I've known several transgender people in the course of my life. You quite possibly have too, and may not even know it. They're not freaks or perverts. They're just people trying to live their lives, like anyone else. That's their agenda: to live a full life in peace.

I was reading an article this morning in The Guardian about how some trans people in the U.S. are buying and learning how to use guns because they feel (with good evidence) that their lives will be increasingly in danger in the U.S. I'd seen statistics in the past indicating that 80% of transgender adults have seriously considered suicide, and 40% have attempted it. Being trans is difficult long before you pile on the social and religious and political hatred that has been ginned up by Republicans (many of whom think of themselves as Christians).

In a recent excellent conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Cox Richardson made this point regarding the recent election:

"The way I think about it is if you have ten people in a room, eight of them just want to get by. They just want to put food on the table and have a good time and have their friends and have a nice life. But there are two people who want to control everybody else. The way that they get that power is to get six people to turn against the two at the bottom. The way that you do that is through the stories you tell. If you can tell those people in the middle that those two people at the bottom--and you can pick them at random because of the clothes they wear or the color of their eyes or the skin or whatever--then you can get power from those other six. That would explain to me anyway, why people of color will turn against other groups of color or why white women will vote against their own interests, because they are hearing stories that say, You must turn against those two people at the bottom, or we're going to turn against you. It's why I do what I do: because I think the stories we tell about who we are and the communities we are, are the way that you garner power."

We know from campaign rhetoric which "two at the bottom" the Trump/MAGA/Republicans chose: undocumented immigrants and people who are transgender. Here in Texas, Ted Cruz's ads were all about how acceptance of transgender people poses a threat to teenage girls and to the U.S. military.

How remarkably, and cynically, different this is from the Jesus who they claim to worship, who said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." The Jesus depicted in the Gospels was constantly defying social and religious norms in order to lift up and make a place for those "at the bottom" that Cox Richardson spoke of in her analogy.

It's just another example of how Trump/MAGA/Republicans claim Christian piety, but their words and deeds show them to be quite the opposite. They're much more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus's day who opposed Jesus and ultimately conspired to have him murdered--all the while proclaiming their own godliness. Jesus referred to such folks--who claimed to be among God's chosen while simultaneously being heartless to "the least of these"--as "fools," "hypocrites," "blind men," "vipers," "sons of perdition," "whitewashed tombs (appearing clean on the outside but filled with death and rot)," etc. In fact, they're the only group of people in the Gospels who Jesus held in utter contempt.

Several years ago, when I was an evangelical Christian and was trying to understand LGBTQ+ people (many of whom very graciously helped me by telling me their stories) I attended a conference of the Gay Christian Network in Chicago (I was relatively nearby, in seminary, in Indiana). I have rarely encountered Christian acceptance and hospitality like I did at that conference, as a straight man surrounded by LGBTQ+ followers of Jesus. But the most profound experience I had there was participating in worship. It was the deepest, most heartfelt, most Spirit-filled worship I have ever encountered. I felt the presence of Jesus in their midst. That's when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was nothing "wrong" with these folks, or threatening about them.