Then
he went on to predict the destruction of the whole Temple system that
wounded and oppressed weak and vulnerable people like the poor widow. Read
through the Gospel of Luke and notice the role of women. Luke 1
and 2 tell of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as Elizabeth and Anna,
who emerge as more open than the men to knowing and doing the will of
God. Women disciples of Jesus are listed in Luke 8:1-3 and
mentioned in 23:49, 55-56; 24:10-11, 22-24 and in Acts 1:14. MARY THE DISCIPLE The
most revealing passage on women as disciples is Luke 10:38-42 where
Jesus visited the home of Mary and Martha. "Mary was LISTENING to
the WORD of Jesus, SEATED at Jesus' FEET." These few words
announced the dramatic revolution of the role of women in the life and
ministry of Jesus. Each word is powerful. "LISTEN" is the
first word in the Hebrew Shema
(which is Hebrew for "hear") in Deuteronomy 6:4: "HEAR O Israel, your
God is One." This verse was included in phylacteries that were
worn by devout men. "Listen to Jesus" is the instruction of the
voice at the Transfiguration in Luke 9:35, which recalled Deuteronomy
18:15, 18, where a prophet like Moses will come and the people will
"listen to him." To
"sit at the feet of" Jesus made Mary a disciple. See Acts 22:3,
where Paul uses "sit at the feet" to tell of his being a disciple of
Gamaliel. The sight of Mary in the posture of a disciple was very
threatening to her sister Martha. Jesus' words to Martha were
intense: "Martha! Martha! You are anxious and
bothered about so many things! Mary has chosen the good thing,
which will not be taken away from her." But the church, including many
sister Martha's, has been trying ever since to deny Mary and all women
the freedom to be disciples of Jesus! Challenging
and correcting the misuse of the Bible against women helps all
minorities to overcome Bible abuse. A fresh look at the role of
women in the life of Jesus and in the mission of the church speaks
directly to acceptance and freedom for gays, lesbians and all people
alienated and oppressed by religion.
THE FIRST APOSTLE WAS A WOMAN Jesus
appeared first to a woman after the resurrection, and this woman, Mary,
was the first preacher of the good news of the victory of Jesus over
sin and death for all people. Read John 20:11-18. According
to Paul in I Corinthians 15, seeing the risen Christ was what made a
person an "apostle" from Greek apostello, meaning to send on a mission representing the
sender. So the first apostle and preacher of the resurrection was a woman. The
appearance of Jesus to Mary was no accident. Peter said to
Cornelius in the first preaching of the gospel to Gentiles in Acts
10:34-43 that God does not show partiality. Everyone is
welcome. Acts 10:40-41 states: "God raised Christ up on the third
day, and granted that he should become visible, not to all the people,
but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God." GOD selected
a woman to be the first witness to the resurrection, the first preacher
and the first "living stone" in the Church. (I Peter 2:1-10). ***********************************************
"DON'T LOOK BACK"
This Update was added June 3, 2004 OUR PRESIDENT PREACHER During
his campaign for re-election, Present George W. Bush has concentrated
on two GLBT issues. He calls for a Constitutional amendment to
forbid same-sex marriages. He also promises in his campaign to
find a way to give federal money to "faith based social
services." "Faith based" can be translated "Bigot based."
