I recited the following at our 5 pm church service, which brings in a different guest to speak every week. The lectionary reading that day was Luke 20:27-38.
One of the things that I like about coming to a church like ours is hearing people’s stories. Every one of you has something to share. Stories are important. I’ve seen them subdue the impulse to ridicule, fear, and avoid those who’ve had a different life journey.
No one is owed stories. If sharing a story requires vulnerability from the speaker, then the recipients too must demonstrate equal care in listening. This has not been the case in a lot of churches when it comes to the stories of women, indigenous members, sexual and gender diverse Christians and/or those who have experienced homelessness. And I would add to that sex workers. Or as we have called them from our readings on Sunday mornings, whores, prostitutes and sexually immoral.
For the stories we carry are not only our own but those we make of others. The Bible is full of such stories. So it is that in the Bible women and sex workers are spoken of and done to; absent of these pages are their own voices. They were not the men who wrote down the stories in Aramaic, Greek or Hebrew; they were not privy to the councils and synods centuries later to decide what would get included in our Bible, nor were they among the subsequent English translators for such esteemed versions as the KJV. That they weren’t there matters.
Because where others aren’t invited to tell their stories for themselves, misconceptions take hold. As a trans person, I see people do this all the time, their perceptions of us rooted in their imagination rather than our experience. Our inclusion then becomes a placeholder for the change they fear. I watch those people spin a new tale for themselves, one where our exclusion is out of love and concern, as if to soothe themselves and avoid the truth that they are uncomfortable and scared. In this way I also watch Christians wield the Bible as a vehicle and shield for their personal views.
Part of this is because the Bible is innate and it takes people to spread the Word. But what we do with these stories in the Bible say more about us than the will of God. I can’t presume to know the latter, but how bias tarnishes perceptions, that is more comprehensible to me. Reminded I am of the voices that went into the Bible, and those that didn’t, I am acutely aware that this book isn’t only a keeper of stories of God, but of our own very human history of prejudice. Not only of our laws past including on the upholding of slavery, but the choice of contemporary translators to insert words like “homosexuality”, and of today’s clergy to selectively quote “male and female he created them” from Genesis when advocating that parents of trans youth turn their children over to violent conversion therapy camps.
We are not immune to this history. Take the lectionary today. It is a story about a woman whose husband dies and so she is passed to his brother. And he dies, so she is passed to another brother. Six times she is passed. This story can be presented in many ways, but there is certainly an interpretation which conveys that women are to be without agency and the property of men. This is the message that some churches choose to share.
It is the case that in this society such interpretations do not carry much weight. But the same cannot be said of readings where sex workers are called whores, prostitutes, and sexually immoral. Sex workers are still admonished in this society much as they are throughout the Bible. When we repeat these words on Sundays, we become promulgators of this injustice. This may seem hypothetical to you, so let me make it more real.
For those dearest to me, sex work is as common an occupation as barrista or social worker. That most of my friends are also trans is not a coincidence; but the mechanics of marginalization is beside the point I want to make right now.
The important bit is that some of my friends were here during my confirmation to support me, as they’ve been through all my most important moments. Imagine my alarm then when we had one of these readings about prostitutes. I don’t remember which one it was; we’ve had more of them since. I just remember that I kept looking back to my friends, hoping they were okay. It’s hard to think that their neighbours in these pews were reciting these words. How uncomfortable they must have been.
I think sometimes we’re insulated from the consequences of our readings because we’re only doing what other churches from the world over are already doing, to an audience that expects it. There is safety in that. But let’s take that safety away for a moment.
Imagine that I present to you one of my closest friends. He was there to listen to me talk at a coffee shop when I couldn’t make sense of things. He always made a card for me for every major life event. The one who soothed me when I called in the middle of the night crying. The one who got a bunch of us together to help a struggling acquaintance into a new home. The one who ran a support group for an especially vulnerable segment of trans folk in spite of abuse and attempts to shut it down.
If you sat down with him, would you be able to call him sexually immoral to his face? Why then is it okay from the safety of the lectern? This church that welcomes me says hurtful things of those I love. Of course it isn’t the intent, but does anyone ever intend to hurt? I struggle with this.
I’ve had a lot of people show me a lack of kindness throughout the years. My parent holding me over the deep end of the stairwell asking if I wanted to die, my ex beating me, a pedestrian grabbing my breasts to see if I was female, another telling me that my head should be cut off for kissing my boyfriend, I’ve been sexually assaulted twice during hookups, I’ve had men mock me to my face, shout at me from cars and call me faggot. Meanwhile my friends who are running workshops on consent, creating art, kicking ass at derby, standing up for marginalized folk, making spaces safer for women, and yes – also do sex work – have only shown me love and kindness. And yet here we are shaming them over sexual morality? Because that’s what we’re doing when we recite these words and leave them linger without context.
I want to finish by telling you about a few trans people.
Shelby Tracy Tom has completed a degree in history from Simon Fraser University and hopes to become a social worker to help other trans people. She lives in Vancouver.
January Marie Lapuz emigrated from the Philippines. She is the Social Coordinator of Sher Vancouver and the first transgender person to hold an executive position with the group. She is described as the life of the party.
Rosa Rebut is originally from Indonesia and now enjoys Edmonton winters. She posted pictures of her frolicking in the snow at the legislature grounds and joked she was a snow princess looking for her snow prince. She works at a 7-Eleven.
Sumaya Dalmar has been the lead actress in a play about the relationship between her Somali ethnicity, religiosity, and its correlation to masculinity. She is a qualified speech therapist. She’s about to start a job with the 519.
Alloura Wells has a fantastic sense of style, a great singer, and is known to be approachable.
Sisi Thibert lives in Montreal. She’s got lots of siblings and friends, and is well loved.
But she, and all the trans women I’ve mentioned, are no longer here to brighten this world. Each one was murdered here in Canada. All did sex work. Shame kills. It’s particularly pernicious for those that live at the intersection of racism, transphobia, and this animus towards sex workers. It makes the police a threat rather than a means for creating safety. It promotes under-reporting of sexual assaults. It pushes people out rather than welcome in. When a mural was put up in Ottawa to remember these women, it was defaced within two weeks, the words “you’ve been warned” inscribed for others to see. We are responsible for the shame we perpetuate, unwittingly or not.
Much like the journey we’ve been on with queer and trans people, we need to do better by those who do sex work in our communities.
We can’t change the stories that have taken place. But we can change where our story goes from here. For our church, maybe this means adding context to these readings. I’m not sure. I don’t have answers, only a desire for more voices to enter the picture.
For those of you who feel excluded from our spaces, I’ll end by asking, won’t you come and share your story?
Amen.