A Blessing for My Transgender Son

MY CONGREGATION, All Souls Episcopal Parish, is in a college town. In the summer when students and faculty go on break, our numbers thin considerably, so we move the pews to create a more intimate space in the round. But today was not an average summer Sunday. The pews were overfull. People were sitting on the sides, and there were extra chairs in the back.

My son Samson stood in front of our pew. One of the men in the congregation knelt and fixed his bow tie. The Sunday morning sunlight was streaming through the stained glass and the skylight. I hugged friends.This is going to be good, right? I prayed . Please, Lord, I hope we’re doing the right thing.

On Aug. 13 we renamed and blessed my son, Samson Red Gabriel. Samson is transgender. That week we had gone to court to legally change his name and gender, and that week he turned 10. That Sunday held the joy of five baptisms, all the hilarity and devotion that goes along with that, and this incredible rite that had never been done before in the Episcopal Church. As far as we know, nothing like it had been done for a child in a mainline church before, period.

After a long period of exploration, my daughter Isabel came out as a boy named Samson, and he was ecstatic. That excitement quickly faded with the arrival of awkwardness, inappropriate comments, and harassment at school. There were all kinds of discussion in the news about transgender people, the military, bathrooms, and Trump. Samson was confused, hurt, and overwhelmed. As Samson’s parents, we were also overwhelmed and terrified. Samson’s papa and I are both queer, with complicated gender identities of our own. Many of our chosen family, Samson’s aunties and uncles, are queer and transgender. We felt relief in knowing that Samson would grow up in our protective bubble. “Kids these days have it so much easier than we did,” we thought. We were wrong.

By the end of March, Samson was in a deep depression. All of his sparkle and talkativeness was gone. His downhill slide ended with a four-day hospitalization. The hospital was about an hour from where we live, and I remember driving back and forth every day. I wasn’t sleeping. People brought us food, but I didn’t taste it. My little boy was hurting, and I couldn’t fix it.

The moral principle

The first time we visited Samson, our priest, Mother Liz, came with us. She sat on the bed with Samson. He asked her to pray for him, and she anointed him. Her presence kept me mindful of the Spirit’s presence, even there. Samson left the hospital and, bit by bit, got stronger and began to ignore the bullies, looking to his friends, family, and church family. Church was his safe space. When he came up the aisle in his acolyte robes on Sundays, I relaxed a little. Samson was going to be okay.

Sometime later, we were sitting at a cafe a few blocks from church when Samson asked Liz, “Could you rebaptize me?” She said “No, we baptized you, it worked the first time. But we can do something special.” Over the next couple of months, we shared ideas back and forth, and Liz did some hard work. She researched, talked to other clergy, and wrote a beautiful rite for Samson based on the form of commitment to Christian service in The Book of Common Prayer.

There have been some blessings and renamings of transgender adults in mainline Christian traditions. There are several beautiful and affirming rites, but they are all for adults. Their language speaks to the experiences of people much further along in life than children. Transgender children and youth have particular challenges. Families feel isolated, fending off suggestions that their children are “playing” or that it’s wrong to allow a child to transition. A mom I know feels totally embattled. She’s fighting the administration at her transgender kid’s school and defending her child within their extended family; she’s lost someone she counted on because of her kid’s transition. She is an unconditionally supportive mom, but transgender youths who face rejection by their families make up 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth. A rite like this, and the support of clergy, holds the young person and their family.

Rev. Liz Tichenor and Rev. Phil Brochard, our associate rector and rector, are revolutionaries in the most Episcopalian way possible. They were 100 percent willing to take the risk of publicly supporting Samson and our family in this way, but they were not going to go rogue. They were going to do it with our bishop’s approval. They were going to make it real. Our bishop, Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus, helped edit and approve the final rite, and this meant a lot to Samson. It meant that it wasn’t just our parish family that loved him. It was the church, too. And what follows is that God loves him, too.

Our presiding bishop, Michael Curry, had this to say in a statement about the ban on transgender people in the military: “I am compelled to oppose these actions and to affirm the moral principle of equal rights for all persons, including the LGBTQ communities. I do so as a follower of Jesus Christ, as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and as a citizen who loves this country.” Again, a revolutionary in the most Episcopalian way. He’s not going rogue. We don’t do this alone. This is how we behave, as followers of Jesus Christ, as the bearers of his love.

This is so often not the case. I volunteer as a chaplain, and one of my trainers told me that if I encounter a transgender person who is suicidal, I must say, “God does not condemn you,” that that—more than any other statement—is critical. LGBTQ people have grown up in religious institutions, and I have the most experience with people who grew up in Christian traditions, being rejected, shamed, and excluded. It is estimated that 40 percent of transgender people attempt suicide. And there is no way to know what the real number of attempts and suicides is, because of reporting gaps and because the deaths of transgender people are often shrouded in shame and secrecy. Much of the pain LGBTQ people struggle with comes from the communities that are supposed to hold us up, communities that are supposed to be centered around the teachings of Jesus Christ. That has been some of my own experience.