This plan would allow anti-gay religions like Southern Baptists to fund
their "Ex-Gay" campaign with federal money. The
attempt by the President to curtail some of a woman's right to an
abortion through a recent law that he manipulated Congress to approve
has just been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in
California. The US Supreme Court will decide. THE PODIUM OF THE PRESIDENCY The
President is running his campaign on a basic denial of the United
States Constitution. The Constitution requires a clear separation
of state and church. Bush ignores it. The Constitution
guarantees the right to equal treatment under the law for all
people. The President wants to deny this by excluding GLBT
couples from the legal recognition and financial benefits of marriage. The
President is looking backwards at old prejudices, misinformed abusive
religions attacks against GLBT people and is ignoring the revolutionary
changes in public opinion about many morals and human behaviors. The
ignorant, outworn, festering anti-gay prejudice against Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgendered people that is developed and preached in
countless churches and other places of worship are being proclaimed as
if the hate and rejection of GLBT people was clearly taught in the
Bible. It is not! Homosexuality
and homosexuals are not an abomination to God. The abusive use of
the Bible against GLBT people, however, is a horror and an abomination
to God! (See all of my website material on "The Bible and
Homosexuality.") "THE FUTURE BELONGS TO ME" School
graduation exercises are underway during this time of year in thousands
of high schools and colleges. One of the clich�s that is often
repeated by commencement speakers is: "The future lies before
you!" Of course it does. Your
future cannot lie anywhere else but before you! Look to the
future, not the past. Religion glorifies and protects the past.
Religion tries to control people's thinking according to an extinct
world-view and on the basis of a confusing and incomplete history of a
special nation of people. Religious teachings and commandments
that are frozen in past time and in the form that they are available to
us are useless and destructive. Many
religions today are like a mosquito trapped in a block of translucent
amber: ornamental but entirely useless. An army of religious
"experts," however, labors long and hard to revive that ancient
mosquito to send it forth stinging, biting and destroying multitudes of
people. ACCURATE INFORMATION The
future for GLBT people to enjoy full acceptance and respect depends on
the accurate available information that is within everyone's reach on
the Internet. Just as destructive for us as the President's
proposals and laws is the convoluted uninformed misinformed
explanations that he gives for supporting blatant anti-gay federal
activities. One
of the most disturbing features of the President's current campaign is
the showing of a lengthy video on national television that gives the
details of his religious "born-again" conversion and rabid
fundamentalist point of view that he has developed over the
years. If the President of the United States is so dangerously
misinformed about homosexuality and the human rights of GLBT people;
how about the rest of the population? THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE The
truth about sexual orientation and about the destructive forces of
abusive religion has been available for years on the Internet. On
September 14, 1997, my website on "STEPS TO RECOVERY FROM BIBLE ABUSE"
was published on the Internet at www.truluck.com. Later, in January 2000, Chi Rho Press published my book of research, detailed,
explanations and weekly lessons for small group study and dialogue. (See links below.) My
website now receives over 4 million hits a year and is linked to most
of the leading GLBT supportive websites on the Internet.
"Truluck.com" is used by GLBT people for information and encouragement
in dozens of countries and many diverse cultures. A
flood of well-researched and carefully documented publications and
websites has continued to carry the bright light of the truth about
sexual orientation and GLBT people around the world in many languages. Go
to Yahoo! Or to Google and type in the name "Truluck" or "Recovery from
Bible Abuse" or just "Bible Abuse" and you will be given thousands of
other websites that use or give links to my website. IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE The
world of sexual orientation has turned a corner in history and can
never be the same again. The truth is out there for anyone who
really wants to know the facts. The anti-gay forces spearheaded
by the "Ex-Gay" industry are also out there draining the truth from the
brains of millions of gullible followers of abusive misinformed
religions and manipulative misguided politics. No
matter what happens to me or to the many other teachers, activists,
writers, and publishers that have opened the doors of truth that nobody
can shut; the truth goes marching on and cannot be ignored or destroyed. THE BATTLE IS FAR FROM OVER We
have seen and enjoyed great progress in acceptance and support from a
growing base of fair-minded informed people. The war on religious
terrorism is still the greatest challenge facing the GLBT
community. Freedom from oppression always comes at great
cost. What has your freedom cost you? We
do not march alone. I have been amazed at the great variety and
number of GLBT supportive actions and leaders that are emerging and
joining with us in every language and every culture in the world!
I first began to write the material that is in my website and book on
recovery from Bible abuse and to teach a small group study at MCC
Atlanta in 1981. At that time, my friend Dan was active in the
church and remarked to me after we had shared in several years of these
studies that he would like to see more people know about these
materials than just the small group that studied and explored them the
first time.
