Teenage Transgender Suicide

"How do we respond when a teenager kills herself because her family refused to accept the gender she identified as?  The tragic story of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender girl who committed suicide after years of anguish over her family's refusal to acknowledge her, can hopefully shed some light on this question"

-- Posted on 1/5/2015 by the ULC Monastery 

How the Faithful Can Help End Transgender Suicide

These stories break my heart, and those that read my posts probably know why; my young friends that endured their own struggles at a time in our history when society lacked understanding, the gay community was just beginning to "come out" of the shadows, and AIDS was the up and coming news of the era. Even in high school I was having a problem wrapping my young mind around the notion that this was an aberration they brought upon themselves at their young age, something they needed to be cured of through years of analysis and therapy, as though this would do anything but chase the true self back into the shadows. These kids were in grade school and junior high. If they retreated into the shadows back then, they would only have to deal with it later on, as adults, after years of secrecy and personal masochism of shame, blame, and torture. The alternative for many of these kids was to stay in the light and endure the intolerance, cruelty, and non-acceptance from everyone else. For many, all of endurance would be tested at home, from the very people who should have been there for support and understanding - the parents. But, this is just my opinion.

One of these friends had parents that were very Christian, loved him, and tried their best to understand. Understand isn't the right word. They loved him dearly, but didn't accept that he couldn't be "cured," they were Christians, after all. He was ten at the time, if I remember correctly. He died of AIDS; I think he was in his late twenties or early thirties, at home with his family caring for him.

"But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy."

-- Ellen Wittlinger, "Parrotfish"

I have included a link to the monastery site where the article is located; I invite you to read it.  I will not belabor this subject with my own commentary concerning someone I did not have the pleasure of meeting, except to say I agree and disagree with two points in the article.  I disagree with this paragraph:

Despite our sympathy for Leelah, we must resist the urge to posthumously turn her into a spokesperson for transgender issues.  She is, after all, ultimately responsible for her own death, though not solely responsible.  The failures of the authority figures in Leelah's life do not excuse the wrongness of her suicide.

Her feeling of being a girl trapped in a boy's body dated back to when she was four.  Whether we would like to admit it or not she is a spokesperson for youth transgender issues and to not discuss her as such would be to sweep this whole "unsavory" subject for Christians under the biblical rug and continue to watch children endure this heartache, or kill themselves to escape it.

If people of faith truly care about the well-being of transgender youth, they will stop cherry-picking Biblical passages which reinforce their bias against gender nonconformity, and instead explore passages which will teach them unconditional love.  For such passages do indeed exist.  "Anyone who does not provide for relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever", says 1 Timothy 5:8, while 1 Samuel 16:7 states that "The Lord does not look at the things people look at.  People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart".

This is a paragraph I can wrap my heart around.  We, as Christians, constantly fail our faith by "cherry picking Biblical passages which reinforce bias."  Many times we do this by misinterpreting the passage to suit our personal agenda.  We have seen how well this turns out when we look at radical Islam.  For every passage that can be interpreted negatively, there are others to contradict them.  The questions for each of us should be, who do we want our God to be?  What message do we really want to hear?

Mine is unconditional love and understanding, tolerance and sweet reasonableness.  I fear not the Lord my God. 

I was going to reprint the suicide note Leelah left.  It is telling, in so many ways, of who she was and what she went through to get to this point in her young life.  After reading it several times, I have opted to post the Snopes.com link to it instead:  http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/leelah.asp.  At the end of the note is a short blurb from the local paper concerning her death.  The police are investigating, but I think it is pretty straightforward what happened.

Note from Pastor Tony, the founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance, as well as the author and editor of "The Path," the Congregation's official blogsite:  

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion.  It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other.  An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so.

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion and debate in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth.  After over twenty years as a military intelligence analyst, planner, and briefer, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human.  God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.
  

Frank Anthony Villari, Pastor