#hope it doesn’t draw any queerphobic christians to my blog 😬

[selkie-tea-tin]

In this dark age of the US passing a horrendous amount of anti-trans bills, I’m reminded of a particular sermon that I heard a pastor give one Christmas Eve. He was a guest pastor, not our usual one. Our usual one was sick. Nevertheless he gave a great sermon. I would absolutely go to his sermons in the future if I knew what church he led regularly. Alas, this was a few years ago now, and I have no way of finding him or going back to ask. Still, I want to share some of what he said. Before anyone jumps to conclusions about the point of this post, I would like to clarify that I grew up going to an LGBTQ+ friendly church. Most of if not all of the queer adults I knew growing up, I knew from church, and I will forever be grateful for having grown up in a community with queer adults to look up to.

Back to the Christmas Eve sermon.

The guest pastor brought up the slaughter of the innocents. For those of you who don’t know, the slaughter of the innocents was when the King of Judea at the time, Herod, ordered the execution of all children two and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. He had heard of this so-called ‘Son of God’ who was apparently born. He saw this as a threat to his power, and wanted no rivals or upstarts. This ‘son of god’ this light, was a threat to him and the power he held over the populous.

‘Many people don’t like talking about this part of the bible,’ our pastor said. ‘It’s brutal, and ugly, but I think it’s important not to forget.’

He went on to talk about how this is how those in power, the corrupt ones, react to those who threaten the status quo.

Those who’s power corrupts them hoard it like dragons on piles of gold. They don’t need the gold, but they mustn’t let anyone else have it, lest the illusion of their authority be stolen from them as well. The dragon fears the one who sees his wealth is pointless. The dragon fears those who see through the illusions he has cast upon the cowering villagers in the valley below. King Herod feared the coming of Christ, as he might uproot and destroy his carefully planted crops of power. Who could tell what a seed of doubt could do. How it could spread, take out the system one careful root at a time.

Those who uphold the patriarchy fear trans people because we have power. We have the power to see through the system that the patriarchy has built and liberate people from it. That’s why they want to eradicate us, legislate us from existence. It’s why they don’t want trans youth to grow into trans adults. It’s a slaughter of the innocents, an eradication of those with the power to shine a light on the oppressive status quo.

They’re scared of us, as they should be.

Because we won’t let them write us out of existence. We will keep fighting, and we will keep liberating ourselves and others and exposing the powers that be for what they are. We will take them down, one oppressive and frivolous rule at a time, and we will win, no matter what it takes.