Little did I suspect
where all of this would lead in the next 23 years! A great army
of informed GLBT people has arisen at every level of life throughout
the world. Our own "band of brothers and sisters" is in the
millions now. Once Thomas Edison discovered the truth about
electric lights, the world was never the same again. The light of
truth about sexual orientation is now and forever shall be available to
all people everywhere as long as the human race lasts. Rembert Truluck
PO Box 24062
Oakland, CA 94623 Thanks
again to all of you who have contributed to my website and book
ministry. Special thanks to my publisher Adam DeBaugh and Chi Rho
Press that have greatly encouraged and financially helped me during a
very difficult time. You can send financial help directly to me
at my address above. You
can still make a tax-exempt financial contribution to my ministry by
sending a check to Chi Rho Press ("for Dr. Truluck") at PO Box 7864,
Gaithersburg, MD 20898 or by credit card at this link: http://www.chirhopress.com/sponsor.html
And indicate that it is for Dr. Truluck. One
of the most helpful things you can do is to buy copies of my book and
start your own small group study and dialogue in your own home or in
some other convenient place. To order my book from Chi Rho Press, use this link:
http://www.chirhopress.com/products/product_details/steps_to_recover y_details.html This material was added as an update on April 3, 2002: "EXPLORING THE JESUS WORLD" MORE REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING OF EASTER 2002 The
Jesus world of 2,000 years ago does not exist anymore. Rapidly
receding into the misty past, the world of the historical Jesus is in
many ways beyond our grasp and comprehension. You cannot enter
into the first century world of Jesus any more than you can enter into
the world of cats or mice or protozoa. You simply do not fit into
any time capsule that really works. Historical
critical study of the Gospels has failed to cross the wasteland of 2000
years of misrepresentations, distortions, and manipulations and neglect
that shroud the historical Jesus in complete mystery. Novels,
movies and an endless flow of television specials have pictured
inaccurate imagines of Jesus so effectively that most of us have great
difficulty in letting go of fantasy long enough to enter into any
realistic relevant experience of Jesus for us today. The
Jesus you that meet in the media is not real. The "you" that you
meet in the media is not real either! The television advertising
industry has effectively convinced most of us that there is something
terribly wrong with us that can be fixed only with the right
medications, cosmetics, foods, entertainment, professional advice or
car! JOURNEY INTO A LOST WORLD You
have been so inundated by misinformation about Jesus that you probably
have given up any hope of meeting and enjoying the real Jesus, whom you
firmly believe must be "out there somewhere." Perhaps "out there
somewhere" is part of the problem. The Spirit of Jesus is not
"out there" but is within you already, or is nowhere at all.
Perhaps there is no "Spirit of Jesus" to know and experience, after
all. I choose to believe, however, that there is. You
do choose what you believe, don't you? Nobody can force you to
believe anything spiritual or true. The truth will set you free,
but the question of Pilate and for all of us is: "What is truth?"
