Pride 2025: A Baptist minister, some transwomen, and the UK situation
And the surprise that will arise when you realise - that you're a rebel
June already - Pride month. Not feeling especially celebratory.
A UK Supreme Court Ruling recently stated that transgender women are not, for the purposes of the Equality Act, legally women (in a case funded by a billionaire who chooses hate and division over philanthropy). Crikey, just think what good could be done with all that money, in our high-austerity little country where 25% of kids have no food security - like, wouldn’t child poverty be an obvious way for an erstwhile children’s author to spend their profits?
I sat down with a Baptist pastor and some transgender women. Yup.
Skyler reminds me that,
“We live ordinary lives, we also want to talk about normal stuff” and her advice to us all is to, “Just say hi, talk to us. Get to know us, get a bit of empathy …”
Sapphire adds,
“We don’t choose to defy social norms, it’s been pushed on us”.
I remember being an adolescent queer and spending time (too much sodding time - stupid, unnecessary, ridiculous time!) wondering to myself over and over - What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Is it hormones? My relationship with my dad? My relationship with my mum? (Of course, back then, there were any number of experts keen to tell me that it was, oh most definitely, scientifically and irrefutably, any of those things). I hated feeling like I was weird, was terrified about how my desires and sense of self transgressed the day’s social norms. I’d been a good child, conformist forever - but adolescence forced me to become an unwilling rebel. In secret. I wasn’t willing to take the shame and stigma back then. And Mum & Dad never guessed how ‘Best Friend’ Tracey and I spent our weekends. Many of today’s trans folk are - similarly - rebels by reluctance, not choice.
Skyler and Sapphire talk with me about how the violence of some men affects all women; we wonder why it’s hard for people to know and accept that trans women are, statistically, most often the victims of violence - not the perpetrators.
“We fear our safety, like all women, at night. But there’s no let up even in the daytime, for us”.
We also agree that trans people are being used as a useful distraction from who’s really harming us - being used as bogeyman and scapegoat and as a ‘wedge issue’ to break the possibility of community solidarities. (Now that The Gays aren’t scapegoats, new ones are needed).
Facts and statistics don’t matter to many. And that has violent impact.
The women tell me that the Uk’s new bill is terrifying: transgender people are wondering if this country is safe, and Skyler has,
“Literally had to talk friends down off the ledge”.
She also points out that, sometime soon, there will be women challenging each other in bathrooms and changing rooms. We can all predict that we’ll be seeing fallouts that will span from embarrassment to bodily violence. (As has already, of course, happened in the US).
Skyler knows where this takes us -
“It will become an excuse - ‘I thought she was trans’. ”
In 2021, a young mother was beaten unconscious in Chapel Road, Worthing, by people who thought (wrongly) that she was trans. Remember gay panic as a murder mitigation plea? We’re back in that absurd space.
Ask a biologist about human biological sex to hear that it is most definitely not a binary.
Ask a biologist about human biological sex to hear that it is most definitely not a binary. It’s also not defined by chromosomes. Prof. Anne Fausto-Sterling was explaining, already back in 1993, that biology could discern at least 5 human sexes. By 2025, research biology would no longer even speak of distinct ‘sexes’ - but about more dynamic and complex fluid systems. Chromosomes, genitals, gametes - they’re all small parts of very complex and dynamic (changing) systems. Yes, even you, Madam. And you, Sir.
We are blessed on Substack that Prof Fausto-Sterling is writing here. Some of us might have stuff to catch up on, because the state of public knowledge around biological sex is about 98% fevered imagination and about 2% evidence-based. And the science is moving on fast. If the scientific facts are all you care about, take a read of the - 2025 - facts.
But what about if your concerns encompass a wider set of issues than science alone?
What does a devout and commited Christian make of all this?
Rev Mike Parker, Worthing Baptist Church,
“Didn’t grow up Christian. When I became one, 30 years ago, I assumed the church had some tough stuff to say. That the God of love I was starting to understand wasn’t affirming of gay people … based on my assumption of what the Bible said … and what some people told me it said”.
But Mike has,
“Been drip-feeding inclusion and grace for 16 years - to myself, to the church. It’s going deeper and deeper into my heart”. This eventually meant that,
“Some of the discussions in Christian press about gay marriage began to grate. I wondered if the Bible was actually clear about all this? The subject wasn’t even mentioned on my degree course in Bible college!”
Yup. It’s a stirred-up issue. A textbook piece of Moral Panic.
Mike also felt pain and witnessed lack of love when,
“People in my life, in the church, couldn’t express their true self”.
He also recognises that,
“I was brought up in the culture of - ‘laugh at’ - now I see the cruelty in all that”.
So, 9 years ago, Mike used his 3 month sabbatical carefully:
“I spent it praying, reading, talking to all sorts of people, reading the Bible very deeply, meeting affirming ministers, meeting LGBTQI+ Christians. I realised - What the Bible actually says is not what I’ve been told it says ”.
At the same time, Mike was noticing,
“A theme of grace - among those who were LGBTQI Christians and those who affirmed them; grace within them and grace coming from them. They carried a flavour of the God I knew: grace, love, a desire for justice, and humility - not, ‘I know best’ or ‘I’m right’ ”.