“The church I know”

So there we were, in the sun and shadow, with Tripp fixing Samson’s pink polka dot bow tie. And I was thinking, Maybe we shouldn’t do this. I was thinking about telling Liz, “Maybe you believe in transgender rights, maybe you want to support transgender youth, but maybe not this kid. Should the media show up, we are not the family you want to be seen with. Queer parents, covered in tattoos, Samson’s sister with her pink hair. You should wait for a nice family.

“How much love is there, really? How much room in the body of Christ is there, really?

“This is going to be a disaster.”

After the beauty of the baptisms, it was Samson’s turn. We stood in front of the stained glass: me, my partner Jonah, Samson’s sister Magdalene, and Samson’s godparents. Samson nodded vigorously to Liz’s question, “Samson, do you claim again your identity as a beloved child of God?” And then came the singing, and the holy water, and the crying. And then we shared communion, for real, in a way I didn’t feel like I had before. Afterward I watched parishioners, young and old, of every imaginable background, come up to Samson and tell him congratulations. I know for a fact that some of these people have very different political views than I do. I imagine some of them didn’t understand. But these are our brothers and sisters, and the love of Christ is big. Really big.

The support of a church is different from the support of a parent, teacher, or another institution. The rite we did for Samson spoke to a love that follows him everywhere, at all times. It was done on behalf of a community that he can turn to when we, as his family, fail, when his friends fail, when his school fails. It targets a deep shame that he has picked up from so many places, a shame that says that he is a mistake, that he is outside of the circle. “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away” (Song of Solomon 8:6-7). At its best, this is what the church can do.

Over the months since Samson’s blessing, it has come up at church over and over. People have told me about the pain that lingered from their childhood experiences with a punitive church. They have told me that witnessing Samson’s blessing changed things for them, that it changed what they thought church could be. And my LGBTQ community has felt it deeply. They are absolutely blown away, and it has started an unfolding of healing. Even my hairdresser cried when I told her. “That’s not the church I know,” she said. “Yeah, it’s not,” I said. Transgender inclusion in the church is not a political issue. It is the coming home of people who have been denied their full personhood and the recognition that they are beloved of God. It is the expansion, for all of us, of our capacity to follow Christ.

What the church could be

Transgender people have so much to offer the church. In 2012, the Episcopal Church voted to remove the legal barriers to transgender people being ordained. Chris Paige, a organizer and educator on transgender spirituality, says, “Some of the fundamental religious questions—Who am I? How do I fit into the world?—those are very familiar questions that people ask on a journey of gender exploration.”

This change in church canons does not mean universal acceptance. Many transgender people are still discouraged from becoming clergy. But paths of transgender clergy offer guidance to the whole church, and the perspectives of transgender people widen our worlds and open our eyes to difference and to our common humanity. And, like anyone else, transgender people can become a part of the church in many ways: maybe as activists, but maybe as lectors or vestry members or ushers.

We have a lot of questions to ask ourselves right now, about who we want to be as the holy catholic church. I believe that we have just started a turn around a corner. A lot of people took risks to make Samson’s rite happen. A lot of people put aside their judgments to demonstrate that the love of God has no bounds.

I asked Samson how he felt that day. He said, “I feel like the luckiest boy in the world.” A few weeks later, Samson told us that when he grows up, he is going to be a professional basketball player, a lawyer, or the first openly transgender bishop in the Episcopal Church. I like that last one, I told him. But someone might get there first. 

‘Do You Claim Again Your Identity?’

The rite used for Samson’s blessing, written by Rev. Liz Tichenor.

Presider, Samson, and his parents and godparents gather near the front.

One godparent lights Samson’s original baptismal candle from the paschal

candle as the presider begins.

Presider: Dear friends in Christ, we trust that God has known every one of us from the time we were being knit together in the womb, making us in their image. At every turn in the wonder of creation, God paused to name that life is very good indeed. Throughout the ages, God has called people to follow and renamed them in the journey: Jacob wrestled God’s angel through the night and emerged blessed as Israel; God renamed Abraham and Sarah as they gave themselves to God’s covenant in the wilderness; scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he began a new life as Paul, a trailblazer for God’s love. We too are called to open ourselves to God’s ongoing revelation. Today, we come together to celebrate Samson’s unfolding understanding of God’s revelation, marked by his taking on a new name. (Presider turns to Samson.)

Presider: Samson, do you claim again your identity as a beloved child of God?

Samson: I do.

Presider: Will you continue to listen for God’s call in your life, opening yourself to the Spirit’s revelation?

Samson: I will, with God’s help. (Presider turns to the congregation.)

Presider: Will all you here present do all in your power to love and support this person in his newly revealed life in Christ?

All: We will!

Presider (to parents and godparents): Name this child.

Parents and Godparents: Samson Red Gabriel.

Presider: Samson, may your name be a blessing. Share that blessing freely.

(Presider lays a hand on Samson.)

Presider: Let us pray. Almighty God, look with favor upon Samson, who has now reaffirmed his commitment to follow Christ and to serve in His name. Give him courage, patience, and vision as he bears this new name, and strengthen us all in our Christian vocation of witness to the world and of service to others, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.