Jenny Boylan remembers the exact moment when she became conscious of her gender. She writes, “One day when I was about three, I was sitting on the floor watching my mother iron my father’s white shirts. ‘Someday you’ll wear shirts like this,’ said my Mom. I didn’t understand. She never wore shirts like that. Why would I ever be wearing shirts like my father’s? Since then, the awareness that I was in the wrong body, living the wrong life, was never out of my conscious mind.”

Jenny, born James, didn’t have words back then for her situation. She didn’t know the word transsexual and the word transgender hadn’t been invented. But, nonetheless she knew that even though she had a boy’s body, she was a girl. After she grew up and became female, people would often ask her, “how did you know? How could you believe, with such heartbroken conviction, something that on the surface of it, seems so stupid?” She says this question always baffled her because she couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to know what your gender was. It seemed obvious to her that gender is something you know intuitively, in your heart, not because of your anatomical equipment. She would say to her female friends, “Remember when you woke up this morning and you knew you were female—that’s how I felt.”

For most of us our gender is not something we have to think about. It’s something we know, without question, like knowing we’re human. And for most of us our gender identity matches our external appearance, and so we assume that must be the case for everyone. That’s why Jenny’s friends could ask what seems like a cruel question—it seemed incredible to them that you could wake up every morning and your internal sense of self would not match what you see in the mirror. But transsexuals like Jenny are not so fortunate. For them, the mind and body are in opposition. Despite all physical evidence to the contrary they do not perceive themselves as a member of their anatomical sex. But just like non-transgender people, their consciousness of their true gender is a deeply felt inner awareness and conviction.

Jennifer Boylan recounts her story in her best selling memoir, She’s Not There. Hers is a story about reconciling her inner identity with her outer persona, about becoming who she really was. Jennifer was born James and though James knew inside himself that he was a woman, he spent the first thirty five years of his life living as a man. James became a successful writer and a college professor. He was married to a wonderful woman. They had two children together. He played in a rock and roll band. To everyone who knew him he was unquestionably male.

As a young man James had sought therapy, trying, as Jennifer writes, “to learn how to accept who I wasn’t.” Instead, the therapist told James, “you are a transsexual; you need to embrace that.” James didn’t want to hear that; what James wanted was help in figuring out how to be happy accepting a life being someone other than yourself. When he fell in love, for awhile he thought that his love for his wife and her love for him had transformed him, healed him of his plight. But finally, even though he would have preferred to soldier on in silence as a man, sparing his loved ones and himself much sadness and pain, James realized he had no choice. And so he began a long, slow but steady, journey that went from psychotherapy to female hormones, to painful electrolysis, before culminating in reassignment surgery at the age of 42.

She’s Not There is, at its most elemental, a story about authenticity and the courage to be oneself. But, as Anna Quindlen commented, “it is also a story about how incredibly good people can be.” Boylan wasn’t shunned by her colleagues. She didn’t lose her job or have her family desert her. Although it was not without its pain for them, and notwithstanding their confusion, almost all the people who knew Jennifer supported her transition. Even Jennifer’s wife responded with love, though she had to actively grieve the husband she was losing. Boylan’s sons perhaps had the easiest time of it, shifting pronouns without missing a beat, calling her Maddy, a cross between Mommy and Daddy. Jennifer’s mother introduced her new daughter at a high-tea for her women friends. Many of them had known James as a child, but they adapted, going quickly from being very nervous and uncomfortable to wanting to sell Jennifer Mary Kay products. Jennifer’s colleagues, students and friends rolled with the change. Jennifer’s faculty id simply morphed from James to Jennifer with a new semester. She still plays in her rock and roll band—her fellow musicians telling her, “As far as (we’re) concerned, you’re you, no matter what.” The way that people valued and accepted Jennifer on the basis of who she was and not on the basis of their own discomfort or confusion represents the very best of human nature.

As Unitarian Universalists, we strive to embody that very best of human nature. And that includes being accepting of transgender people in our congregations and working for their full acceptance in society. Transgender people have been supported by the UUA since 1996 when “transgender” was added to the name of the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Concerns. Those UU congregations which are official Welcoming Congregations, such as this one, have formally affirmed their acceptance of transgender people, along with gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

It has been awhile since this congregation went through the Welcoming Congregation program and many new people have joined us in the interim, so some explanation might be in order. First, what does “transgender” mean? Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe the full range of individuals who have a conflict with or a question about their gender. Some are transsexuals, like Jennifer Boylan—people who are born into a body of one gender but know they are the opposite; some of whom, but not all, choose to undergo medical treatment and surgery to align their external appearance with their gender identity. Others, who may call themselves genderqueers, choose not to identify as any one gender and may reject gender roles and stereotypes as social constructs. Others are cross-dressers, people who feel a need to dress in the clothing of the other gender. Still others are intersexuals, those who are born with a combination of male and female physiology, people who used to be called hermaphrodites. Transgender, thus, describes people who transcend the traditional understanding of male and female.