He also encountered and reflected deeply upon,
“The stories of brokeness and hurt coming at trans people from families and - sadly - many churches. The response of a parent or a minister is crucial”.
Mike shared, first with Deacons and leadership, and then with the whole church, the passages and the theology he’d studied that allowed his head to catch up with his heart. This tension - between God’s love, and how people misunderstand certain verses and take them out of context - also turned up among church members, when Mike opened up a conversation in Worthing Baptist Church. He did an exploratory survey of church members,
“Asking what the Bible says about these issues, and where in the Bible they thought that it said it”.
He was astonished to find that even many lifelong Christians and people who’d been in church for many years had,
“Surprisingly little Biblical knowledge”. And so,
“We [leadership, who were united with Mike] told the church members that we’d not impose, but we’d share with them what we had learned. We were gentle. We told everyone -
‘We’re not asking or insisting that you change’ ”.
Still, he was,
“Shocked by how many people left without even saying goodbye. We weren’t pushy, we just said that we were opening up a conversation. It was hurtful, but we found peace. We knew that what was on our heart was to build a safe space for people who might not have one”.
Some church members,
“Were way ahead, without verses or anything, but just from love, genuine love - they were already there. Many left, many stayed with it, did the work, and new people came in”. But,
“This is not a gay church, or a queer church - it’s a normal usual, church”.
Mike slows his voice - he has an important point to make -
“The diversity was already there: different ethnicities, neurodiversity, disabled people, a wide age range - all of it. But now we recognise it all, we affirm it. We put flags out, we have a clear statement on our noticeboard and our website, to let people know that we are here if they want an inclusive and affirming church”.
We are here if they want an inclusive and affirming church
Mike has something else he wants me to hear -
“This isn’t just theoretical and intellectual, theological. I’ve seen whole-heartedly that the more you love, respect and accept, then people’s mental health issues resolve. I’ve seen the harm to mental health, the effects of having to repress”.
Skyler and Sapphire ask us to open our hearts, listen, see the human. Mike says,
“My heart’s always been open, but understanding came later … trans, gay and queer people were here all along, in the world, in our churches. They’re part of the rich diversity and creativity of God’s creation”. He smiles -
“It’s such a non-issue - that you love, honour, respect someone for who they are. I’ve been on a steep learning curve - but I respect people who are confused or don’t understand yet - it takes time”.
Where has all this recent hate and moral panic come from? As Rev Mike notes - queer, gay, trans issues, were not even issues, or topics thought central to any teaching or discussion around Christianity, just a few years back.
Ian Lekus, in a Harvard-Kennedy law school panel assessment of the UK act, comments,
“The U.K. Supreme Court has now added junk jurisprudence to the junk science of last year's Cass Review”. He is among those who point out that, globally, the rise of anti-trans hate is connected to movements standing ‘against ‘gender-ideology’. (Apparently, ideas like ‘women are born to be mothers’ or ‘men are naturally protective’ don’t count as ‘gender ideology’. Weird, eh?)
As Lekus states,
“Like the gender-critical feminists, the anti-gender movement - a movement backed by mega-rich Russian oligarchs, American evangelicals, and extreme-right Spanish and Latin American Catholic billionaires - purports to be acting in defense of women and the family”.
Be careful who your friends are; if they can hate a tiny and marginal group so fiercely, who else do they hate? And when will they turn on you?
Many of us know Pastor Niemöller’s poem (‘First, they came for the Communists …’). Let’s hope that by November, when we in Uk remember wars fought in the name of freedom, that we might have remembered and understood his words in our hearts.
Rev Mike has been on a journey of love, grace, humility and learning; he’s followed his heart full of love towards a more mature understanding of the biological facts around how sex and gender work and how they are lived and experienced; this is mature faith, built on universal love.
As TransActual’s pamphlet Dream versus Reality* notes, in a quote from Prof Mickey Diamond,
Nature loves diversity. Society hates it
“Nature loves diversity. Society hates it”.
(As a social anthropologist, I have to jump up here and qualify that this is not global ahistorical society - there’s no such thing, of course. A moral panic like this, folk devils like these, arise in a very specific historical-cultural moment in a capitalist society, where media prompts both the content and the inflection of people’s opinions).
Strange times, when a Baptist church is the place offering solidarity, knowledge and compassion, to transgender people - while women who call themselves feminists actively build cultures of hate against other women.
As Skyler and Sapphire told me,
“We’re not a threat, we’re not a danger, we’re just human”.
*Illustrations for the pamphlet done by Fox Fisher & Lewis Hancox and if you’ve not seen any work from this pair, you are in for a lorra lorra laffs. (That was an in-joke for Brits - Lewis hails from St Helen’s). Lewis’ graphic novel Welcome to St Hell will introduce you to the vicious world of UK schools and to growing up trans. Ouch. But Lewis turns pain to humour and defiant joy.
Caroline Osella writes @ Rewilded Anthropologist -
Love this survey of the state of things, Caroline, and the diversity of the voices you've raised up - literally, only asking for love, compassion and understanding (vs. hate, repression and misinformation.)
Caro, brilliant writing! This is a vital conversation that needs more attention right now.
Side note, I come from 4 generations of Christian ministers on both sides of my family, and I'm a pastor's kid, and the rejection from churches and organized religion is brutally effective.