Disappearing?
I met Carol a year or so ago at a coffee joint; she possessed a cool style and looked at me with piercing, indigo blue eyes. She was also gradually concealing her womanhood in an attempt to ‘transition.’ I felt intuitively her years of torment and sought to reinforce kindly the beauty I beheld in her.
As weeks went on, she disappeared behind men’s clothes and facial hair. I saw her last week as ‘Kevin’. My mind went blank and I looked haplessly in those eyes. Her voice squeaked a greeting as if she (approx. 30-years-old) was going through puberty.
I am seeking God and wise counsel as to how to best care for her in the little ways and moments we interact. I pray for her family who may well have agreed confusedly with Carol’s way of resolving her gender-identity conflict. The logic? ‘Better for Carol to disappear than for Carol to kill herself.’ I agree. I rejoice in her life and respect her right to choose how to resolve a longstanding gender conflict.
Her ‘cure’ is costly: on her own body (toxic hormones and invasive surgeries) and social network (disassembling old bonds, seeking tenuous new ones). Was she given a choice to explore the option of becoming reconciled to her biological self?
Kansas City’s Mayor and Council will vote this Thursday to deny her or anyone that choice. My city has initiated a push to ban ‘conversion therapy’—code word for any minor in conflict who seeks help to make peace with one’s birth gender. The bill highlights ‘Gender Pathways’, a local treatment center that offers every freedom to dysphoric youth except resolving the psychological reasons as to why one is rejecting his or her birthright.
The powers-that-be have tried to hide their counseling ban agenda from public view. They announced the bill and their near slam-dunk victory only after protest from us and others. It seems they know what they want, and they are going after it. We have become an inconvenient truth for Kansas City. They want us to disappear. No way.
We cannot disappear. We must tell the truth of how faith and sound process enabled us to overcome homosexual and transgender identities. We will make known our stories at City Hall this Wednesday. Come pray beforehand with us at 930am on the city steps or just join us at 1030am in the Council chambers. (Will keep you posted if this changes as it often does in politics.) Pray for us!
Pray that we might convey reasonably and lovingly an alternate path to healing. Pray also that we would line up good legal counsel to fight the city in case the ban passes. (The Council could vote as early as the 31st.) This is not a good time for Kansas City to make such a ban, as recent rulings in Tampa, Fla. (Vazzo v. Tampa) and New York City (Schwartz v. City of New York) have demonstrated.
A strange power has darkened the understanding of well-meaning big shots. We must break that power by telling persons the whole truth. Give each person a choice–but give them one to make! Kids grow up fast these days and don’t need condescension; they need choice. Kansas City wants to take away that choice. We won’t let them. Rather than disappear, we will shine through the confusion.
‘We have renounced secret and shameful ways. We do not use deception, nor do we distort the Word of God. Rather, by speaking the truth plainly, we commend ourselves to every person’s conscience in the sight of God’ (2 Cor. 4:2).
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