It’s been a little over a month since a group of anti-trans Christians held a worship service in the heart of Seattle’s rainbow community. But despite the resulting coverage and commentary, three important stories remain untold.
The first: They weren’t the only Christians there.
About 50 of us showed up to support transgender people. We were pastors in collars and vestments. Parishioners carrying signs that said, “Love Is Louder.” We came from mainline denominations like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ. We even had a priest from a queer-friendly branch of the Eastern Orthodox church.
We gathered on the east side of the worship stage. We stood in silent witness. One of our pastors prayed with a young man, their knees on the ground, as the anti-trans service continued.
Our group was hard to miss — yet we were largely overlooked.
I don’t blame the press. The story of the day quickly became one of conflict and the right to free speech. But after the singing and sermonizing, the arrests and pepper spray, there was a missed opportunity to look deeper.
The first story is the diversity of Christianity in America. It’s an important one for this city, one of the most unchurched in the country, as the loudest Christian voices tend to skew reality.
Good numbers are tricky, but the conservative Catholic Register and the religiously unaffiliated Hartford Institute for Religion Research make a good case for roughly 200 formal denominations in the United States. In other words, we Christians are a fractured bunch.
And if you say the T-word, we fracture further.
The Human Rights Campaign maintains a list of American denominations and their positions on trans rights. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church and United Methodist Church offer full-throated support for transgender membership, marriage and ordination. The Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ support the ordination of trans people but, given their historic support of local church decision-making, do not mandate it.
Then there is Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination with 12.9 million members. In 2017, its leaders signed on to the Nashville Statement which states, in part, that considering oneself transgender is “ … inconsistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”
Perhaps the denomination walking the finest line is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Morman Church. It does not consider it sinful to call oneself a transgender person. Then it gets sticky.
According to the LDS General Handbook, if a transgender person does not pursue a surgical, medical or social transition away from their biological sex at birth, they have all the privileges of church membership. But if they do make such a transition, they might be restricted in the ways they can participate. The handbook stresses consultation with local church officials to sort out those restrictions.
This is a thimble-full of positions. It does not include those of home churches, megachurches, nondenominational churches or so-called emerging churches. But it makes one thing clear: There is no single, unified Christian position when it comes to transgender people.
This story, and its complexities, also extend into Native communities.
I saw a counterprotester wearing a shirt that celebrated two-spirit people. It’s an Indigenous phrase that speaks to having two identities, often when performing traditional activities of the opposite biological sex: male weavers, for example, or female warriors.
“Two spirit” is a broad and imprecise term. The University of New Mexico’s Center for Rural & Community Behavioral Health counts more than 145 different names for it across 79 tribes. According to the Indian Health Service, some tribes use a single word for such a person, creating a third gender; others use two words, creating a third and fourth gender.
The complexity deepens because not every tribe celebrates or accepts gender or sexual-orientation diversity: In other words, there is not a single, Indigenous position. What many Native peoples do have in common, however, is an experience with Colonial-era Christianity. Understanding that experience, and its impact, would make for fascinating reading.
The second story that got missed is more nuanced.
Some Seattleites demanded to know how anti-trans Christians got a permit to worship in a park named for Washington state’s first gay legislator — and in a neighborhood held dear by the queer community and those of us who support it.
Opinion writers and city leaders clapped back quickly: No matter how hurtful you find their words, the group has a right under the U.S. Constitution to assemble peacefully and express its views.
As someone who thinks a lot about the Constitution, there’s no question the worship group had the First Amendment right to gather. But the very same right extends to the press, which could have examined the disproportionate impact of what the group said.
Here’s why. Historically, belonging to a faith community lowered your risk of suicide: a community, message of hope, and sense of joint purpose protected against isolation and despair.
But that protection isn’t the same for the queer community, according to The Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention and crisis intervention among young people. In 2020, the group reported that rates of attempted suicide among people aged 13-24 were significantly higher when they heard a parent use religion to say negative things about LGTBQ people.
Imagine that’s you, your kid or someone else’s child at Cal Anderson Park on that Saturday. You hear adults’ Bible-based language to wrap abortion, child sex trafficking and being transgender into a three-headed monster stalking America.
That’s how the previously safe harbor of religious community becomes enemy territory — and one reason why young kids think more about killing themselves.
In my three hours at Cal Anderson Park, I saw a young, queer community try to assert its basic, human rights. It was loud and circuslike. There was a mosh pit — a beautiful whirligig of dust, sweat and noise. People banged on barricades to make themselves heard.
Yes, there were arrests; no, you shouldn’t throw water bottles at cops.
But you shouldn’t have to protest alone. That’s what I saw: Young people who yelled and screamed as if they only had each other. Because greater Seattle wasn’t there. The kids were on their own.
Which is the third story that got missed — and the most heartbreaking.
The final story is yet to be written. It is what happens when the next hate peddler comes to town. It’s not an academic question. Sean Feucht, a Christian revivalist with a global following, has said his group will come to Seattle in August. It’s a safe bet that they’ll provoke in the name of the Jesus they understand — and use the trans community as a punching bag.
The Seattle Parks & Recreation Department did not respond to my email and phone messages asking if Feucht has applied for a permit or been granted one.
But if these folks do show up, we should make space for them — and then go somewhere else. On that day, the mayor should declare the Seattle waterfront the Capitol Hill Rainbow Annex. He should lead a celebration beneath a banner that reads, “When Hate Comes To Town, Love Throws A Party.”
The City Council should be there. So should high-tech and coffee-brewing Seattle. Arts, culture, civic, legal and professional sports Seattle, too. And a whole bunch of transgender-loving Seattle folks, religious or not.
Two groups, in two places. Each exercising their constitutional rights. Two groups, singing “Jesus Loves Me,” with vastly different understandings of what those words mean.
What a story that would be.
