I am very grateful to be invited by the Revd Canon Dr Garry Deverell to speak at a vigil celebrating the kinship of trans people in Christ’s church on International Trans Day of Visibility.
This land is God’s land, and God’s Spirit dwells here. I acknowledge the Elders of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations, and that sovereignty was never ceded.
I turn fifty this year. One of the benefits of being this old is having lived through some history. One of the detriments, however, is having to watch the bad parts of that history again raise their ugly heads. Sadly, history does repeat, and I recognise the current anti-trans rhetoric.
I first came out as ‘not entirely heterosexual’ (bisexual) at a national Uniting Church meeting in 1997. At the time I was a Sunday School teacher in my local congregation, and I immediately checked with the parents to see if they were still okay with me teaching their children, since LGB people were then often portrayed as dangerous to children, because we were either going to abuse them or recruit them. (It was the Church of All Nations – they were fine.) During the 1990s and early 2000s I had people ask me why we wanted to allow openly LGB people into ministry, when we were simultaneously putting rules in place to prevent the sexual abuse of children by church leaders. For such people homosexuality and bisexuality were inseparable from paedophilia. Continue reading
Rev Doc Geek 