I use they, their, and them as my preferred
gender pronouns
because I haven’t figured out how want to
have my body in for the rest of my life.
I’m a pastor, I’m a parent, I’m transgender,
I am a work in progress.
Hey, sup?
Adam and Eve photobombing me all the time.
Growing up in South Dakota, you can imagine
it’s not the most fun place to figure out
you're trans.
The amount of religious abuse that people
spoke near me, and around me, was enough to make
me study religion.
There is no such thing as transgender.
This notion that you are something other
than your biology is a cultural construct,
intended as an assault on God.
At my college, football players would get
drunk and like knock on my door in hopes of
like having sex with me, so that they can me
not gay anymore.
People would write bible verses from the Gospel
of Matthew about how it would be better if
I had drowned in the ocean than to tell anyone
else that being gay was okay.
I did a lot of studying and ended up becoming
a pastor just trying to vocalize what I knew
in my gut was okay.
As I became queerer, I also became more faithful,
which isn't the typical experience that people have.
In the Lutheran church, they declared that
trans people are beautiful part of God and
so then they let me write for them and have
always supported me.
Being a pastor is a weird thing. Churches
regularly pray for you when you have surgery
which is weird when you're having what would
normally be private part of your body removed
or cared for in any sort of way.
I'd have chronic headaches and shoulder pain.
When I went to the doctor's office I needed
to have breast reduction surgery. They were
like you got two choices: Ken or Barbie?
You wheel you into an operating room trying
to get relief and you come out wondering how
people are going to engage with your body
and it's new to you and you don't even know
how you feel about it.
And the like portion of hourglass that you
use to have is now like Ooooooo.
Most people's feelings about gay and lesbian
people and trans people aren't rational and
maybe as I've matured as a pastor, I've figured
out that it's feelings, right?
People have a feeling or a fear that is compelling
them to want to say no to an entire group
of people.
The way to respond to that is by being our
best self and by being louder that other people's
fear.
I think the most important thing I can say,
as a queer pastor, is, I'm sorry.
Using faith to tear other people down is not
good news.
We need to all be as loud and angry as the
people who want to declare that there are
types of people that God can't love.
People are literally dying because of it.
I'm Pastor Megan, I'm 37, and I am beautiful.
