to our lives. Maybe in the same way we go to a concert or a movie. Worship as spiritual entertainment.

But in the biblical imagination, worship is not simply something we attend. Worship is the life that we live.

The question Isaiah puts before us is not, “Did you go to church?”

The better question is, “How does your worship transform the world?”

Because of what happens in your church on Sunday:

Did the hungry get fed?

Did the oppressed experience freedom?

Did the poor find shelter?

Did the vulnerable find dignity?

Did the people who had been pushed to the margins discover that God has not forgotten them?

Isaiah says that this is the worship God desires.

And that changes the job description.

The job of a Christian is not simply to attend worship. The job of a Christian is to become worship.

Our worship is our life.

So we come to worship Sunday not because this is the entirety of our Christian responsibility, but because we need to be formed, challenged, encouraged, forgiven, connected, strengthened, and sent back into the world.

So what exactly does God expect of us? If it is more than showing up for an hour on Sunday, what does God want from us? What is the job description of a Christian?

The prophet Micah gives us a remarkably simple job description: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

Jesus makes it even more personal. He says that all of the law and commandments can be summed up to “love God completely,” and to “love your neighbor as yourself”

But as simple as it sounds, what does it mean to love? Love is not simple. Love is not just a sentimental feeling.

We practice love when our faith and our worship lead us to do the kind of things listed in Isaiah 58.

This is what it looks like to love.

Register at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/transohio/transohio-s-17th-annual-trans-ally-symposium-across-generations

TRANSlation from the Canticle of Zechariah

Blessed be the Lord, the God of the Disinherited
You came to set us free.
You raised up for us a mighty Sophia
born of the house of those whose backs are against the wall

Through the justice martyrs, they promised of old
that you would save us from those who said separate but equal
from the hands of all who erase us
Show mercy to our scared children
and remember those who cry for justice.

This was the oath you swore to King and X:
to set us free from systems of bigotry,
freedom to rain down like running waters
holy and righteous in your sight sight all the days of our life.

You, my queer child, shall be called the gift of the Most High;
for your beauty will testify of the goodness of our God
Your freedom is salvation
by the forgiveness of societal sins.

In the tender compassion of our God
the rainbow from on high will break upon us,
sprinkle your glitter on those who dwell in darkness,
guide our feet into the way of peace.

When I was a kid on the playground, and teams were being divided, I was often the last one picked. I can remember the look of disappointment on kids faces when they saw they were stuck with me on their team.

My slowness in sports mirrored my overall development. I was often the awkward one out.

Being the odd one out feels uncomfortable and unsafe.

And yet, Jesus describes the kindom of God not as a place controlled by the powerful who are stuck in the eyes of needles, but “everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

As transgender people, many of us have sacrificed home and relationship for the call of authenticity. Statistically, transgender people are among the last when it comes to access to healthcare, employment, housing, and safety.

Culturally, it is common to look down on the last among us …

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But it is interesting what he quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures and what he doesn’t.

Jesus interprets scripture through a lens of love, compassion, and justice. 

Jesus does not quote verses of war and violence and hatred. In fact, Jesus never quotes from books like Joshua and Judges that are filled with stories of violence. 

And even when he does quote scripture, he does so selectively. 

In Luke, Chapter 4, Jesus gets up in front of his home church, he is handed the scroll from the book of Isaiah, and quotes from what we call chapter 61:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

   and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

This is Jesus' mission statement. And, in effect, it is ours as followers of Jesus.

But Jesus l…

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Creative is the expression of the human soul. Creative is spiritual. Creative is divine.

Yesterday, on this blog, I posted a poem. I don’t know where a poem or a painting or a song comes from, but it feels like an energy that is more than my own.

Last night, I went to an art crawl with friends. Many of us no longer have any empty wall space in our homes, but we still walked away with sacred expressions.

I haven’t been to a concert since Thursday and have listened to over 300 albums just that have come out this year. I am compelled by the vulnerable and honest expression of the human soul.

One of my favorite song lyrics comes from Dillbilly’s song, Fray, “There’s the shape we were born with and the shape we make whole.” To me, this speaks to the connection between creative and transgender.  …

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59 years ago I got an auspicious start. Born to a woman who couldn’t keep me and the next ten weeks in an unknown place. I was raised by parents who loved me the best that they could and I stumbled my way through much of life.

But here I am now and all that glitters is gay! I had top surgery four months ago and am so grateful for the support of the community who made it happen. I’ll be celebrating life by going to the movies with my boys today, hanging out with friends tomorrow, and sharing a long weekend with my love.

I am a lucky girl,

To live a life marked by love.

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