Most important of all: "What is the truth about Jesus?" Is truth
to be found in memorizing the Bible "from cover to cover"? Which
a surprising number of people have done! Such devotion never goes
unpunished, often producing a level of arrogance and obnoxious
legalistic "know-it-all-ness" that kills the Spirit and drives wedges
between people that nobody can fix. LOOKING WITHIN All
of this leads to the question of how do we find and experience the real
Jesus. What does it take for us to look within and be open to our
own intuition and ingrained unlearned truth? What do you already
have in yourself to give you truth about Jesus, or about anything
else? As you now sit on the pinnacle of millions of years of
human evolution, what advantage do you have? How can you tap your
own inner "image of God" with which you were born? Do you have to
get rid of some spiritual and social baggage first? YES! But
how? What do you find when you look at what has always been there
all along, but you could not see before? My sister and I were on
her rooftop deck a few nights ago, and we looked up at the night sky to
see the magnificent "Big Dipper" and the North Star. My sister
commented that when she first looked up to see the star constellations
at her studio in Oakland, she thought of how remarkable it was that she
was seeing exactly what she had seen years ago in Atlanta when she
looked up at the starry night sky at a friend's farm out in the
country. Some things don't change, no matter where you are or
whom you happen to be with. You
already have a storehouse of reality and truth within that simply
awaits your conscious notice and observation. As you explore your
own inner world, you are exploring the Jesus world. You have a
highly developed memory. So did Jesus. JESUS WAS HUMAN TOO Jesus was not an illusion. Jesus was a human being, just like you. You
can start there. Whatever
else the Gospels say and imply, they show that Jesus was clearly human
and uncompromisingly claimed and celebrated his humanity. Jesus
refused to do miracles on demand, turn stones into bread, play
religious games, or deny his humanity by making his understanding of
God and the Spirit into magic or ritual. Even though he could
have done it, Jesus did not "come down from the cross" to convince the
skeptics that he was real. What
have you been demanding that Jesus should do in order to convince you
that Jesus is real and that Jesus is already with you and within you? THE EVIDENCE WITHIN Easter
Sunday was celebrated all around the world. Yet there is no
objective historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The
initial reaction to the empty tomb was that the disciples had stolen
the body while the guard soldiers slept. Later, the personal
experiences of many people with the real Jesus gave a basis for belief
in the resurrection, though those personal experiences were often
questioned and refuted even within the Gospels. Your
personal experience with the risen spiritual Jesus may seem like a very
slippery slope into truth, but it is the only viable path that you
have; so take it. CRUCIFIED IN ORDER TO LIVE Have
you ever felt like you were being crucified by well-meaning people who
did not realize what they were doing to you? I have. Yet,
such humiliating frustrating attacks upon you are teaching you what you
need to know in order to continue to live and grow in spirit and in
truth. You just don't realize what you have been learning until
much later. Reflect now on how God has used the worst things that
happened to you to teach you and prepare you for what you are doing now. Perhaps
you have yet to see the value of the humiliating frustrations that you
are experiencing and that are parallel to what Jesus experienced also. As
you reflect upon the ways in which you own life is parallel to events
in the life of Jesus, what most stands out as significant to you?
What do the Gospel experiences of Jesus tell you about yourself?
At what points do you most identify with Jesus? Spell it
out. Write it out. Share it with your study/recovery
group. Send e-mail and tell me about it. WHAT I AM LEARNING One
result of my exploration of my own inner world has taught me is that
nothing that ever happens to me is unrelated to Jesus and how Jesus is
portrayed in the Gospels. Every disaster, every test, every joy
and success in my life has parallels in the life of Jesus in the
Gospels. How Jesus related to people is one of the realities that
speaks most directly and forcefully to me. If
I were to give a general all-purpose answer to the question: "What
would Jesus do?" It would be: "Be yourself" and be grateful for
who and what you are. Once you can accept and be yourself, you
can accept and affirm other people. You have to love yourself
before you can "love your neighbor as yourself." The world of
Jesus is already with and within you. The Spirit fills you with
love and guides you along the path of self-acceptance, self-esteem, and
outreach in love and acceptance to others. It
only takes two people to form a group for dialogue, study and spiritual
recovery. Have you found or formed your group yet? Rembert Truluck
Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life�Follow me." Today,
I am meeting with Todd Holland and Ashley Moore, the director of the
transgendered gospel choir of the City of Refuge here in San
Francisco. Todd is making a video about the choir and they have
asked to interview me as part of the video. The choir is
"Transcendence Gospel Choir" and you can click here to view their web
site at: TRANSCENDENCE GOSPEL CHOIR.
Plans are being made by the Broadway Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri,
to make the most of my visit there April 19-21 to preach, lead
workshops, do interviews and a book signing. I am grateful for
Gerry Young and all of his great work in advertising and preparation
and for the help of my friend Ken Gies in his efforts to get the word
out about my book and about this visit. If you are in the Kansas
City Area, please contact the church, look for article about my visit
in the local gay paper, and come to the activities. The following material was added on February 3, 2001.