A common misconception about transgender identity is that it is one and the same as homosexuality. It is true that, like homosexuality, gender identity, does not seem to be a matter of choice but rather an inherent characteristic. Both are probably biologically determined, very early in development if not in utero. But these are really two very different things. Being gay or lesbian, or bisexual—or heterosexual for that matter—is about sexual orientation—the sex of the individuals to whom we are erotically and emotionally attached. Being transgender, on the other hand, is about self-identity. There are transgender individuals of all sexual orientations.

Admittedly however, the concerns of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are often linked together as they are in the UUA Office of that name and as they are in the UU Welcoming Congregation program. What connects homosexual and transgender concerns is the desire to be accepted and to be free to live true to oneself, openly and authentically. The sad underside of that connection is the fear and hatred that both homosexuals and transgender people can arouse; the discrimination and abuse both have been subjected to. A telling moment in Boylan’s book comes when her doctor tells her “gay men and lesbians don’t really have much in common with transsexuals.” “Yeah,” Boylan replies, “except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people.”

As Boylan well knows, not every transgender person’s story ends up as well as hers. Transgenderism is widely misunderstood and feared, even though from 2 to 5 % of the population are transgender. That may sound like a small number, but just in Harris County, that means there are from 79,000 to 196,000 people who are transgender. Transgender people may suffer a tremendous amount of inner travail, much of it because of society’s attitudes, and they suffer enormous, needless, stigma, prejudice and discrimination. Transgender people in most cities and states can be denied housing or employment, lose custody of their children, or have difficulty achieving legal recognition of their marriages, solely because they are transgender. Transgender people are often the targets of harassment and violence. Transgender children and teens face bullying and ostracism by schoolmates; many transgender adults live in fear of being discovered. Transgender people are disproportionately the victims of hate crimes.

One of the reasons why I chose to speak about transgender issues on this particular Sunday is because November 20 is the tenth annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to memorialize those who have been killed due to transgender hatred or prejudice. The event honors Rita Hester, whose murder in November 1998 in San Francisco led to the first observance in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder, like most anti-transgender murder cases, has yet to be solved.

Those murdered in the past twelve months and who will be remembered this year include:

Patrick Murphy, 39 years old, who was found dressed in women’s clothes, shot several times in the head, in Albuquerque, New Mexico;

Lloyd Nixon, 45 years old, repeatedly beaten in the head with a brick in West Palm Beach, Florida;

Brian McGlothin, 25 years old, of Cincinnati, Ohio, who liked to dress in women’s clothes, shot to death with an automatic rifle;

Ashley Sweeney, a young transgender woman, shot in the head in Detroit, Michigan;

Adolphus Simmons, 18 years old, shot to death in Charleston, SC;

Sanesha Stewart stabbed to death in the Bronx—Sanesha was 25 years old;

Simmie Williams Jr., shot to death in Fort Lauderdale, Florida—Simmie was found wearing women’s clothing—Simmie was 17 years old;

Rodney Whitaker, 20 years old, shot in Memphis, Tennessee;

Angie Zapata, found dead in her home in Greeley, Colorado with two severe fractures in her skull—Angie was 18 years old;

Jaylynn Namauu, 35, stabbed to death in Honolulu, Hawaii;

Ruby Molina, 22 years old, drowned and whose body was found floating in the American River in Sacramento, California;

Lawrence King, a 15 year old transgender teenager who liked to wear women’s clothes, shot to death by a classmate in his high school English class in Oxnard, California;

and, Duanna Johnson, a 42 year old transgender woman who had been the victim of a police brutality case earlier this summer, was found dead in the street in Memphis, Tennessee, just this past week.

This list includes only those deaths in the United States—and, of course, it includes only those known to have been killed because of transgender bias. Few of these cases, except for Lawrence King’s, received any significant media coverage; many remain uninvestigated. Were it not for the Day of Remembrance, many of these people might otherwise be forgotten. And yet, as the list graphically brings home, many must have suffered horribly; many were teenagers or young adults; all were someone’s son or daughter;.

