“A Time of Decision”
Dear Beloveds,
After watching some videos and reading the transcript of the incoming president’s inaugural address and news accounts of the first day of the administration, I want to be very clear that what we witnessed January 20, 2025 was beyond injustice, it was evil. Evil is not a word I use lightly. We are witnessing a planned, systematic dismantling of representative democracy, human rights, and guaranteed constitutional freedoms. Immigrants, refugees, and transgender people were dehumanized by executive actions. An attempt is being made to eliminate birthright citizenship guaranteed by the constitution without using the process for amending its contents outlined by the constitution. I want to be very clear about this: There are not good people on both sides. Any government, leader, or law that makes any human being less than equally human with the same dignity and rights as every other human being is evil and should be resisted at every turn.
The task in front of us is to move forward without compromising on the dignity, worth, and human rights of every person, including the people who would dehumanize others. Do not mistake this for a false equivalence. All opinions are not equal. Dehumanizing others is evil. It is immoral. If someone’s opinion is that some humans are less than others, that person holds an immoral, unethical, and unjustifiable position. It is not dehumanizing them to name that and hold them accountable. I truly hope the congregation can engage in the work of communicating across differences especially in the local community, but a prerequisite for our participation must be that all participants in the congregation are welcomed and treated with dignity and respect. We won’t be able to have conversations with people who deny the humanity and human rights of trans and non-binary people. We welcome conversations with people who don’t understand things, but not people who disagree with us on everyone’s common humanity.
We are in the middle of a year of congregational learning about transgender and non-binary people and their experience so that we might make our congregation more welcoming, more inclusive, and more just. The administration’s dehumanizing of trans and non-binary people is in direct opposition to what we are striving to do in our congregation.
I share with you a statement from Alok VAid-Menon from this month’s Soul Matters Sharing Circle resource packet on Inclusion that points out dehumanizing others dehumanizes everyone, including the dehumanizer:
“The situation facing trans and gender non-conforming people in the United States right now is really bleak. And I really want to have an earnest plea that people stop framing this as a minority issue and reframe this as a universal attack on self-determination. Every one of us should be able to determine our own gender. No one else should be able to tell us what we should look like, how we should act, and what we should do with our bodies. So we need you to show up at this moment, not just out of an ethics of allyship. That doesn’t feel like enough for me, but out of an insistence and your own dignity, your own capacity to transform, your own love of self.” Alok Vaid-Menon
You will notice that this month that my monthly spiritual challenge to personal growth and my monthly message both focus on our work of transgender inclusion. My challenge to you is to register for, log in, and actively participate in the online course Trans Inclusion in Congregations. The registration information is in the Spiritual Challenge. I am also only recommending one book this month “Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Non-binary People and Their Families” which is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s congregational read for the current program year. If you haven’t read it yet, please start. If you need a copy, please let me know as the congregation has copies to lend.
To those of us with privilege, especially those of us who are cisgender and heterosexual, I urge us to take sides unequivocally and unambiguously with our trans and non-binary family and friends and the entire LGBTQIA community.
We are living in “one of those times” – one of those times when future generations will look back and judge those who sided with love well and judge those who sided with dehumanization, hatred, bigotry, and violence damningly. As Unitarian James Russell Lowell says in hymn #119 in our hymnal:
Once to every soul and nation comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side:
then to stand with truth is noble, when we share its wretched crust;
ere that cause bring fame and profit, and ‘tis prosperous to be just.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong;
though its portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong.
Then it is the brave one chooses, while the coward stands aside,
till the multitude make virtue of the faith they have denied.
It is the time of decision. May we decide forcefully, without apology for truth and for the good. May we decide forcefully and without apology for inclusion, justice, equity, and love.
In solidarity,
Rev. Tony