This "Update" deals with the continuing problem of discrimination faced by minorities and others today. "WHITE PRIVILEGE" HOW DO YOU HANDLE PRIVILEGE?
I
learned about "white privilege" from my African American Lesbian
friends Carolyn and Adraine when I was in Houston last month. I
am ashamed to say that I never realized how unfair and how prevalent
"white privilege" is in our culture. Simply put, "white
privilege" is the preferential treatment that white people receive in
our society simply because of their race. It also means the
systematic neglect of people of color. This injustice is just as
pervasive in LGBT society as elsewhere. I
have begun to realize that as a European American, I unconsciously
accept the benefits of "white privilege" without even realizing what I
have been doing. "Male privilege" is just as unfair and
disturbing. Whenever I allow myself to be noticed or served first
for no other reason than my race or sex or I am given more attention
for my opinion than a person of color or a woman, I have given in to an
unjust and demeaning social custom. A
brief simple incident made me acutely aware of this issue when I
suddenly realized that my African American female friend, who is a
professional in her field, was being ignored in a discussion that
concerned her professional opinion. A TRIP TO THE IMMIGRATION OFFICE Another
friend in Houston, David, is a blond white male from England. He
told of being at the immigration office in Houston to take care of a
business matter. He saw a very large crowd of people in the
waiting room. Most of the people were people of colors. He
finally noticed the dispenser that gave numbers for people to take to
wait their turn. When he went to the window to get a number, the
official there asked if he had business with immigration. David
said yes. The official said to come on in and he would take care
of it. David asked if he should not wait his turn. The
official replied, "You don't want to wait all day like these people, do
you!" David later had misgivings and felt uneasy about letting
the official see him ahead of the others. The assumption of
"white privilege" is so strong in our culture that few white people
give it much thought. Every
minority person has had to learn to wait when others received attention
and moved ahead. "White male privilege" is a persistent dimension
in society even in brief social encounters. Minorities often
learn to be quiet and let others talk even when important information
is being ignored. Everybody loses in the "privilege" game!
The reality is that "white males" are a rapidly shrinking small
minority of the population of the world. SILENCE IS DEADLY We
as LGBT people can remain silent and in the closet and avoid the
neglect and oppression that our culture dumps on homosexuals.
Does that work for you? How do you feel about accepting and
enjoying the privileges of your status as white, male, clergy, senior
citizen, beautiful, educated, etc., when others of equal value to God
go without the benefits of your privilege? Most of us never stop
to think about what is happening to others who are not "privileged". All
people are of equal value to God, but not all people are of equal value
to other people. When we enjoy our privileges and ignore the
distress of others, we are following our basic instincts and not
following our spiritual values. The gay activist slogan of a few
years ago, "SILENCE = DEATH," is still true. Every gay white male
in America has an obligation to fairness and respect for people who are
under-privileged and disenfranchised in our culture because of race,
sex, orientation, social status, poverty, religion, national origin or
age. Discrimination
is the first step in the direction of oppression and abuse of people
who are different. Respect and acceptance are powerful forces
that can overcome discrimination and abuse. NOTICING PEOPLE Learning
from people who are different from you begins with noticing and paying
attention to them. A few days ago I visited the Japanese Tea
Garden in Golden Gate Park to enjoy the tranquility and inspiration of
the beauty and truth that I find there. A dad was there with his
little girl, who was about 3 years old. She was running about
excitedly noticing everything. She was filled with wonder,
surprise and joy. She was happy and having a good time. I
asked her father if she had seen the goldfish, which are unusually
large and live in the ponds throughout the garden. He said, "Yes,
and she was excited about how big they were." Then he added,
"Seeing the garden with a little girl gives you a whole new
perspective." I learned something special from him and his
daughter. Jesus said a lot about learning from little children and from
others who are vastly different from you. Take
a good look at yourself. You don't have to be a white male to
enjoy privileges that others don't have. No matter what your race
or sex or orientation, you have great privileges if you are attractive
physically, educated, have a comfortable place to live, have friends,
have a good job that you enjoy, feel good about yourself and have
learned to accept yourself and others.
