Transgender Day of Visibility

Keegan T. Glover

Delivered 3/29/2025 at the Mass for Transgender Community

Not supposed to get political, but we can’t say trans without being political so I will take
my pass for today and talk about some politics.
Gender is not a new issue. As long as society has had gender roles, we’ve had people who
don’t fit those roles, and ways to deal with us. So why do people keep saying this is some
new, radical thing?? Well, politics.
Throughout scripture, the people we see highlighted are often not the ones who are acting
exactly perfectly, right?
Jacob was cast as a troublemaker from the start, immediately identified as less manly than
his twin brother, and loved less by their father (Isaac) because of that. Jacob has many
sons, and favors the younger one, as he was not favored.
Joseph is creative, he has these dreams and he has this long fancy coat, and most of his
brothers hate him for that.
Every woman who is mentioned by name in the genealogy of Jesus is touched by some
kind of sexual scandal, from Rahab always being known as a prostitute, to Mary becoming
pregnant before her marriage.
Not 1 for 1 the same, but the closest thing we have to today’s gender non-conforming
people in scripture is eunuchs. The biggest distinction is choice. Exiled Israelites being
taken prisoner and castrated is absolutely different from someone allowing themselves
the courage to be authentic, but what we have in common is for some reason, people insist
on treating us differently based on parts of us that are nobody else’s business.
When we talk about the eunuchs in scripture, it’s not enough to just know what a eunuch
is, we also need to know what they were then used for, and how they were treated. There
were whole rules just about these people, the spaces they were allowed to access and how
people should interact with them. Eunuchs were castrated so they could be servants in
the households of the Babylonian elites and not threaten their bloodlines.
When they returned from that exile, though, the Israelites had this third class of gender
that didn’t fit their established rules. These people could no longer have children, and in a small, heavily oppressed group, numbers really mattered. So they were shunned from
society, they came home to no hope of a family or a future, and they weren’t even allowed
to participate in worship anymore. They had finally come home from exile, only to be
exiled from the house by their own.
In 2023, the Florida legislature passed an anti-trans bathroom law that makes it criminal
trespass to refuse to leave a restroom or changing facility that does not align with an
individual’s sex assigned at birth after being told to do so by a government employee. Fla.
Stat. § 553.865. This year, they’re trying to revise the states equal employment policies, to
remove protections for trans and queer people and minority businesses in hiring
practices, contract selections, even personal interactions within an office. It would be
harassment for someone to insist on calling me “she” in the office, revising these laws
would make it harassment for me to report someone for such direct bullying.
But those are the rules that people make. If we look back to the scripture, when we get
into the prophets, what do they have to say about these issues? What does God think?
Isaiah is prophesying peace, and he says: ‘Do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.”
For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that
please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a
monument and a name greater than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting
name that shall not be cut off. .. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel.’
God clearly does not want us excluded. God speaks right to us, about our names and our
futures, those are the same things a lot of us trans folks worry about today. We have to
fight for our names, we have to fight to have families, but God reminds the eunuchs and us
that we are not forgotten, we are not cut off, and we are not excluded. Not only will God
bring us into his house, but we will also be celebrated for who we are.
Jesus himself talks about eunuchs, and like he often does he expands our understanding of
whatever he’s talking about. He clarifies that eunuchs are not only those who have been
made so by others, but some have become so of their own choice, and others even are
born this way. He even said “this is going to be really hard for some of you to understand.”
Now let’s visit one last eunuch in scripture, one of the very first converts after the
resurrection, the Ethiopian. An angel sent Philip off into the wilderness, and Philip found
an Ethiopian court official heading away from Jerusalem. They had traveled all that way to
worship in Jerusalem, but we know that eunuchs weren’t allowed in the temple, so this
person was no doubt turned away at the gates of the temple and excluded from the
worship they had traveled so far to offer and experience.
An angel sent one of Jesus’ own into the wilderness after an outcast, someone from so far
away, someone who didn’t fit within the rules of what was “normal”, God had that person specifically sought out, and brough into the fold of Gods love, because God excludes no
one.
I have heard people say “God loves and welcomes everyone as they are, sin and all, but he
loves them too much to let them stay that way.” This phrase has always gotten under my
skin, it’s felt used as a way to say, you can show up queer, but we will expect you to change
and conform.
To that phrase I say, I did show up one way, and I have been changed. In many, many
ways, I have been changed by this faith I have been so loving accepted into. I learned what
love, real love, true love is like. I’ve grown a lot since then, I’ve become my most authentic
self. And I’ve only been able to understand Jesus better since then. Nothing about my
gender has ever been a barrier for God, only for other people. I am, who I always have
been, who God made me to be.
God excludes no one. We don’t decide who is in or out, we have ample evidence in this
wonderful book that God says, over and over, anyone and everyone can be in. In a time
when many of us are feeling pushed back into the closet, into the dark, we have to always
remember that none of that is how God feels about any of his beloved children. And at the
end of the day, that’s who we all really are.