We have such a long way to go as a society in understanding the full range of normal when it comes to gender identity and to creating an environment where everyone could be free to express, without fear of censure or violence, who they truly are. We have made some strides. In recent years transgender issues have received much more attention in the media. For example, Felicity Huffman won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a female transsexual in the 2005 film Transamerica and the venerable TV soap opera All My Children introduced a transgender character in 2006. Barbara Walters did a 20/20 special on transgender issues last year; NPR did a two part series on familes raising transgender children earlier this year. Last year Oprah Winfree chose Middlesex, a novel about an intersex individual, for her hugely popular book club. Closer to home, over the last few years, the Houston Chronicle has had several sympathetic stories about people seeking gender reassignment surgery. And there have been strides in acceptance. California has an openly transgender Administrative Law judge. An openly transgender person served on the platform committee at the Democratic National Convention. And, last Tuesday, the tiny town of Silverton, Ore., elected the country's first openly transgender mayor. There have been several attempts at both the state and national level to include transgender people in anti-discrimination and hate crime legislation. And while many of those attempts have faltered, such initiatives would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

We are making strides as a society in acceptance of transgender individuals and I am proud of the role that Unitarian Universalists have played in that, through our own education and advocacy efforts, and by joining in coalitions with other groups. I am also proud of the fact that Unitarian Universalism has been leading the way toward the full inclusion of transgender people in religious congregations and in the ministry. And I am hopeful that we here at Emerson can take one more step in that direction by moving from tacit acceptance of transgender people by our designation as a Welcoming Congregation to actively proclaiming our welcome. As you leave the sanctuary today, members of the Social Action Council will be distributing rainbow stickers to put on your Emerson nametags to symbolize our welcome of all people—whatever their sexual orientation and whatever their gender expression.

Now, I want to acknowledge that thinking about this can make us uncomfortable. I think that’s natural. As I said in the beginning, gender is something that most of us don’t have to spend much time thinking about. It is so inherent in our identity that even though it’s usually the first thing that registers when we meet first someone, it hardly registers that it registers. Most of us just take gender so for granted. And so when we do have to think about gender, it can make us uncomfortable in ways we may be reluctant to acknowledge. Some of our discomfort comes from not wanting to embarrass ourselves or others. We may wonder, for example, how will I know what pronoun to use to refer to a transgender person or how will I know which restroom to direct a transgender person to, or other similar questions. The easy answer is - it’s okay to ask and to take the lead from the transgender individual. But some of our discomfort comes from a deeper level, I think. Because transgender people make all of us confront our stereotypical assumptions about gender—of how gender determines expectations, roles and behaviors and about how gender is such a fundamental part of our self identity.

I think it’s okay to be uncomfortable, awkward even. But as Unitarian Universalists we know that discomfort is not fatal and that discomfort can even help us grow spiritually if we are willing to do the work to move beyond our comfort zone.

Why do we need to do this work? Because no one should suffer because of their desire to be authentic; because no one should face torment and abuse because of who they are; and because there are so few places, particularly religious places, where true acceptance is a possibility. Because we have had transgender children in our RE program who needed a refuge where they didn’t suffer the assaults they had to bear during the school week and because we will have such children again. Because we have transgender adults here now who wonder if this is a safe place to be who they are, openly, honestly. Because all human beings deserve acceptance and respect; and, finally, maybe even most importantly, because those who are transgender have something to teach us all about the costs of freedom and about the courage to be oneself.

Would you join with me in a responsive prayer for community:

Creative Spirit of life within all, we who are here gathered
     celebrate the beauty and individual worth of every person.
We give thanks this day for the gift of life itself
     and for our uniqueness; for our freedom to change and grow.
We would strive to create here a community
     of welcome, justice and peace.
We know we sometimes fall short
     of our expectations of ourselves; of our acceptance of others.
Help us not to be afraid of difference but to extend our welcome
     to all those who would find the courage to live their truth with openness and grace.
Help us to know that there are things more important than comfort and ease
     so that we might take our part in healing our too often violent and hate-filled world.
Help us to communicate to one another a spirit of wholeness and compassion
     to laugh with one another in our joy; to cry with one another in our pain.
Help us to know the one thing we each might do to create a community, a world,
     where every person can live with dignity and pride in harmony with others.
Let this be our prayer, our song, our life together.
     So might it be. Amen