COMPASSION The
more that I study and work on "JESUS BIBLE STUDIES" the more I am
struck by the compassion of Jesus and his totally unqualified
acceptance of people just as they were. Acceptance is the word
that keeps jumping out to me as the clearest most consistent attitude
of Jesus towards people. Jesus never condemned anybody for the
trouble they had. He simply noticed people and showed them that
he cared about them. He reached out with the loving touch of
healing, which took many forms and always was adapted to fit the real
needs of the individual, not the need of the healer to be needed or to
receive praise. "Compassion"
in Greek means what we mean by "empathy" in English. It means
really to feel the hurt of others. When you see an
underprivileged person being neglected or offended by a person of
privilege, how do you feel? Do you feel the unjust hurt that
others feel? Do you try to suppress these feelings or do you
recognize the feelings and try to act to bring fairness and kindness in
the face of neglect and abuse? JESUS LET GO OF PRIVILEGE Jesus
never used his incredible privilege as the Son of God to hurt or offend
anybody. Jesus had greater privilege than anyone else who ever
lived, but he chose to live with and identify with the common
people. For powerful descriptions of this, read Philippians
2:1-15 and Hebrews 2:14-18. How
do you react when you see people who are physically unattractive or who
are crippled, poor, homeless, offensive, disabled, not your race, sex
or social class? Do you try to enter into their way of seeing
you? That might be very disturbing! Have you thought of why
you should accept privileges that are not available to everybody? Discrimination
against anybody is discrimination against everybody. Whenever you
see oppression and abuse, you are included also. We usually view
unfortunate people with the old saying, "There but for the grace of God
go I." The truth, however, is the opposite: "There by the grace
of God am I." Through
the Spirit of Jesus, we are connected with all other people that our
lives touch. We are truly "one in the Spirit". We cannot
remain true to our real self and ignore the abusive use of privilege
against anyone. Whatever else it means, following Jesus means
letting go of privilege and working to end all forms of
discrimination. "Accept one another just as Christ accepts you to
the glory of God." YOU WERE BORN THAT WAY How
do you feel about the way you were born? Adam and Eve got along
quite well in the Garden as long as they accepted and enjoyed the
natural state of how God had made them. Then along came the
snake. The snake ("Satan" �the adversary) convinced Eve and then
Adam that the way that God had made them was a mistake and they should
challenge it and eat the "forbidden fruit" that would make them become
"like God." Then they abandoned God's purpose for the way they
were made. They became ashamed of their "nakedness" and hid from
God. God found them and asked them why they hid. They said
they hid because they were naked. God asked them who told them
they were naked. They said: "The snake!" You know the rest
of the story. What
snake has tried to convince you that the way God made you was a
mistake? The way you were born is not a mistake or an
accident. You were born the way you are as to sex, race, national
origin, orientation, personality, etc., for good reason. You are
the only you ever born. You are not just like anybody else.
Accept and celebrate who you are and help others to accept themselves
and celebrate who they are. Resist the snake. God had a
good reason for making you just like you are. Respect and enjoy
being you! "There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female
(white or color, gay or straight), for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
--Galatians 3:28
"Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these;
you have done it to me."
--Jesus This update prompted many responses.
Here are two of them. A Powerful Letter from a Transsexual Friend
February 4, 2001
Dr.
Truluck, in my case the term "Male Privilege" is much more likely to be
heard. There is a major misperception among many women in society
that a male-to-female (MTF) transsexual benefited from male privilege
and can never be women because we had it so easy (I am writing from the
MTF perspective, but the same things apply to FTM as well). The
idea is based on radical feminist theories from before I was born that
men are trying to infiltrate the female culture to control them.
