http://jamesalison.co.uk/

He argues that the sexuality/religion issue should not be framed as inclusion of yet one more identity group in the liberal-pluralist mosaic, but as an opportunity to see the emptiness and sinfulness of all these categories we create to shore up our selfhood at the expense of another, so we can come together with acceptance of our universal brokenness.

If they see us as abject — “A person in the lowest and most despicable condition; a castaway” — then they stop seeing us as human and see us as brave lessons in facing what breaks humans.

Of course, a key lesson of most religions is that all humans are broken, that living a finite & fleshly life means we suffer the frailty flesh is heir to. To enter our own abjection is to engage our own humility.

Reynolds Price talks about how his illness seemed to lead people to believe they had a right to ask questions they never would of someone who was not visibly sick.

When people treat me as a lesson, not a human, I see them treating me as sick. If they also engage their own brokenness, their own sickness, their own queerness, then they come as equals.

But if they see me themselves as normal and me as abject, and therefore a lesson, well, that really makes me queasy.

i am not someone else’s lesson, and my gifts are not tokens.

To say a brief word in defense of VRM, she delivered her keynote to a group of people who were familiar at some level with her body of work. She didn’t really need to explicitly offer that group a “Reason Zero” (“Congregations should embrace their transgender members because love demands it”) because it was widely understood by her audience to be her most basic premise.

I think her goal in offering this keynote was to acknowledge the pain you expressed so eloquently when you wrote, “The most painful thing about trans is not being able to give your gifts and have them accepted.” She reminded the trans people in her audience that we do indeed bring much-needed gifts to the congregations to which we belong, and she reminded the allies who were present to accept those gifts. Personally, I left feeling encouraged and empowered to offer my gifts more willingly.