Since we "men" never were faced with the discrimination in life that
women were, we all have it so easy and do not deserve to be women. Never
mind that we have never felt like men, have been ridiculed and beaten
as "gay", and always longed to be female. Never mind that MTFTS
are the group with the highest rate of being suicide and homicide
victims. Never mind that we CAN be legally fired for having once
been another gender in most of this nation. Never mind that our
very rights to marry vary across this nation and that many people try
to prevent us from adopting because we scare them. Any
TS can marry legally anyone of either sex if they are willing to travel
across this nation. While in my home state of Louisiana I have to
marry a man post-op, I can drive to Houston and have to legally marry a
woman instead since they refuse to recognize us as our new
genders. Even better, two legally married people (if one is
trans) driving across the nation will be alternately married and not
married as they cross county lines. Because of attitudes like
these, we are excluded from the Michigan Womyn's festival because we
seem to still retain a male privilege that "taints" us, are murdered or
taunted as freaks by even the GLB community, are prey for tyranny
chasers, and excluded by anti-discrimination bills like ENDA because we
are politically incorrect. HRC
specifically excludes TS people regularly and even GenderPAC has turned
from its roots to exclude us. No wonder so many TS people go
"stealth" and just try to fit into society as "normal" GLB
people. For reasons like these, I am seriously considering doing
the same. I do not wish to go stealth and hide my head in the
sand, but people like me face several extra barriers that leave us more
vulnerable. Imagine
if a gay trans-phobic man discovered that his lover has a vagina.
Or recently when a man placed a TS gal in a headlock and killed her
because she insisted she is female and he claimed she is male.
Worse, when Bubba the redneck propositions a "lady" and won't take no
for an answer, only to discover the lady has a penis. It's time
for another small byline in the paper that gets glossed over as a crime
on gays. Look
how long it took for news that the murdered "gay" Army Private
Mitchell's "male" lover is a pre-op TS woman and that they had a
heterosexual relationship. It took 4 months for the news to break
that he wasn't traditionally gay, just queer because he loved a woman
who is saving up to remove her penis. I am so tempted to go
stealth to try and avoid some of this hatred. I do not think I
can sit on the sidelines like that, but I sure am tempted to. My
life is hard enough without having to fear people out to get me for
being a "man". I barely beat the US Navy to get the Honorable
discharge I earned for being trans. I should have been able to
serve, but the US is the last NATO member to ban gays and trans. I
sure could use a nice quiet life as a girl performing PC repairs with
no other fears. I am one year away from surgery, and I wonder if
I will live long enough to make it, or it I will be "clocked" or
"outed" and killed. Boy this life is full of ups and downs, but I
will not give up. I might move to Vancouver, BC (I live in
Bremerton, WA, across the sound from Seattle) for equal rights as a
human, but I will not give up. "HUMAN STATISTICS" (added 2/4/01) The following item was sent to me by my cousin Tim in response to my
update on "White Privilege" above. A very humbling perspective If
we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100
people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would
look something like the following. There would be: 57 Asians 20 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual
(This
statistic is unknown. Recent studies by the Kinsey Institute have
concluded that 20 % are heterosexual in orientation, 20% are homosexual
in orientation, and 60 % are bisexual in orientation and can go either
way.) 6
people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would from the United States. 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 20 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education 1 would own a computer When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for
both acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. The following is also something to ponder... If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the 20
million who will not survive this week. If
you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you
ahead of 500 million people in the world. If
you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest,
torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in
the world. If you have food in the refrigerator,
clothes on your back, a roof Overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace . . you are among the top 8% of
the world's wealthy. If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada. If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful...you are
blessed because the majority can, but most do not. If
you can hold someone's hand, hug them, or even touch them on the
shoulder...you are blessed because you can offer healing touch. If
you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that
someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than
over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all. |
